Tim is a bean counter at heart and everything Apple has been marketing spin for decades.
After using Android since around 2010 getting a midrange iPhone around 18 or so months ago was almost a revelation for me, so no, it is clearly not all marketing spin.
(Why? Even on a Note II or S7 Edge something as trivial as opening the camera would have me waiting. On my iPhone XR pressing the camera button brings up the camera more or less instantaneously. And there are also a number of small conveniences that are hard to really pinpoint like actually understanding when it is in my pocket and then not turn on and burn out my battery.)
That said, if there was a decent Linux phone, I’d hop on it, warts and all. Pinephone or Librem are getting close.
Battery lasts all day (and it's 4 years old). Doesn't turn on when it's in my pocket.
These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.
That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.
I do support on iPhones (not an Apple employee) and I've never experienced the the vaunted "this is so much better" moment.
If you want to see how much value there is in Apple's phones, look at the used phone market. The competition isn't even close and iphones hold their value much better than the vast majority of android phones.
I've used apple products too, but it sounds to me like the differences in quality are deeply exaggerated. I happen to like android mostly because I have access to the filesystem and like to tinker with settings (and I like using my headphone jack).
As far as aftermarket value, I'm not convinced the used marked is completely rational... Or rather, there are plenty of confounding factors that make that a poor argument for which phone is built better.
The used market may not be totally rational but there's a good case to be made for why apple devices tend to hold their value better - they are often built better. You cannot simply dismiss the higher price of used apple hardware as the market being irrational.
So my personal experience makes me doubt that my phones are some kind of exception. These things seem to be plenty durable enough to last several years. I think there's not as much difference in hardware and software as you'd like to think.
If you want to make definitive statements, then I have to ask for your data.
Some basic searching I've done unearthed a paper[1] in the Journal of Industrial Ecology[2] that concludes that economic lifespan (how long a phone is actually used and thus depreciation rates) is only marginally effected by the functional durability (including hardware and software quality). Instead, they suggest that lifespan is more effected by brand equity and related intangibles. People choose to use certain products longer regardless of whether other products have similar functional qualities.
Thinking further on what could cause intangible factors to have such a large impact on the secondary market and depreciation, I can't help but wonder if each brand is attracting different kinds of people with commensurately different attitudes towards their smartphones. That certainly could drive a difference in behavior, and could even be a self-reinforcing trend where the users more likely to retain their products longer are drawn to the brand with the users who are more likely to retain their products longer.
This would mean that the S5's and S6's I've been talking about aren't the exception to the trend. Their users are the exception. That's something I'd be happy to accept. There definitely is a difference in behavior between iphone and android users.
P.S. it's worth noting that the paper itself was seeking to determine if repairability would significantly increase the economic lifespan of smartphones. That's why they were looking at what factors caused people to use their phones for longer or shorter periods of time.
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jiec.12806
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Industrial_Ecology
You can supplement this with the OS share stats of android phone and combine it with the safe assumption that the majority of android phones are lucky to see one OS update. Consumentenbond in the netherlands estimated an average life of around 2.5 years. This is their source Android: beperkt houdbaar. Digitaal Gids
Add to this the resale value number.
I think you're making this more complicated that it needs to be. Android phones don't retain value as well because support is poor. There are few Samsung shops you can walk into to get OEM support and samsung is king of the android hill. Same with google and their name is behind the OS. Apple meanwhile, support six year old phones with software updates and even replace batteries inexpensively.
The point i was aiming for was that android phones aren't any less durable than apple's phones. They aren't used as long and this establishes a feedback loop where android OEMs must cut corners to maintain margins on devices simply because there isn't a revenue stream once sold.
End of the day, your old android phone working well is the exception. Apple know that what sells is the appearance of speed. That is a major reason why their phones sell, not because of GHz or GB or Megapixels.
[citation needed]
This isn't supported at all by the article you linked. It's your own hypothesis, and I simply can't find any basis for it.
The peer reviewed article I linked explicitly shows that behavior (like how long a phone gets used for) is being driven by primarily nontangibles like brand equity rather than hardware and software durability.
The fact that you're ignoring that and still pushing your hypothesis makes it feel like you're clinging to Apple for some reason. I've never understood this kind of brand loyalty. I've stated a couple reasons for my decision to use android, but I'm not attached to Samsung, and I'm even thinking of picking up one of Sony's new phones. Hell, I've used Apple phones in the past, and even tried a Windows phone for a while (that tile interface they had was excellent BTW)
Lucky you.
> These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.
Well, here I am. I don't think I touched an apple product from 2012 to summer 2018 because I disliked OS X so intensely. So not exactly the biggest Apple fan.
> That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.
I talk about normal steady state usage after a month or two. My iPhone is still smooth. My Androids were hardly ever smooth even shortly after installation. YMMW. If it works for you, more power to you.
Edit: I know Android devices can be good. My Samsung S II was amazing for its time.
(asking for an Xperia owner)
And yes, as far as I remember Xperia was good, it just failed physically (later realized it was my fault as I used it as alarm clock and ended up applying force to the charging cable each morning.) Also they lost me as a customer when they included Amazon ads in a OS upgrade.
Maybe it was a bad time for Apple, but it was almost traumatic for me. They really did just use marketing to sell phones.
Consistently Apple have been the leaders in all of the above. Even now, superior chip, camera, battery life, pixel density... it's hard to find better.
I've used Pixels since they became a thing and Apple iPhones. Other than quirky App Store bugs the quality issues almost always occur on the Pixel phones. ("Ok google" just stopping, gestures just stopping, ringing phone not responding to touch etc).
The os annoyance was the relentless "type in your apple id password", and multiple times per week updates. A few users have spun the narrative that updates are good, but these were annoying and didn't have any front facing benefits. No widgets really sucked, it was regressive not to have my next alarm time on my home screen.
Finally Apple maps sucked, the podcast app was buggy, I'd hit play and nothing would happen. I'd then hit play a few times and nothing would happen. Then finally something would happen. I can't remember other software bugs, it's been years.
Sure these might be fixed today, but I wonder what other things are bad today. I have ad blocking and a few other non play store apps on my phone, given the App Store, I'm not sure Apple would let such apps through.
To be fair, transitioning from any phone around the S7 era to an iPhone XR bought in 2020 would probably give you the same feeling of revelation.
The longest I've held on to a phone was the iPhone 7 Plus for ~4 years, but even after 2 and a 1/2 years it was starting to show it's age. By the time I got rid of it, a charge would last me a little over half a day from moderate use.