>>I've still got my iPhone 6 Plus.
Not the parent, but that's pretty new. I used a 4s earlier this year and there were several apps that couldn't be upgraded and/or stopped working.
Not the parent, but that's pretty new. I used a 4s earlier this year and there were several apps that couldn't be upgraded and/or stopped working.
The Nexus 6 reached it final OS update with N but the 6+ is about to get iOS 11.
The iPhone 5s is about to get iOS 11. If it weren't for the 64-bit transition I wouldn't be surprised if it had gotten on the iPhone 5 as well.
Apple gives about 5 years of iOS updates, which makes keeping the same phone a lot more feasible. Meanwhile my Google sourced Nexus barely makes it two without landing on security patches-only.
Maybe I got really lucky with both of my iPhones but even though I hate to pay this ridiculous premium price for iPhones it kinda evens out in the end considering I use the phone for 4-5 years.
I used an iPhone 4 up until late last year, my dad is still using it. Now I upgraded to an iPhone 5s.
The annoying part is generally apps that require a higher OS, which is the app developers fault. But even then you don't always necessarily /need/ the absolute newest version of an app.
Planned obsolescence by big fat arse.
In case of tablets, my partner is still using her iPad 2 and Netflix has a version of their app that still runs on that.
The core software on her tablet, like the core software on my older phones that were given to family members still work fine.
Its the 3rd party apps that seem to be abandoned by software developers. That's going to happen regardless of what phone manufacturer's want.
So in my view it's a bit of both. These devices could have a longer life with manufacturer support, but the app developers are the ones driving the obsolescence.
From (solo) developing an sms based app in 2017 there was little incentive to target an API level lower than 19 (KitKat), which provided a standard API for SMS.
The majority of devices support it so what's the incentive to support legacy software?
Now if there are breaking changes introduced to telephony in the future I'll probably maintain 4.4 support and add a check for API level. That isn't feasible for every app, though...