Forced Obsolescence / Obsolescence by Design

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Chatter about forced obsolescence, including but not limited to:

salvaging or repurposing abandoned / unsupported hardware
name and shame culprits of obsolescence
right to repair guidance and advocacy in situations involving obsolescence
obtaining old software to drive old hardware, finding archives, building old binaries from source

related communities (decentralized only)

somewhat related to forced obsolescence:

!buyitforlife@slrpnk.net - Buy stuff that lasts a long time, if you must buy something
!buyitforlife@discuss.tchncs.de - Buy stuff that lasts a long time, if you must buy something
!fixing@slrpnk.net - fix it, don’t replace it
!fixit@disflux.org
!righttorepair@midwest.social - exercise your right to fix stuff
!right2repair@discuss.tchncs.de - exercise your right to fix stuff
!righttorepair@lemmy.fmhy.ml
!sustainabletech@lemmy.sdf.org - sustainable technology
!permacomputing@lemmy.sdf.org - To discuss computing that’s not resource intensive
!permacomputing@slrpnk.net - To discuss computing that’s not resource intensive
!zerowaste@slrpnk.net - To discuss waste avoidance

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activistPnk@slrpnk.net

Sony Ericsson / Xperia (proprietary s/w “phones home”… and nobody home; refuses to operate) (slrpnk.net)

submitted 4 months ago by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/forced_obsolescence@slrpnk.net

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/19802629

Smartphones are a shit-show so I bought some old Sony Ericsson feature phones from a flea market, expecting Gammu¹ to work as reported. It worked on one phone but not others (despite all of them reportedly working with Gammu).

Some msgs arrived and got trapped on the phone, which happened to have a dysfunctional screen. And gammu failed to access the phone (though it works on some phones). So I needed to run Sony’s proprietary garbage (“PC Companion”) on a Windows machine to get the msgs.

Sony’s PC Companion is designed to phone-home. The software launches but immediately goes to the cloud to check for updates so it can update itself. So obviously offline people are inherently fucked -- they can never sync their desktop and phone without the cloud.

But worse: Sony has taken down their server. Thus rendering all Sony phone syncing software installations useless. This thread is to document the big “Fuck you” from Sony to their customers.

¹ Gammu is free software syncs to old feature phones. You can send and receive SMS using the commandline this way.

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[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 2 points 4 months ago

This is why you need to sign up for the stopkillinggames.com petition, no one likes having their stuff taken from them

[–] mutual_ayed@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

https://xdaforums.com/t/guide-root-any-sony-android-phone-without-twrp.4542839/

https://xdaforums.com/t/xperia-1-root-guide.3938304/

Edit: for those that need to bypass this to keep a phone working.

[–] activistPnk@slrpnk.net 1 points 4 months ago

This thread is more about Sony’s feature phones, which need the PC Companion software.

Not all Xperia phones are Androids. The Xperia X1 ran Windows. I also suppose if you connect a recent Xperia android to PC Companion, you’re still fucked by Sony for the same reason: Sony dropped the ball on their servers. You can hack the thing but let’s not give Sony credit for that.