In my experience, my iPhone 6 is perfectly usable, as is an old SE and 6S Plus. Batteries degrade, and after being replaced they work fine. And they’re still getting updates this year.

>Batteries degrade, and after being replaced they work fine.

If the batteries were user replaceable, it would have been a perfect story.

Sending the device back to the manufacturer (authorised service center) can be inconvenience(data formatting, TOTP apps etc.) at best to security breach(malware install, device imaging etc.) at worst.

Also, if indeed a user decides to replace the battery on their own, an iPhone is the least repairable phone out there and getting worse with every iteration.

The procedure to get an iphone battery replaced is to make an appointment at the apple store and they swap it out as you wait.

That's great if you live near an Apple Store, but only 25 countries have Apple Stores and half of those only have 1-3 stores for the whole country.

Then you can go to an AASP.

Or spend 15-30 minutes replacing it yourself?

Does the technician change battery before your eyes? Didn't happen when I went to AASP and anything can happen in that room they do their work.

Maybe we know a technician we trust, who can repair iPhone before our eyes, but alas independent repair shops doesn't get Apple love[1].

[1]https://www.macrumors.com/2020/02/06/apple-independent-repai...

I can second this. I’m hanging on to my SE for the form factor and it’s still going strong. My wife’s SE is nearing a battery replacement after what feels like half a decade of usage. I dread the day the SE will no longer be supported.

Typing this on an iPhone SE

Guess you didn't read the articles explaining that reduced performance on phones with heavily amortised batteries is to be expected. And didn't read the testimonials of people who paid for a new battery and got their device working fast again.

Refusing to fix bugs and issue patches is much cheaper, if forcing obsolescence is your goal.

The vast majority of security vulnerabilities and bugs that end users experience are fixed within the first few years of the device's shelf life. Security vulnerabilities tend to go unnoticed by most end users, and therefore don't really play a role in forcing users to upgrade.

Wouldn't it be nice though if users could choose to patch security vulnerabilities without installing updates that deliberately slow down the phone?

Do you have a citation supporting the claim that old bugs don’t affect users? That’s certainly not true in the Windows world.

Similarly, “updates that deliberately slow down the phone” sounds like a conspiracy theory. The closest we’ve come to that being real would have required a caveat “… when your battery has degraded to the point that the phone would otherwise crash”, which is an important distinction.

It's pretty hard to fine a company that has one of the world's largest legal departments €25m based on a conspiracy theory. And no, that caveat isn't even close to the truth. Apple states that they do it "once the battery begins to degrade", which is so ambiguous that it could even apply to brand new batteries, because all batteries begin to degrade upon their first usage. In my case, I had a 9 month old iPhone 6 that drastically slowed down due to the update. When the apple store told me that it only slowed down phones with aging batteries, I asked them to replace my battery for my phone which was still under warranty. They "tested" it and told me my battery life was perfectly fine. Fuck that...have not and will not ever buy an apple product ever again.

How could you tell it slowed down?

You must be just as friendly in person as online if you are one of the few people ever to have an Apple store employee not go the extra mile for you.

Funny you say that, cause apple has had to pay a $53m fine precisely because those oh-so-friendly apple store employees won't even go a normal mile in honoring their warranty, let alone an extra mile. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/04/apple-poised-to-pay-...

Typing this on a perfectly fast iPhone 6.