It’s that time of year again. What do you want for Christmas? People are wandering around the malls looking for inspiration as to what to buy their loved one’s. No doubt that will be me on Christmas Eve, last minute Larry. However the kids want new phones and Dad wants a new computer. Their existing equipment is only two or three years old but it is already out of date and very slow.
Why is it that when you bought state of the art phones or computers a couple of years ago they are now so slow as to be operating at geological timescales. I bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 when they came out in 2012 top of the range Smartphone at the time, it was superfast. But by the time it packed up in 2016 it was hardly responding to any request. So I then bought the best at the time again the Galaxy S7 and by now barely 18 months later it is also very slow. The answer to this and the same issue with computers is that there exists a profitable dance between the hardware manufacturers and the operating system companies.
When you buy a computer or phone it is designed to process as fast as possible on the existing operating system but then Android or Samsung or Apple or Microsoft release a new version of their operating system with all new bells and whistles, which is much larger than the previous one, so your device takes longer to boot up and open applications. These upgrades happen automatically and usually in the dead of night when you’re sleeping, all you know is that when you pick it up in the morning you might notice that it rebooted during the night. Once you have had 4 or 5 of these upgrades then the processors cannot keep up. The manufacturers have created new faster processors which of course are in the latest models in the shops. This continuously circular process is designed to keep you purchasing new devices even though the one you have would still be able to run the applications you want for many years to come. Most of us have a few apps that we use and have very little use for all the new bells and whistles on offer. So what can we do to stop this?
The simplest answer is to disable automatic updates, you can do this on your phones and computers but it is a bit of a fiddle. If you are not sure then just Google your device and the phrase “stop automatic updates” and you should get instructions. If you do this then you will get plenty of warnings telling you that you put your security at risk by not updating, but just ignore these as your phone was plenty secure before. The result will be that your device will not slow down and continue to work at a reasonable speed for many more years than if you allow the updates. The manufacturers, in an attempt to cover this as well, more and more do not allow you to change the battery which will be the first thing to go. With my old S3 I had a couple of spare batteries which I carried around and could swap when one ran out, but my S7 has a built in battery that I cannot change. So when that gives up I will have no option but to buy a new phone. You can delay it but they will get you in the end.