Phone software as in, like, smartphone software? The phone in my pocket is literally more powerful than the PS4 I bought last year. 8GB of RAM, 128GB of flash storage, 8-core 2.45GHz 64-bit ARM processor.
Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago, I had to add a new feature to firmware that was already using just under 900 of the total available 1024 bytes of program space.
Agreed. Assuming you're talking about phone apps (as opposed to baseband or sensor control etc); software for phones has much more in common with desktop software than it does with the embedded world, you just have to be a little bit more conscious about your power and data usage.
In my embedded work I pushed a few years back to upgrade the microcontrollers we used from 2kB to 16kB RAM and 16kB to 128kB flash devices (at a grand total extra cost of $2) so I could stop worrying about how we would fit all the new features in.
My personal line for "embedded" at the point where you take responsibility for the OS functionality too. IMHO that's currently somewhere around Raspberry Pi etc devices, which on one level have computing power in line with the smartphone world, but on the other you're still mucking around with the OS yourself. I know it's pure snobbery on my behalf, but I still cringe to think about Node.js running on them... (even though I'm doing it myself for hobbyist level stuff).
Ah! You know, that makes me feel a little better, knowing I'm not the only one sort of balking at the idea of Node.js running on those little dev boards... Even though I've also done it in the past haha! Very funny. :)
Yeah, historically I have tended to agree with the parent's posts on HN, but here I couldn't disagree more. Our phones are definitely closer to small workstations than embedded devices. Not only because of the available resources, but because of things like application portability. I can take an apk for my phone and run it on every other Android device on the market running a compatible API. The fact that it runs Android in the first place makes it too general purpose to be an embedded device. Now, if the parent had said our old-style brick phones were embedded devices, I would agree with him there. But not smartphones.
Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago, I had to add a new feature to firmware that was already using just under 900 of the total available 1024 bytes of program space.