The 5S is entering its 6th year and will get iOS 12.
They ADMITTED to deliberately slowing down phones https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/29/apple-apo...
Do you think a $1,000+ phone lasting only "4 or 5 years" is really that good?
You don't have to buy a $1,000 iPhone to get 4-5 years out of it. You can buy a cheaper model and get the same longevity.
Or you can buy random_chinese_android phone, pay the same $1,000, and get software updates cut off in two years.
Apple's iPhone 5s is getting it's sixth year of support starting with the next release of iOS.
If you splurge on Google's own flagship device with a similar pricing model, you only get two years of OS updates with an additional year of security updates.
Additionally many people would consider a laptop being directly supported for 5 years pretty good.
Especially if you contrast with the "maybe you'll get two years of updates" experience provided by the majority of Android device vendors.
ESPECIALLY Apple. They developed a subscription model for hardware.
Instead of accusing them of designing for planned obsolescence, maybe consider the gigantic performance gains between each model for the first 5 years.
Imagine if Windows only supported up to 5 year old hardware.
The phone was released in September 2013.
How many Android devices from 2013 are getting Pie, and running well under it? I'm guessing it's about "none whatsoever": Google can't be arsed to support its own device for more than 3 years (the 2 years old Pixel is the oldest Google-branded device getting Pie), and other manufacturers are way worse.
I still use it for videos at the gym, and as a ebook reader at home. The battery is fine. The screen is still great.
They force download some upgrade every year. Last year i relented and stuck a $20 memory card in it.
Granted - this is a top tier device from a top tier manufacturer..
Plenty of iPhones had only 3 years of support, and same with Android phones. At least do an apples to apples comparison (pun intended).
That's a bold claim. Only two models were end-of-lifed after less than 3 years. One more after less than 4 (3y, 11m). The rest had at least 4 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
According to this, from the 3GS to the 5C, most had 4 years (or very close) of support. Two models approached 5 years (4y, 10m and 4y, 11m).
Everything from the 5S forward is still supported, and the 5S has 4 years and 11 months of support now.
If you failed math, you might include the iPhone X in your numbers and its 10 months of support would bring the average down. However, that's 10 months of support so far, it's not end-of-lifed yet.
The 5C is an outlier amongst the earlier models, but it makes sense. It was the same hardware as 5 but a different case, and released a year later. So the 1 less year of support is reasonable (if it were supported another year, the 5 would have been as well).
For grins:
The first 7 iPhone models had an average support period of 47 months.
If you include the next 7 models (all still supported) it brings the average down to just shy of 39 months.
If you consider that each of those 7 will get another 12 months of support from today, minimum: This time next year (excluding this year's models) they will have received almost 45 months of support, on average.
If a device is built to last and that means it spends 1 year in the hands of an early adopter and then 5+ years in the hands of someone more price conscious, then that's still better than being disposable.
I do question whether Apple is serious about this aspect though if for no other reason than how hostile they are to the non-Apple-first-party device repair market for their devices.
Well they're at least serious about supporting devices for a long time: even if it's dropped from iOS 13, the 5S will have been supported for 6 years. Although the devices getting less and less repairable is a significant issue.