@darius I did this with a $100 ZTE phone (illegal to sell in America!) and… the experience was really nice, actually! I was sorely tempted to just not get a "better" phone. Part of that though was I managed to get Android Go, which was a special version of Android where all the stock apps are carefully trimmed to work on very low-end, low-RAM devices. Google has since killed Android Go.

@darius

Decades ago I gave HTML (2.0 was still a novelty) lessons.

My first advice was to check local pages from a floppy disk, to have a better experience on how a visitor with a slow modem can see them.

I don't know how many app developers check if their apps can work on "cream of the crap" phones.

@darius my wife and I went to Cuba recently and I picked up a refurb pixel 4a figuring that at minimum, it would have the most up to date camera software and OS. Everything else that was cheap was pretty dire

@darius yes! I 100% agree with this.

For my projects, we value speed and efficiency. If the site can't load on a 3G connection, it's effectively broken outside of the first world.

While I don't have a $100 Android phone as my daily driver, I also don't use the latest Pixel or Apple device.

@darius I think about the NHS digital. design standards all the time, where the standard is functionally "your target audience is a fifteen-year-old for whom english is a second language. They're using a 6 year old android phone that's been handed down twice, and they are sitting in an hospital emergency waiting room trying to look up information in the middle of the the most terrifying night they have ever had. Your site must work for that person, at that moment."

https://digital.nhs.uk/about-nhs-digital/standards-for-web-products#using-valid-html

@darius yeah I'm writing a piece on sw perf & scalability, and I have a section about that issue. the phenom where devs & 1st worlders can get spoiled and blinded to some perf issues, and so not understand what the UX is like for folks using older/slower kit or pipes

@darius
I'm glad you have become aware of this. I read a while back that some big tech company (was it Facebook? Google? don't remember) required their software developers to use crappy phones regularly to see first hand what others around the globe are dealing with.

I don't use "fancy" phones. I always have to tell my iPhone friends to quit "liking" my texts because on my phone it comes through as a whole other text that says "[name] 'liked' [whatever the text said]"

@darius If a website needs a $900 phone, it's a bad website.

@darius Yeah, there are a lot of corners cut on low-end devices. Manufacturers will use older chips, even new chips will use older cores, RAM is hit or miss, and the GPU always suffers... I ended up with a Samsung Galaxy A32 (a $280 MSRP phone) from a carrier promo and was surprised how much worse it felt than a couple-year-old mid-range A50. Android's never been able to make the most of low-end hardware, either-- that was where Windows Phone (RIP) really shone IMO.

@darius I bought a cheap Nokia about 1.5 years ago when I borked my aged Galaxy S8 and the Nokia was nearly un-f***-ing useable. It was bought brand new and claimed to be supported, with future updates promised. It was by far the WORST phone I have ever used, and the most miserable fact was I had bought it new. I cracked the screen within a few weeks and even managed to replace it (despite the glued battery) but I wouldn’t bother trying to use it again—even the literal phone app would occasionally crash or glitch out. It was sooo bad.

For cheap Android the clear path to go is a 3-4 year old decent condition former flagship if you need a cheap phone. I’m using an S10e I bought about a year ago for that reason, and my next phone might be a Pixel 4 if I am forced to move on.

@darius Yup, always design for a system that can't use CSS and work up from there. Content above style, always, unless your website is a single image of a wall of text.

@darius what makes it worse is the cheaper it is, the more likely it's subsidized by pre-installed bloatware and has a ton of ill-advised hacks applied to the system image

@darius Moto G on android 12 was cheap and works well enough for me. Not fixing what ain't broke.

@darius

One can see such realities in the "Rest of World’s photography contest" submissions.

https://restofworld.org/2023/winners-2023-photography-contest/

https://dair-community.social/@OmaymaS/110182138283790758

@darius @zens That's 1 thing about iOS, everyone has the same experience just about depending on how old your phone is. Same with Mac.

@darius out of curiosity what is the fancy phone you currently use? Aside from the clear performance difference (owing to hardware), curious if you also found a difference in the OS Software experience.