tl; dr: out-of-touch tech journalist realizes living like a normal person who doesn’t buy a new expensive phone every year is possible.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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I had to check, and my current phone (Gslaxy S10) was released 6 months before the iPhone 11 Pro Max. I have no plans on upgrading any time soon.
Yeah I'm on an S8 and it's been feeling like time to upgrade for a whiile now unfortunately. But it's holding up much better than you'd expect.
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I was extremely worried about downgrading to a phone from four years ago, but it turns out I’m totally fine using it as my main phone.
Man, I don't feel like I'm living in the same world as the author of the article. All my smartphones have lasted me years and years, but they were flagships like the 11 Max. If they had been iOS, they'd surely have lasted longer too.
Yea, I’m literally on an iPhone 11 and bought it with the intention of using for this long as a minimum (I picked it because it had a good battery and seemed to be a good iPhone generation). Previously I was on a 5. Some people just need to be forced to see that not consuming like an addict is actually possible.
The 11's don't have 5g though. That's a pretty big negative since network's are dedicating less and less bandwidth to 4g.
And, do we need 5G? I’m doing more than fine on my 4G. To the point I’d actually forgotten about 5G. Last I checked it was a bit more marketing than innovation as it’s increased speeds were not reliable.
Yes, depending by on where you are and who your provider is, medium band 5g is everywhere and is a noticeable improvement over 4g. Providers will be moving their bandwidth more to 5g over time, so it will become more important.
mmWave 5g seems to be only in cities, is a slow rollout, and your provider may charge more to use it. Most of us wont
My speeds are regularly noticeably faster on 5g, but that’s me. I also don’t live IN the city. I’m fairly near one, but not in it
5G is totally not needed for a phone, but at least on my network (t-mobile) the bandwidth allotted to 4G now is reduced, so when I am using 4G, it's a lot slower than it used to be. Same thing happened to 3G. Once 4G was the norm it really throttles down 3G.
Guessing you're in Germany, but here in the states 5g is near nonexistent if you're not in a city. I will keep my 4g phone long as it works. My breif experience with a 5g phone was awful and speeds were no where near 4g at my home
That’s definitely not true. There’s 5G everywhere now in the states I’ve traveled in. mmWave is the one only in dense cities. 5G is pretty much as low latency as my home fiber connection. It’s definitely faster than LTE.
I’ve carried my 12 Pro for 3 years, which is the longest I think I’ve kept a phone (worked in wireless for a good while and had to keep up with latest devices so I could sell them, and it became a bit of a habit to upgrade regularly). My 15 Pro Max comes in tomorrow and I plan to use it for 3-5 years. I’m upgrading specifically for USB-C so that now all my devices that get used regularly have the same port. I’ll give my lightning cables away so they don’t just become e waste immediately and that’ll be that.
Ditto: reading this on an iPhoneX
I'd still be rocking my pixel 2 if it wasn't for the 3G shutdown.
The hardware isn't the issue...
The problem comes when Apple decides not to upgrade the OS any more. Then, some time after that, the apps you like to use won't work.
Planned obsolescence : environmentally iniquitous.
iOS 17 installs on a 5 years old iPhone though. I don’t think that's an unreasonable window of deceives supported.
Why shouldn’t it last be updated if it’s still working perfectly and capable? I have a 10 year old laptop and a 24 year old car. But my bank is not restricting me from visiting their branch or website because my car or laptop is too old.
Dev and QA costs.
Your car has no impact on them, and neither does your laptop’s hardware since they don’t write native software. But supporting old browsers would be more work for their devs, so they likely have limits there, like not supporting IE6.
Everyone latches onto the wild conspiracy theories, but this is the real reason.
Your dont demand continuous updates for your car. Heck, even from the moment you bought the car, unless there is a recall, there is no update expected for your brand new car.
I think my partners car was 15 years old when it was recalled for an airbag replacement, and if there is a security issue with a car I have aftermarket options available which Apple actively restrict.
I get your point, but we are talking about pretty much the only thing a person routinely spends more than £/€/$1,000 that they can’t modify or update themselves.
The SE form 2016 still gets safety updates.
Lmao let's not pretend like Android is winning in the support department.
I wasn't suggesting it! There are other options.
The IPhone 3g turned me from a long-time Apple Fanboy to a Linux enthusiast over a decade ago. With no regrets.
My partner and I are still on the 12 Pro Max and have no plans on upgrading. Of course like clockwork, Verizon has texted us both the same upgrade message every few days. I finally had to tell them to stop.
I’m very happy with my 12 pro max.
I was using a 6S Plus until about a year ago.
I was on a Nexus 6P before I finally got sick of disposable Android phones. The last straw that sent me back to iOS and the iPhone was when I was in another country and my phone kept shutting down at 50% battery. No matter what I did, it kept shutting down. This was not good when I was trying to traverse a city I wasn’t familiar with and needed to rely on Google Maps. I had to keep the phone connected to a portable charger for the rest of the trip.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Android. I still have a Nexus 5 that has had a ton of different ROMs on it, but the amount of just plain terrible devices I had was staggering. The kind of tech that gets shoved out the door and thrown in the trash a year later.
We got like $400 from a class action about that phone. Had two of them, but the second one didn't double it for some reason.
I had the same problem with my 6p back in the day, but a battery swap fixed that problem.
I was just done at that point. I had a slew of problems with the phone and having it be unreliable in a time where I needed it was enough to push me into the walled garden. Everything else? I love to tinker. Linux, the Steam Deck, etc. For a phone, I’m past the age of tinkering. I needed something more consistent.
Yeah I tinkered with everything when I was younger. Nowadays I hand it to my daughter and she figures it out.I stopped jailbreaking my iPhones around iOS 7.
I love playing around on my Steam Deck though.
We were in a store today and walked by the iPhone 15 display and stopped. Yeah, not missing much is definitely true. It doesn’t really feel faster and the camera was not impressive. It was ok for a 5x. I’m staying with my 12 Pro Max as well. It’s still quite good and it’s paid off.
The only plus I see is USB-C and that is definitely not enough to justify starting the new phone pay cycle all over again.
USB-C would be … nice I suppose. However, I’m already totally wireless with the 12PM using MagSafe and wireless CarPlay so I don’t really care about the port on the bottom of my device.
Are we not going to talk about battery? I've never had any luck w iPhone battery being able to perform that's this old. Replacements are a thing, but Suprised this wasn't mentioned.
Battery life tends to be the one things I really look forward to with a new phone these days. Instead of paying to replace my battery, I just sell my phone and get a new one.
I’m still using my 2020 SE 3.5 years old on original battery. No issues.
I bought the original OnePlus Nord mid 2020 for €336 and I have no plans of replacing it. A €600-700 foldable might convince me, but other than that this phone is way better than what I need.
The only thing I'd do differently is buying a phone from a company that isn't Chinese.
I am using with no issues at all my Poco F2 Pro and that one came out in 2019, I can get 10 hrs of SOT if use it minimal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Do you know what SOT means?
It's screen-on time, and ten hours is quite normal for the Poco F2.
I just upgraded from 11 pro to 15 Pro max, I didn’t have to as it was still running fine on iOS 16 and the cameras were great but it’s nice to have the fastest cpu, 24MP pictures, 5x optical zoom, 120Hz and always on display.
Based on video from JerryRigEverything, be careful about the rear glass.
sure looked pretty all shattered tho
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