Too short IMO, I personally would value having a 5yo device still useful, above that I can accept limitations in terms of new; below it's just pushing for renewal for no reason.
I agree. I am currently using my 2011/12 vintage Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (albeit as a play phone) with Lineage OS (Android 7.x) and it works pretty good. Batteries are getting harder to find but still available. It works great.
The simple fact that we have to rely on volunteers to have a recent OS on our phone shows how problematic updates are on Android. Hopefully Project Treble will make the lives of Lineage devs easier.
You have a good point. I am very grateful to Cyanogenmod and Lineage OS and contribute what I can - it really puts the vendor junkware with its non-removable bloatware to shame. I once wrote a giant rant on XDA Developers after spending a long night debugging a Nook HD+ tablet and its highly-obnoxious habit of reinstalling uninstalled bloatware on a reboot.
(Off-topic) I still prefer Android with its volunteer ecosystem due to the freedom it offers me with respect to my devices. I have tried to switch to iOS a couple of times due to my perception of their stronger privacy policies but my use cases, which I have been familiar with since the days of Palm, are incompatible with non-rooted iOS use models.
Batteries don't last that long still, last I heard you get about 1000 charges before you need to do serious maintenance to a phone, in which case you'll probably want the latest and greatest anyhow.
This is just another example of consumer hostile planned obsolescence. Rechargeable batteries are consumables. Most cell phones used to have removable batteries so when it wouldn't hold a charge any more you could easily replace. Now most phones have integrated batteries which can only be replaced with an expensive and inconvenient visit to a repair center.
You're niche. Most people don't care as long as their phone is fast and they can use their phone all day. By the time a phone's battery becomes unusably short (my iPhone 4s still holds a charge for about a full day), most people agree their phone is ready for replacement.
Oh and btw, it's very possible that speed is a software issue. Latest gmail app update tweaked a few things in how mailboxes are loaded and it's way snappier.
I have a moto g3 quadcore and 1G(maybe 2G)RAM. I cannot reason about slow performance for non gaming / pixel heavy stuff.
Anecdotal, but I have an Asus EEE from aeons ago (2010, I think?) that still has about 60%-70% battery health, which is not bad, considering that this little guy was brutally abused throughout its existence (it was my main PC in University).
I also have a first generation Moto G (~2014) and an app I have here (OS Monitor) reports 70% battery health. In practical terms, the battery lasts a day of normal usage.
On the other hand, I have a ~2 year old Toshiba, and Linux here is reporting 0% battery health and a "last full capacity" of 0 mAh. If I unplug it, it goes under in 5-10 minutes (factory battery life was about 2:30 hours).
I read that the biggest battery killer is heat, not charge/discharge cycles.
Regardless, and if I am not mistaken, that figure of 1000 charge cycles is for cycles of 100% discharge (or as close as you can get before the protection circuits cut in) followed by 100% charge. This rarely happens in the "real world" and thus that figure will probably be much higher when adjusted for real world conditions.
