Well, one stopped charging and wasn't popular enough for local shops to have parts for it. But that was likely wiring/port, not the battery itself.
Something like the switch for example has no waterproofing and isn't ultra compact, it's really just not acceptable that the battery isn't a screw in panel like previous consoles.
There's only so much a cell phone needs to do. I think a Note 4, which is 8 years old at this point is still a perfectly functional phone, with only software related issues. And the battery is replaceable.
Every form factor since has been a pain in comparison.
This can be somewhat mitigated if you have a popular device that is supported by 3rd party ROMs.
Plus, there's an insidious combination of changes to the underlying hardware and changes to the APIs. When old hardware is no longer supported by the app maker, and their APIs have changed enough that you need a new(er) version of the app (or they just force you to be on the latest version), you're often SOL.
Using POS software that is never optimized does not help, indeed.
> or weren't updated by the manufacturer.
That is a real problem, and there is no good solution - apart from having eventual Linux phones but we are a very long way from there.
This depends on your use case. Sent from my Pinephone.
This can also be because of degraded batteries. It will also be much less of reason over time as phone processors mature.
The result is I only buy cheap phones now (~200$), with the expectation that they'll last about a year. I have no idea how people can justify spending the price of iPhones and other flagships when they are apparently so expendable.
I had 3 high-end HTC smartphones and one Huawei, which all lasted at least 4 years of use. And the reason for retiring them was wanting better hardware, camera, etc., not really that they stopped working or became slow (there only was a "physical" reason in in the case of the Huawei: the screen broke in a fall and it was expensive to replace, otherwise it worked just fine).
I don't have experience with Motorola, but from friends/family who have or had Samsung, it tends to be just... not good. Even if the hardware survives, which it not always does, after 1-2 updates they tend to lag like hell. I don't really get why they are so successful while e.g. HTC's smartphone business basically went under.
My iPhone6 still works. I’ve moved on for other reasons (more space, better camera) but the product still works better than most Androids. I even had Apple replace the battery!
IMO when it comes to electronics with little to no moving parts it's almost always better to buy used quality than cheap new crap. An iPhone that has lasted two years without failing will probably last 5 more without anything else than battery needing replacement. Mid-range Android phones often aren't bad either except for lack of long-term updates.
This is exactly why we need GNU/Linux phones, which will have lifetime updates (Librem 5 and Pinephone).