No, the government hasn’t installed a coronavirus app on your phone

Phones should not be made obsolete in this way. I would have hoped Which? would be working against it to promote product sustainability, as they should with the smart products that lose functionality. My smart phone still works well and does all I want of it. I don’t want to throw it away and spend hundreds on a new one when that should be unnecessary.

I have just been using an old microwave oven (about 30 years old) and a vacuum cleaner (~ 20). I used to have a several appliances that were over 30 years old. A phone or computer is very different and it would not be wise to use one without an up to date security. I do believe that there should be an international agreement that dictates to manufacturers how long updates must be provided for phones and other computing products.

Perhaps Kate would write a Convo about this so that we can explore the issue. One of my concerns is that modern smart devices can lose functionality or even become a security risk.

Technology might move on but why can a government app not be designed to work on older phones. That will exempt many users from being protected.

Why can security updates not be applied to older phones. Is it impossible?

I am asking because I do not know 🙂

Thanks Kate. I remember you told us about your washing machine. Derek has a Zanussi that is 32.

Until we have legislation about the length of product support the best solution seems to be to choose a model that is early in its life cycle, perhaps waiting until any teething troubles have been dealt with. It would be good if we could be be told what Which? is pushing for and if there is anything that we as consumers could do to help.

I agree that the suport lifetime of Android is really poor.

Many of my ten year old PC’s can run Windows 10 and many legacy applications still work nicely there. During lockdown, I been spending a lot of time playing one particular Win95 era game that works nicely on XP (and also worked on Vista and W7 (I think)) but does not work on W10.

You have often mentioned prolonging the working life of computers by switching from Windows and MacOS to free open source software and presumably maintaining security. I wonder if there are any options to do something similar with phones and tablets.

Considering how much most people use their mobiles we are probably getting better value for money than most of the other products we buy but I’m determined that we should push for phones to be supported for as long as reasonably possible and for batteries that are user-replaceable without the need for a pentalobe screwdriver, a spudger and a heat gun to soften adhesive. 🙁 We also need access to OEM parts and service information.

This is rather like suggesting we get a lot of use out of our car, fridge, washing machine, tv…… so after a certain amount of use, miles, programme hours, we’ve had good value out of it and shoukd throw it away.

That is neither good for our pocket, good for the environment nor for the planet’s limited resources. It goes to the heart of bad consumerism and is something Which? should be fighting to stop. The promotion of “the latest technology” should be very carefully considered.

That is not what I said or implied, Malcolm. I have pointed out above that many products can carry on being used for years or even decades. There is no security risk. What concerns me is the move towards smart products, giving further opportunities for planned obsolescence.

I have also said that we should push (via Which? hopefully) for phones etc. to be designed to be supported for as long as reasonably possible.

I very much agree that we should stop promotion of phone contracts that provide a replacement phone after two years or less.

Misunderstanding, wavechange. I was simply picking up on your point about the value we get out of phones, but extending it to say despite this we should be able to use products as long as possible, and keep them functioning.

I am a bit disturbed by Kate’s view that I should ditch my smart phone that still does more or less all I need of it, because it is somehow “unsafe”. In my ignorance of such matters, given what I use my phone for, I have asked why I am at risk. At first sight I am disappointed that Which? appear accepting of the notion that these expensive devices might only be safe for 2 or 3 years and should then be discarded. I may learn otherwise but I do not think that Which? should be supporting that approach.

Elsewhere you have asked whether it is possible to use a smartphone safely for a limited range of functions such as web browsing and taking photos. It’s a good question and I’m very interested to learn the answer, as I said in my reply.

If you know the operating system you can check online to see if it is still supported, Debbie. If you are no longer receiving updates it will not be secure and you will not be able to use the tracing facility when it becomes available.

Couldn’t agree more. This built in obsolescence particularly affects the elderly and vulnerable who can’t afford to splash out on the latest tech. I wish Which? would champion this cause, rather than tell us whether the latest Samsung or iPhone is ‘better’.

I suppose ‘out of support’ is a way of getting around the fact that something is not out of date but has been rendered useless by the manufacturer.

I really resent this. Apple and Google and all the rest know full well that hackers exist, they are selling products that are open to misuse, they should support them for as long as they work. The motor companies have to support their products for ten years, I’d say that’s the least the tech companies should offer given the money they’re making out of us (And the way that they’re doing it).

It would help the environment if all phones and other technology has standardised connections for power and charging. We managed to this for kettles many moons ago and it’s time we did it for all our tech devices.

Malcolm R: There is no reason why an app can’t be written for any device capable of using it, the problem is with the willingness of programmers to do so. The sad fact is that technology moves on and is frequently deliberately built to be incompatible with previous versions. ‘Built in obsolescence’ they call it.

