On top of that you have constant tweaks and changes - often on useless things. This year, an update "improved" the clock app. It's now harder to set alarms - and about once per week I get an alarm going off without any UI to disable it. I just have to reset my phone.
Why in the world does a stable, reliable feature like the clock app suddenly introduce a major change.
What do you attribute that to? Is it software updates that slow it down or some kind of pile up of junk that somehow slows it down like Windows 95 used to get?
> On top of that you have constant tweaks and changes…
Yeah, that exists on the iPhone too. Can’t think of anything off the top of my head but I promise you they make things worse sometimes with redesigns and take a few point releases (or even entire releases) to fix them.
I'll add that in addition to software, Android hardware typically experience more NAND degradation, which can slow the phone down. A possible explanation being that iPhones use NVMe storage vs the cheaper eMMC/UFS type found on Android.
99% latencies increase as the flash memory wears or fills, and I think the UI gets intermittently blocked on writes.
Compare that to Android 12 on Pixel phones. Users can't make phone calls due to some bug, and Google is going to provide a fix by the end of January! Do you think they'd delay it that long if they used their own products?
iOS may be locked down like crazy and have UX from 10 years ago, and the keyboard is atrocious (even swiftkey is way worse than the android version), but it works reliably.
My partner has an iPhone 8 that still works perfectly fine, and much faster than my 3 year old flagship Android. Why the performance degrades after 2 years, I have no clue, plus it happens across brands (seen it with Samsung, LG, Sony)...
However this is a hit and miss affair. You need to buy your phone with this in mind (always do this, even if you don't intend to use it yet) and many are quite unstable (LineageOS and /e/ are quite good).
I'm back on Android for now (it has some apps and freedoms I prefer), but I have been at a point recently at which I have said holy shit, fuck this and bought an iPhone. And it was nice. No constant worrying whether my battery would suddenly drain to 0. Much, much, much fewer random delays, frame drops and stutters. And that's on an iPhone X.
have you tried lineageos? My 5 year android phone (flagship) is still usable with lineageos. The only lags I get are from heavy SPAs inside firefox.
Recently got access to Windows 10 LTSC from a company I worked with and installed it on my workstation, super fast compared to the modern version I was using (LTSC build is 3 years old IIRC) and didn't find any downside compared to 10 Pro, so can recommend that for any dev that feels like their machine is too slow.
as for disabling bloat in non-LTSC versions, there's various scripts floating around, eg. https://github.com/DrEmpiricism/Optimize-Offline/ or https://ameliorated.info/
It's a 5 year-old Moto G5 Plus that I bought for ~$200. It got one OS upgrade to Android 8.1.0. I run Firefox, Signal, Google Authenticator, and the usual set of Google apps (GMail, Maps, Keep, Drive, Contacts, Calendar). It's a great phone. The only problem is that it stopped receiving security updates 3 freaking years ago. But I'm not going to throw away a perfectly usable phone.
though i used to upgrade after 1.5-2 years, current phone holds record, soon 4 years of use without any lag or anything probably attributed to not updating system, which would bring me no benefits and using clean lineage ROM, also not fan of crap apps
That seems suspiciously high. I "manage" approximately that many phones and only one has stopped working without obvious cause of failure (eg. smashed screen).
- the Nexus One died when the power button broke
- the Nexus S died when half the touch screen stopped working
- the Galaxy Nexus died for some hardware reason that I cannot remember
- one of my Nexus 4 died when the battery ballooned and shattered the glass
- another Nexus 4 died in an infinite boot loop
- the spare BLU brand phone died in an infinite boot loop
- the Moto X died when the radio antenna (both WiFi and cell) stopped working
- the Nexus 5X died in an infinite boot loop
Nexus 6 though (it is very similar to Moto X hardware wise) only died after 4 years after taking a swim, and was perfectly functional until then.
Walked in and tried to get the battery on my first gen iPad Air replaced. The guy said the model is flagged as 'vintage' in the system and he can't replace it.
Vintage...
But you can do it yourself. Repair kits for iPads: https://www.ifixit.com/Kits/iPad-Fix-Kits iPhones: https://www.ifixit.com/Kits/iPhone-Fix-Kits/iPhone-Battery-K...
Disclaimer: I sell these.
7+ is considered obsolete and they won't touch it.
That is old enough that a battery update through a third party or through a DIY vendor like iFixit should be reasonable.
Oh no. Apple won't do shit (or at an unreasonable price, if you're lucky). That's one reason everyone's so mad about them making it so hard for everyone else.
I often use it when I’m around her for some reason or another. Works fantastically. My only complaint is that between the smaller screen (compared to a FaceID phone) and her having it in zoom mode (easier for her to read) the screen feels cramped.
But performance wise it’s not an issue at all. Nice and smooth. She’s not playing high end 3D games or editing video so it works for her.
Only reason she’s thinking of upgrading? The cameras have come a LONG way in 5 years.
I've thought of upgrading for the same reason as your mom though.
Better privacy settings are great, it is so much easier to lock down permissions (though I hear Android has gone a long way). Everything else is worse.
Performance was OK, but now is so-so, phone definitely feels very slow from time to time, or Safari randomly crashing. Some websites will reload a bunch of times then crash completely. Typing is so much worse, autocorrect is more like auto-typo, compared to what I'm used to (which surely mined text data from my and everyone's phone but so be it). App availability for general stuff seems worse.
I wanted to like my iPhone, but don't, and I'm likely to go back to Android when this one finally dies.
The autocorrect can be fixed by using Gboard instead. I don't know why Apple can't make their iPhone keyboard work right.
What sort of Android device? Flagships usually have a much longer life than cheap ones.
I had a Mi Mix 2S for 3 years (2.5 of it with literally a hole in the bottom left corner with a circuit bord visible after i dropped a heavy and sharp object on it) and it was as snappy and fast when it died due to water damage, and was still getting updates. I know people with OnePlus 6 or Samsung Galaxy S7 which work just fine ( there are no updates though). The updates part sucks but is getting better across providers, so hopefully will be better in the future.
3-4yr old androids have been, in my very anecdotal experience, completely unusable (software bugs that’ll never be fixed, battery drain from OS updates released after manufacture year).
If I were to give a 13yr old a phone, I’d probably give them my used one, and then survival bias would mean they probably get an iPhone since more of them survive in a very usable state.
My dad actually likes Touch ID so much he uses a 5yr old iPhone 7 daily. Just replaced the battery for the 3rd time out of pocket.