People love to hate (which seems justified on the surface) on Apple's high prices, but the unparalleled years of support makes it worth it for me. Especially for phones like the SE.
I have an iPhone 6S Plus. Apparently it came out in 2015. The ORIGINAL Pixel was announced in 2016. I'm still getting support for the 6S Plus - I actually have iOS14 beta running on it rather pleasantly. It's plenty fast, too.
Based on support period, one can easily justify the most costly iPhone over the seemingly temporarily supported Google/Samsung etc. flagship.
Likely because your statement that your Pixel 1 still works and is not receiving software updates is exactly in line with the points being made in the comment you replied to, and people are probably interpreting your point as "but my device is fine, what's the problem". The problem is that your device which is still working fine isn't receiving software support.
If only they put even remotely good batteries in their phones. The battery they generally spec out seems to only handle one day of mild use (including accounting for Apple's very efficient processors), and VERY quickly loses capacity and other specs. I'm sad they don't provide an option for if you like having 3500mAh or more.
Unfortunately I still wouldn't be happy with an iPhone as I'm just not a fan of iOS
The batteries are usually decent for the first two years. After two years, getting a battery replacement from a 3rd party has gotten cheaper and can be worthwhile (right now it's 35€ for an iPhone 6S and 45€ for an iPhone X)
I tend to use my phone more as a computer with a lot of SSH, unzip/unrar, downloading audio files, editing audio files, sending videos, full file manager access, and I want to move to iOS because I am absolutely not liking Google at all, and have tried, but it's just not there yet. I see improvements being made, but things like not being able to hold open an SSH session without subscriptions or expensive applications is a big issue for me. iPhones also can't play .webm's and other media files. I have a 6S plus I keep trying, but its personally not there yet.
Also not a fan of face unlock and wish they'd implement a fingerprint into the screen. I usually block out the front camera and any sensors that I don't use.
Early Android devices had removable batteries and most of the popular ones had custom ROMs that extended support for way beyond OEM updates.
The irony is that early Android phones were built to last, but quickly got obsoleted by more recent models. Now, progress is much slower, but the thing that kept devices alive (removable batteries and community ROMs) are dying. Real obsolescence is replaced by planned obsolescence.
> Early Android devices had removable batteries and most of the popular ones had custom ROMs that extended support for way beyond OEM updates.
how long is "way beyond OEM updates"? one year? two years? three years? five years? The main problem is that third party roms can only update so much. Without OEM support, you're not going to be getting updates for the proprietary bits of your phone. This includes blobs, baseband, and even the kernel (technically it's open source, but all android phones run off a customized kernel that's specific to that SoC. When that SOC gets EOLed, the updates stop coming).
Even if there are custom ROMs and the like, as gruez said, you will not be receiving updates for other critical parts of the phone. Regardless, those are only community supported, and not from the vendor.
I have far less trust in a random community. Plus, their EOL could be completely unexpected.
I do not want my phone to be reliant on community updates, personally.
This thread talks about Apple as if they're the only company offering support and warranties. Whether it's their products or services, Apple's success is based on a smooth experience and they pursue to control the entire ecosystem. So for them to offer long-lasting support is neither surprising nor significant.
The Android phone market is distributed. You can get almost anything there you can get from Apple, in particular wherever the competition regulators had done their work.
The stuff Google itself is participating in is a different matter. Honestly, with respect to consumer products and UX Google is generally a failure. It's like Google is full of engineers and analysts but lacks talent in every other profession. Even Microsoft which has been so often a late-comer and the death for so many brands seems to be better at it.
They don't have a "guaranteed support" lifetime, because instead they just have a track record of supporting hardware well beyond the (2-3 sigma) x (average) person keeping their hardware.
When you see "guaranteed support" by a manufacturer, you can be sure that it actually means "guaranteed end of support" timeline. Which Google follows exactly.
I was curious so I looked to see if I could find a chart that shows how long iPhones typically receive iOS updates. Some are up to 6 major releases (and possibly more — we'll find out next year).
> Their track record seems to be more recent- earlier iPhone's were not supported nearly as long, from what I have seen.
This is sort of true.
It is true that Apple dropped support for older devices much faster in the past. But it is also true that the older devices were way underpowered.
As an example: when Apple introduced home screen backgrounds on the iPod Touch, they released the same software upgrade for all iPods. However, since the older generation didn't have enough compute power (most likely GPU), they disabled the feature for older generations. I thought they were trying to force people to upgrade, but after a jailbreak and force enabling the feature, I realized that it was not the case. It was not smooth, so this is why they disabled it.
Same goes for, say, iPads. The first iPad quickly got obsoleted, but it was also very underpowered compared to subsequent devices.
They will not hesitate to drop hardware if it turns out to be insufficient, but they are just as likely to disable a feature if there is insufficient hardware support and allow the OS upgrade anyway.
Other vendors are far worse. After using iphone 5s for 4+ years, My kid now watches youtube or play game etc on that phone. Android phones after 2-3 years basically turn to crap. It could be OS/ battery/plastic shell/screen that fail for sure.
As someone who has bounced back and forth between iPhone and Android over the years: my hate hasn't seemed to have been fixed over the years. Sure Apple will push updates for 5 years, but after about 3 years somehow the latest update makes the phone so slow as to be unusable. It's happened to me with every iPhone I've owned (3G, 6, and I guess we'll see on the latest).
If it helps ease your concerns any - my current work issued phone is the lowest end iPhone 6S model and it is still running fine to this day on latest iOS. Granted, the 6S is a pretty significant spec bump up from the iPhone 6.
