Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I have a completely unusable nexus tablet. It sat with 50% charge for years, I tried to boot it up and it took minutes to do anything. So I flashed it with the latest image available, and it took minutes to do anything.

When I put it up, it was fine.

Compare this to an EeePC, where it happily runs a web browser in Gentoo, snappy. The EeePC is two or three years older, and cost half as much as the nexus.



The flash memory on the Nexus tablet was pretty poor quality. Like many Android devices of the era, eventually you get higher and higher rates of read failures which makes the error correction try again and again to get a good read massively reducing disk performance. It's hardware falling apart.

I've had several Android devices from several manufacturers experience the same issues whether or not they got updates.


Is there some way i can tell if this is the issue, rather than a software issue? root it and install a terminal emulator and start looking in /proc?

was the flash quality poor on purpose? that's planned obsolescence, too.


It sounds like you're saying the nexus broke for reasons unrelated to updates?


Did it, though? There was no reason for it to slow down. I used it plugged in to a beefy supply.

If i said "i put it up in a cabinet because trying to watch youtube on it was becoming a hassle" would that change anything? I put it up for a reason, but i can't remember why. It wasn't because i bought another tablet, because i never have.


> Did it, though?

Did it break? Yes. I'm counting super slowdown as breaking.

Was it unrelated to updates? I can't be 100% sure but your description of what happened sounds like it was unrelated to updates.

Is that what you're asking? I'm confused.


So unrelated to updates. The tablet just slowed down enough to be unusable while plugged in.

sure is a coincidence that this mirrors other people's experiences.

i still have the nexus. I can mail it to you and you can then diagnose it and be 100% certain that it wasn't updates. Then you can be correct on the internet.

or, here, i am wrong. It wasn't updates. It was crap "google" hardware and planned obsolescence. Or stray gamma rays.

You're right!


I don't understand why you're acting like a hardware failure is a ridiculous idea.

At least I think you are? You're being so hostile out of nowhere that it makes your comments hard to follow.


what i'm being is sarcastic in the face of someone who refuses to step back from my single tablet to everyone else in this thread mentioning the same thing

and like i said, you're welcome to my tablet, i'll mail it to you, then you can be certain you are correct.


You made a post that was entirely about your tablet. But when I respond with a post that's also about your tablet in particular, that makes me unreasonable?

And this idea that I'm super insisting on being right about your tablet... you pulled that out of nowhere. Do you do this any time someone disagrees with you?


But the OP talking about an iPhone? I’m sure some devices get bricked (for real) by updates. The iPhone slowdown wasn’t that (though it still should have been optional and/or well advertised)


the term of art is "Planned Obsolescence" and manufacturers have been designing stuff this way since the 80s, around when credit cards were introduced.

I'm sure these two things are unrelated.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: