iOS devices generally receive os support for 5 years past their last retail shelf date (longer than when you bought the phone!). There's a lot to criticize apple w/r/t locked down devices, but their support lifespan is pretty good!

> There's a lot to criticize apple w/r/t locked down devices, but their support lifespan is pretty good!

Compared to most smartphones, it's pretty good, but compared to PCs it's pretty bad.

Overall, it's a sad state of affairs imo. Why do phones become obsolete so quickly when other computers can be perfectly usable for well over 10 years?

> Why do phones become obsolete so quickly when other computers can be perfectly usable for well over 10 years?

I'll answer as if this is a real question: the overall rate and pervasiveness of change for that class of device.

I wonder how well a nearly 10 year old smartphone would work with modern software? Has anyone tried something like a Note 3 with updated software? It might not be terrible, tbh.

I recently had to use backup phone and used OnePlus One. Updated Lineage OS and it was… fine? The biggest problem for me has been battery life. I even tried to buy new battery but its hard to find ones that are not a bad scam.

It makes sense. The Snapdragon 800 and 801 weren't particularly slow. While cameras have certainly improved, even those weren't bad back then.

I suspect that 2022/2023 flagships would hold up really well 10 years from now.

I mean, you are talking about a general purpose computer + quite great camera + multimedia device that fits in your pocket and is battery powered. The only ones we get close to 10 years of review were pretty much experimental phones, only recently did we reach a much more slower pace of development where a current gen phone is not that different from a 3 years older gen one. Current ones use much more durable materials (steel frames, glass which is contrary to “breaking easily” is one of the hardest materials, thus being very scratch resistant), and better, more performant hardware that won’t become multiple times better year-on-again, so besides replacing the battery every 3-5 years, they might very well have a longer lifespan.

After that support cycle ends, the phone will rapidly become less and less useful. I could've bought a OnePlus One 8 years ago and still have Android 11 or 12 from custom ROM support, or some Linux distribution.

You could've, but have you held on to a phone that long? I suspect very few people have made the bridge from "could" to "have".

Between the

- battery lifespan (a technology that has tradeoffs between lifespan and capacity, such that manufacturers target 3 year lifecycles

- driver updates and baseband security (famously out of date on older android phones, no matter what "rom" you're running)

- ports lifecycles (the charger port has a finite lifecycle of plug cycles, also often cheaped out on a bit)

- lifespan of custom ROMs (frequently losing contributors and thus updates)

Is that phone really going to last 8 years of daily active use?

I think the answer is no. Apple has made a huge effort with the iphone 14 (not pro), to re-engineer the device to make it easier to repair and recycle. We'll see if that pays off, but I don't think holding on to a phone for 8 years is feasible or practical for enough people.

Yeah. It's rather ironic that Google's phones have the best support for de-googling and comes close to it being a first-class experience. Samsung and Huawei iirc are the worse ones, which tries what it can to stop you from unlocking and cripple the phone if you do.

American Samsung phones don't even let you unlock the bootloader. My friends have had to import Exynos-based Samsung phones to the US to truly own the hardware we bought.

You’d just find the hardware isn’t capable of what you want it to do, because it wasn’t designed to do that, it was designed to be a phone.

Or in other words, it’s all fun and games until the flash dies because you used up the lifetime writes.

Are you serious? Iphone devices easily live for 8+ years as is, android is unfortunately the platform where your perfectly fine phone can easily be “canceled” 1-2 years down the line on purely software grounds, even Samsung promises only 3, recently 4 years of support!

Oh, and don’t forget the reality of those “open” bootloaders, besides pixels almost all of them come with the huge caveat of wiping proprietary firmware ASAP, bringing your fancy camera’s quality to the dirt for example. So, do your phones really get a new life?

I am serious! Like I mentioned, I only care about the phone having an unlocked bootloader so I can install whatever software I desire, which means I don't really care about the camera or any of its features. I like to live a simple life. I have a nice Canon mirrorless camera for when I need good quality photography. As long as the phone can make calls, browse the web, send text messages and have a few messaging apps on a custom ROM (which most support), I'm plenty happy.