Apple will update iPhones for at least 5 years in rare public commitment

arstechnica.com

Nice the are putting a commitment, but I think it should be 10 years due to expense of these phones. That should also apply to all other Smart Phones too.

On the laptops I have, it is very easy for me to upgrade the software and the hardware, but since Cell Phones are locked down, we should have laws for 10 year support.

This almost always means "security patches" but the general public almost always interprets this as "feature updates" and tech journalism never manages to draw the distinction.

They’ve updated the iPhone Xs to iOS 17 with new features and that phone is from 2018.

And they just release iOS 16.7.8 last month, that was the 4th update this year for iOS 16, that goes back until the iPhone 8 from 2017.

They also released iOS 15.8.2 this last march, this one goes back to the iPhone 6 from 2015, a device that is 9 year old and still getting security updates.

So while they are only making a commitment for 5 years, in practice they are doing, and have usually done, for much longer then that.

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