Microsoft provided free upgrades to later versions of their operating system for as long as I remember. My Win 10 Acer laptop cost less than my Android 9 phone. Why are smartphone manufacturers allowed to sell phones that become a security risk after just a few years.

I think they get away with this because we are daft enough to buy them.

As a workaround, charging leads can come with micro USB, USB C and Lightning connectors. I have one of these and it works with any of my smartphones.

To get the facts completely correct, Microsoft have now stoped free support for all home OSes other than Windows 10 and 8. But they have provided free support for about 10 years with most of their OSes and additional paid for support for up to three more years, but only to large corporate users.

Some major patches were also released for XP after it was out of support for home use. It was good to see that.

If you buy nice cheap Andriod phones, costing no more than £100 each, you get good functionality and can probably also afford to replace them every two or three years.

On the other hand if you buy flagship phones costing £_EXPENSIVE each, then you probably deserve to have them supported for for 6 years, as Apple do with theirs (see:-https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/ios ).

Yes, but you will only get the maximum length of support if you buy phones when they are newly introduced.

Good point. I only paid £40 for my s/h iPhone SE, so I’m not too bothered about not getting 6 years of Apple support from my date of purchase. I do like the ready availabity of inexpensive 3rd party spares for these older iPhones but I don’t like their use of glued in components.

As a fogie I was quite happy with my 2006 £30 Nokia that made and received phone calls and texts and fitted the hands free cradle in my 2004 Espace. Both still work and are in use. It was only when my son passed on his Galaxy S4 that the joys of owning a smart phone were revealed.

I take DerekP’s point about buying a cheap Android and replacing it every 3 years from the point of view of my personal finances. However, this still means discarding a functioning device, further depleting the earth’s resources and adding just a little more to our waste mountain. If Win10 can be supported for 10 years without a hardware modification why cannot a phone?

An iPad I bought in 2012 works perfectly well put perhaps is no longer “safe” – I hadn’t thought to check. I wonder just how many people have had all their millions of older devices attacked and with what results?

If like me and many others you own the phone outright then you think twice before replacing it every few years. If you have it on the monthly plan, a small extra increment every month makes an upgrade easier. I have no need to access the internet on my smartphone so I have no intention of replacing it prematurely.

Is it practical to make smartphones that can be supported for years? Maybe someone could provide a link to an expert’s view on the subject or better still a recent review supported by evidence. Without this information we cannot have an informed debate.

I do believe that we should push manufacturers to provide support for as long as practical. Some brands seem to do better than others.

The forthcoming coronavirus app might be the first app that might be widely regarded as essential, and others might follow.

I suspect that it is not practical for mass produced, popular, smartphones to enjoy unlimited free support for life.

in similar vein, Nissan have failed to provide me with either free servicing or free petrol for the life of my secondhand Note. I am, of course, happy to pay separately for those items, because, without them, my car would not be of any practical use.

Given the current commercial reality, that cheaply purchased smartphones will only be supported for a few years, it would be nice to have some consumer protection regulations to make that much clearer at the time of purchase. For example, we already do this with “use by” dates on products such as both food and PPE.

Agreed. I wonder which organisation might push for these regulations with our approval and hopefully help.

When we are being pushed to do everything on our smartphones, they need to be supported longer than 4 years for the sake of the environment and for all those who cannot afford to keep replacing them or pay the escalating monthly fees.

Smartphone manufacturers must not be allowed to perpetrate fraud by not supporting their products leaving phones open to hacking.

To keep products going, I don’t mind paying for updates after say 6 years, but the costs must be reasonable.

Is there any evidence that this is practical, Alfa? As I suggested above it would be useful to have expert opinion backed by evidence. There have been huge changes in the design of smartphones and they have much of the power of computers in a very small space.

Until I can see evidence that it is practical to keep old phones secure for as long as we want then perhaps it would be best to focus on the problem of phone service providers pushing us to replace our phone with a new shiny one within two years of purchase – or less.

I doubt that many security flaws arise from hardware limitations on older phones.

Instead, if manufacturers will not patch out revealed flaws in older code and will not release that code for others to patch, then it becomes impossible to use older devices securely.

Imagine driving an old car without an MoT. Most of us would not risk that.

I agree with that. If the Government need the app or an equivalent capability to become universally adopted, it is a mistake to only make it available for a subset of mobile phones. In some articles, I have seen references to the use of bluetooth tags, as an alternative for those without compatible mobiles.

Tosh!

Scaremongering is what Which? seems good at nowadays.
Using any device without appropriate security software is taking a risk. Downloading, installing and allowing any app/programme access to areas of your device has to be done with caution.

I’m still using Windows XP on 2 pc’s but use updated antivirus, malware and firewall protection with no issues at all.

