Built in obsolescence?
Compared to its competitors, decidedly no. The state of affairs on Android is even worse.
Samsung Galaxy S2 release: May 2, 2011
Apple iPhone 4S release: October 14, 2011
Google Galaxy Nexus: November 17, 2011
Galaxy S2 last OS release: October 9, 2012
4S's latest OS release: October 21, *2015*
Galaxy Nexus' last OS release: October 3, 2013
Compared to other industries, like computers or cars, sure. Maybe it's planned obsolescence.
Or maybe it's just that it's such a new product that innovations and consumer desire are faster than usual (or, likely, sustainable).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4S
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_II
As for the other complaints: yes, it's not a perfect situation, but it's better than the alternatives. At the very least, it is still receiving security updates. Those Android phones' last updates predate Heartbleed...
What possible incentive could any phone manufacturer have to build a phone that significantly over-lasts the rough 2 year cycle that their bulk buyers, i.e the networks, sell the phones on?
That's not rhetorical, I'm really asking - does anyone know of any?
Consider it this way: the actual evidence we have disagrees with your conclusion. Apple has seemingly gone out of their way to ensure that new releases continue to run on increasingly-older generations of hardware. Look at calvin_c's comment[1] for a complete breakdown of this.
It's hard not to believe that planned obsolesence isn't at least part of that strategy. It's certainly incidental. I don't hold a grudge against Apple for doing this, but not acknowledging it is turning a blind eye.
But in the consumer mobile OS space, there are really only a few big players. It looks like google does patch old versions of the OS, albeit up to a limit: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/01/12/google-not-fixing-som...
But on the other hand with the way the android adoption curve looks, that's still a lot of people. I just checked wikipedia right now, something like 35% of users are running a version which google stopped patching. So to have the same coverage of security updates, google has to support more OS versions. And even then, they're leaving a lot of people in the dust.
I'm sure google would like people to upgrade too, less versions for them to maintain, but they've got the whole carrier situation to deal with in that ecosystem.
1. General brand goodwill. If it's known that the phone you buy today will be functional for the next 5 years, then long-term customer loyalty may incentivize a company to make sure their units last that long
2. App-store market share. The longer your phone lasts, the lest likely its purchaser will replace it with another ecosystem's product. This would increase the lifetime revenue you get from that buyer.
Again, I'm not sure if these two incentives are enough to outweigh the "new every two!" hardware refresh profits.
The incentive is called actually giving a fuck about quality, and doing the best job you can.
This is thoroughly ingrained in Apple's culture, and NOT ingrained in competitors' culture.
2 year cycle? Nope. Apple's mobile products have a very solid 4-year cycle. Far superior to competitors.
What if you displease them in one way, by making older phones have a limited lifespan, but redress that by pleasing them enough to make the difference in other ways, for example by developing newer phones with superior features that get them excited enough not to care so much about the shortcomings of the old model (shortcomings which wouldn't necessarily be as apparent if the phone had a longer lifespan)?
Might it then be the best strategy to displease your customers on purpose, and accept the negative impact of that since it's also contributing to a wider goal of selling more phones and making more profit?
@aljones gives such an incentive.
Now, you try to cook up particular parameter values under which this reasoning would not apply ("what if you displease them in one way..."). What is the point of this?
I asked for incentives because I'm not aware of any strong ones, aljones replied with what they thought was such an incentive. But, am I obliged to agree? If I disagree, should I not point this out and continue the discussion in a constructive manner?
Additionally, cook up particular parameter values - I don't understand what you mean - we are talking specifically about the 2 year lifecycle of a phone, and the manufacturers' incentives for keeping it as such - I didn't bring that in out of nowhere, that's what we were originally talking about!
Clothes don't need to break, lightbulbs can be built that last forever, cars can and should run indefinitely when we can build aeroplanes that don't fall out of the sky and the performance of animations on an iOS device do not need to degrade substantially every OS release.
Apple release new versions of their OS to support the App Store (which make billions every year) not at all to increase the longevity of devices but to decrease them!!
I assume some of you think this is a paranoid conspiracy or something??