I honestly put off upgrading my phone as long as possible now, they’re like tires for my car - I need em but man I hate hate hate replacing them and spending the money.
I was using an iPhone 8 until last year, and it was functionally fine until I replaced it.
This is one area where Apple is unambiguously leading the pack on mainstream manufacturers. The iPhone 14 is winning accolades for its (relative) ease of repair-ability, as well. It is not inconceivable that if you buy an iPhone 14 today, it will receive software and hardware support until 2029 - or even 2030 if you're lucky.
Batteries don't fly across the street if you drop a phone: that is a dumb rationalization. Same with flashlights and other portable devices with batteries. If you insist, have the battery cover held down by a screw. There, no flying off.
There's also MagSafe battery packs, which would disconnect in case of a fall.
The battery, or the battery cover? Do you recall which model?
Is this trade-off the same for every user?
Offer one model with a replaceable battery and let the market decide.
As the context of this debate is ewaste, giving up water resistance can reasonably be assumed to increase ewaste.
Sacrificing repairability on 100% of phones causes more waste than the tiny percentage of phones that cannot be repaired after water damage?
Current phones are water-resistant in varying degrees by IP rating, they are not waterproof. What's the number one remedial action that people took when their Nokia or Blackberry fell into water? Remove the battery to avoid an electrical short. This mitigation is not possible on an iPhone or Pixel.
Quite frankly, seven years is pathetic, and no company should be praised for that tiny support period.
I have a seven year old phone, and the one and only thing that will cause me to get a new one is the OS vendor ending updates, effectively forcing me to dispose of a perfectly working phone. The hardware lasts far, far longer than the software, which is totally asinine and backwards. The glorious free market is failing to solve this problem. No serious phone OS vendor provides long term security updates for their devices.
As a user, I demand at the very least basic, no-frills security-only support for as long as the hardware functions. This doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable.
Edit: rephrased to not be unnecessarily offensive.
And remember that Apple was the one throttling iphones with a bad battery. What would be the first reaction of 90% of the users, replace the battery or replace the phone because it's now slow?
Don't fall for Apple's greenwashing, they are like or even worse than everybody else. See the "no charger included" campaign.
software maintenance costs money.
>And remember that Apple was the one throttling iphones with a bad battery.
They weren't throttling as part of some conspiracy to sell more phones. They were doing that so phones with weak batteries won't randomly power off because the battery couldn't deliver enough current.
This is symptomatic of a larger problem, which I don't feel like getting into - but I do think that we need legislation around this to force these companies into doing the right thing.
Well, it's complicated. The baseband is the biggest obstacle, because it's generally not made by the manufacturer and has a lot of arcane requirements that prevent them from having a great negotiation position, but yes, things could be better. Smaller manufacturers have a serious challenge with this, especially since they can't negotiate as well as Apple, and these kinds of things slaughter their margins. This is partially why Apple is the best at this and also partially why I think we need legislation in this area.
>And remember that Apple was the one throttling iphones with a bad battery. What would be the first reaction of 90% of the users, replace the battery or replace the phone because it's now slow?
They were doing that to extend the lifespan of the device, and communicated it poorly. Now, iOS informs you that you need to have your battery replaced, and Apple does it for a relatively reasonable cost.
>Don't fall for Apple's greenwashing, they are like or even worse than everybody else. See the "no charger included" campaign.
Apple is doing more than anyone else. They _should_ be doing better, but they certainly _could_ be doing worse.
I would love legislation that suggested that all new phones sold in the US must have 5+ years of security updates /from when the model of device is last sold/. It would raise the price of phones, but there are already subsidy programs in place that could be (slightly) expanded to fill that. Actually, I'd prefer 10 years of security updates ;) but the bar is already tragically low.
It would be nice if phones could converge to absorb laptops somehow. Fold or roll out maybe?