Completely different scenario. Do you expect your car to be usable after three years?

The day after an MOT and your car could be unroadworthy.

Yes, but if it did pass the Mot the day before, then it should be very unlikely to fail the next day, so the risk involved will be low and, as the car owner I will have taken reasonable steps to avoid any such scenario.

On the other hand, if I deliberately drove a car that I knew could not pass the Mot, then I would be failing to exercise due diligence.

I also still have a number of XP PC’s but I refuse to use them online because I have more up to date kit that I can use instead.

Could I suggest that Which? includes a “cost per supported year” in all the phone reviews and includes this factor in the recommendations for Best Buys. As phone models age, the typical buying price is already updated, so it should also be easy to keep this figure updated too, based on the remaining support period. For any manufacturers that refuse to give a commitment for a specific time for support, it could be assumed that they will not support it for more than a year. This built in obsolescence for mobile phones is a scandal!

Until this happens the best option is to buy a phone soon after the model is released, which maximises the period of support.

Actually it should be perfectly possible for any company that maintains a good archive of their software releases in their software repository. The real issue is more likely to be around what the companies deem as cost effective for them. This in turn will be based on how they architect and design their s/w to work efficiently across the multiple hardware platforms and variants in their own product catalogue. Of course if the company controls both the software and the hardware, as they do, one would expect them to ensure that the number of variants aren’t that large so that it’s easy to maintain…
I really hope that the Which campaign has an effect in this area. If there’s a more recent topic somewhere that addresses this on the site, please point me in that direction.

In the meantime, one thing that I think should be added to a request for general support is that vendors should separate updates for security from updates to features. By this I mean that a user should be allowed to not take User interface updates but still take security updates.
Not everyone wants to learn new ways of doing things, and I’ve recently spent 2 days trying to make Android 10 look like Android 8 for my 85 year old mother on her new tablet (she spent 2 years before finally being comfortable with 8 and not having to ask anyone how to do XYZ).
I get that marketing people and developers want to put in new fancy interfaces. I understand that phones are complex devices not just for phone calls any more but a tool is a tool and when you own it and are comfortable with it, why should you have to spend days or weeks (depending on your ability and desire to change) working out how to use it again when the latest security patch updates the OS as well? Change isn’t always helpful!

…and this doesn’t need to make the development more difficult, it just depends how it was designed in the first place.

I should have read your intro properly before posting, Kate. I’d worked it out but could not edit/delete my post.

I hope that you will advise on security risks etc. when it is functional.

The Gibraltar app is available at https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/beatcovidapp or specifically for iPhones at https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/beat-covid-gibraltar/id1514587092.

I agree. I do not see why we have to reinvent the wheel ( unless those producing commercial apps are profiteering).

Give the presumed IT expertise in our universities I wonder why we cannot produce a competent app and associated data base, though.

If funding was provided they might be happy to take this on.

I presume that different apps are being developed for evaluation, which would allow the most effective one to be adopted. The first one trialled in the Isle of Wight did not prove as effective as had been hoped.

I have not seen any comparative studies for the one used in Gibraltar, mentioned by NFH. compared with alternatives.

malcolm r says:
I agree. I do not see why we have to reinvent the wheel ( unless those producing commercial apps are profiteering).
Give the presumed IT expertise in our universities I wonder why we cannot produce a competent app and associated data base, though.

The problems are security and privacy. Older ‘phones run on slower processors with possibly flawed chipsets. The newer ‘phones have had hardware upgrades to make illicit data acquisition more difficult and the newer apps are designed to protect the privacy of he users whose data is being used.

Producing the database is a doddle; securing it is a nightmare.

Wavechange, the UK government was warned very publicly by many independent technical experts that their own non-Apple/Google solution wouldn’t work because of restrictions in iOS. Nevertheless the UK government went ahead and wasted taxpayers’ money on developing it, and wasting valuable time while the UK remains without a functioning app. In the meantime, the far more competent British government of Gibraltar developed an app using the Apple/Google solution.

Thanks NFH. I’ve just found the same information. I’m socially distancing myself from what the government is saying unless there is science to support the views of the politicians.

The government doesn’t develop apps so who did they pay to attempt this one?

If I’d looked first it was NHSX, teans from the NHS and others. Why do we not use university IT specialists to do this sort of work? Do they not have the expertise?

I found this information about the costs of developing the app that the government decided not to use: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-contract-tracing-app-cost-uk-government-apple-android-a9576001.html

I don’t know the answer about IT specialists but wonder if the government offered funding.

If they can pay these outfits they can pay universities, surely. Why did no one know apple iOS would prevent its use?

Once again, were universities offered funding? I’m not qualified to comment on why the app was less effective on iOS devices. There is an article in the Independent that suggested that the new app will be better on iOS and Android than the previous one was on Android but have no reliable information to back this up.

This is fast becoming shakedown time for the universities as they ponder the implications of coronavirus on their foreign student intake and other related issues, so bidding for an app development project was probably not top of their priorities right now – that’s assuming they were even given the chance to offer their services. Money obviously isn’t the problem. As Malcolm said, it has been found [and then wasted].

The £11 million spent would, I should imagine, have been very welcome. University staff seem to have been working on COVID spread modelling, for example.

What I am interested in learning is whether, in appropriate cases, the government could make more use of the knowledge and talent that universities have, for payment of course, instead of paying huge sums to consultants.

I’m sure the Government has been trying its best to make good use of our universities during the pandemic.

That said said, I doubt that many universities are set up to work as manufacturing industries, not even in the field of software engineering.

So, whilist I would certainly expect that a good university software engineering department would be teaching the skills and knowledge need to produce simple entreprenurial mobile apps, I doubt that they would have the quality assurance infrastructure needed to tackle an urgent high profile and high risk project for Government.

I agree. This sort of work might be best done as a collaborative effort perhaps on a science park associated with a university. Having to deliver a reliable product within months is not easy but there are always going to be those who have to find someone to blame when something does not work out right at the first attempt.

The NHS should stick to health care. They don’t have a great track record in IT development.

Thanks Kate. I have already advised her and discovered that the phone in question is not running the latest version of iOS 12, for some reason. I guess it was too full of photos to accept the software update. Since I’ve been told that my iPhone 11 is rather large, the new SE might fit the bill.

Yes but only if you now agree to carry your Dyson with you at all times.

It might be worth taking some time to understand how this API works and what data is stored where. Taking an approach akin to “I refuse to use this technology because I don’t understand it and one of the parties involved does something totally unrelated that I don’t like” isn’t going to help you.

It might be worth taking some time to understand how the Apple/Google API works and what data is stored where. Taking an approach akin to “I refuse to use this technology because I don’t understand it and one of the parties involved does something totally unrelated that I don’t like” isn’t going to help you.

I agree, NFH. Having tried to learn more it is difficult to find information that is unbiased.

In response to “So, do Apple & Google have an app which the UK government are looking to implement, or was this just yet another case of ministers not having a clue what is happening – or worse still actually not telling us the truth?” – no, Apple and Google do not have an app, but an API to a service within the smartphone’s operating system that detects proximity and records anonymous identifiers of nearby smartphones.

Government ministers are technically illiterate. Their attempts at previous initiatives and policies demonstrate this, for example their unworkable and abandoned plan to block porn from those who have not opted in. Aside from the likes of Keir Starmer, who has an expert understanding of law, politicians are generally experts in nothing, particularly technology.

To be fair, I think many politicians are experts in the field of not giving simple truthful answers to clear and unambiguous questions.

Here in Gloucester our last (unsuccesful) Labour candidate actually had a PhD in carbon capture technology, so, if elected, she would have been well equipped to undertstand issues around climate change.

Politicians are advised by the civil service. Maybe we should be questioning the latter’s competence.

Actually, I suspect one thing that doesn’t serve the public well is the convoluted and complex way the press often ask questions, supplying a deck of answers, from which they expect the politician to select.

The question you quoted from BenUK, NFH, is a fairly good example of what I mean. Rarely is a question asked which requires a simple answer.

I stopped watching Question Time a long time ago. I used to then catch the tail end while waiting for “This Week”. I simply tired of the predictable negativity. A Tory following the party line, labour disagreeing and attacking on principle, Lib Dems telling us what they thought we’d like to hear (no chance of having to live up to it) and other fringe parties having a bicker.

Just occasionally they had someone on the panel who made sensible contributions, and they were the odd journalist, professional, someone from the real world. A notable example was Ian Hislop.

I’d just ban all politicians from the panel and invite genuine people from the same world I inhabit.

Malcolm, you forgot internet trolls (sorry political persuaders), those that reflect the people (sorry brainless celebs).

Trouble with inviting genuine people, they would still be biased to the flavour of the programme.

I don’t usually stay up late enough to watch Question Time but I do quite often listen to Any Questions?

As Malcolm says, sometimes the debates are just annoyingly fractious and often the best participants are those who do not have a party line to follow and who may even have some relevant knowledge of the subject in question.

As an Engineer, I have been taught to ask open questions rather than biassed ones such as: `why has time and money been _wasted_ on developing an in-house app?’. For example, to ask that as a more open question, I’d use `spent’ rather than `wasted’.

If politicians do ever receive any training for their chosen occupation, I imagine their initial training covers techniques for avoiding any question and then diving down a nearby but unrelated rabbit hole. Examples of this can be seen in Parliament, e.g. during Prime Minister’s Question Time.