The performance of my personal Pixel 2 on the other hand has not held up nearly as well by comparison and my next personal phone will likely be an iPhone even though I'm not a great fan of Apple.
I also have a work iPhone and a Pixel 2 personal phone. I haven't encountered the same thing as you in terms of performance, they seem to be aging pretty similarly to me.
Google's attitude to customer support and brand loyalty, on the other hand, is a different story...
My girlfriend's Pixel 4 screen cracked and was a huge PITA to fix even though we paid a ton for extra warranty. Trying to get that fixed was far more painful than any experience I've had with other brands.
Worse than that, there is a software bug that can / will irreversibly brick your Pixel 2 rear camera. You can find a ton of info on it by searching. It doesn't seem to affect everyone, but I was unlucky enough to hit it last week, presumably from a recent update. Google has been absolutely silent on this issue. Unethical at best, and probably worse.
There was a time where I would have scoffed at paying a premium for Apple or other brands that sell an experience more than just a device. That's completely changed now. I don't have the patience or energy in my life to deal with what I perceive to be Google's cold / impersonal / numbers oriented approach to customers. It's just not worth the stress. If anything, I'm willing to pay a pretty big premium for the opposite. If that means switching our household to Apple products, so be it and good riddance.
I didn't mean to imply my Pixel 2 is unusable by any means. The phone is still perfectly usuable but it is certainly not as snappy as it used to be despite its ridiculous overpowered specs. For instance, bringing up common applications like the camera or dialer has noticeable lag now under current Android 10 that wasn't present in previous versions of Android.
My Pixel 2 XL has been humming along nicely, even on Android 10. Maybe I should worry how Android 11 will run on it--it will be the last update planned for this phone, and hence an opportunity for Google to make me unsatisfied with my old phone--but as it stands now I have no performance complaints whatsoever.
My Pixel 2 XL had heating issue. The battery couldn't last much at the end. I couldn't use it as GPS anymore (plugged or not) because it was over heating. I have a Pixel 4... still get warning about heat when using it as GPS once in a while ( I have the phone in the A/C vents so it has no reason to get that warm).
Contrary to your view, I have a Pixel 2 XL and the battery is still stupendous. My only disappointment is how long it takes to charge on an old style, 500ma-1amp charger.
Did you leave in plugged into the AC adapter overnight? anecdotally that killed my previous phones and there's also (anecdotal?) evidence that it isn't great for it.
Have you checked what apps are eating all the battery? On older phones, newer versions of certain apps seemed to turn them into pocket warmers, getting stuck in a tight CPU loop and efficiently turning 3000mAh into heat at about 5 watts
Did you leave in plugged into the AC adapter overnight? anecdotally that killed my previous phones and there's also (anecdotal?) evidence that it isn't great for it.
Don’t most people do exactly that with their phones? If that’s something that actually breaks a phone, that’s ridiculous and they should fix it.
Similar complaint - I have a Pixel 2. Everything still works great, except for the battery, which lasts around a third as long as when it was new. I checked out replacing it, appears to be highly difficult to not damage the screen when replacing. Sigh. I'm ordering a Pixel 4a to replace it.
It's kind of a drag that once they finally got the fundamental hardware and OS good enough to really last for a few years, they also made it nearly impossible to do what should be simple maintenance.
Anecdotal for sure, but my Pixel 2 is still running great. My last one was running even better until it got stolen. The batter life, while not phenomenal, was still pretty good since I took care to preserve it (just basic things like not charging it over night, keeping it around 60-80% battery).
After it was stolen, I bought another Pixel 2 used and while the battery life is worse, it still runs perfectly well as far as I can tell.
Even the iPhone 6 runs all right. I have dropped mine quite a few times and it still works fine for my needs (which are not many since I have a computer). I have to admit that sometimes it doesn't start charging without shaking the cable a bit though, and not being able to update to the latest iOS version is regrettable.
But what I'm saying is that my iPhone 6 is still running mostly fine as well.
I've heard that was the case for some of the older devices, but they're really gotten better at it. I'm currently using an OG iPhone SE (a 4 year old phone) and I'm running iOS 14 beta and it runs great.
I'm still running an 6s plus. My luck might run out with iOS 14, but so far so good. It was expensive when new, but I've gotten 5 years out of it. Might get 6 if the update doesn't hurt it. Still runs quickly. Screen is still scratch free. Despite it's high initial price, it's been a bargain overall.
I still have the iPhone 6. Since it became "obsolete" I stopped keeping tracking of iOS updates but I feel like it hasn't hurt much. I can't really install many apps anyway since it only has about 11 GB of effective space (the "System " uses 6.87 GB)
I'm using iPhone 6S with latest iOS and no issues with performance. Although I did replace the battery last year for about 800ZAR (~$45) from a certified Apple repairs company.
Same here. I purchased it expecting it to last me 5 years, and so far that plan looks sound. I’ve followed the release of subsequent phones in the review media, and I don’t feel like there have been any compelling new features since that would tempt me to upgrade sooner.
I’m replying to you on a iPhone 5S (2013 model) running iOS 12 (the last supported version), and it runs perfectly fine for me.. Maybe it’s slow as hell comparing to the latest model, but it allows me to do everything I need it to do for me..
I use a first generation iPhone SE every day in conjunction with my regular iPhone 11 Pro Max and I definitely wouldn’t call it unusable. The main pain point I have with it is loading a heavy webpage if I don’t have ad blocking on
You should get your battery replaced. That is generally the cause of performance slowdown -- see the iphone battery complaints thread. But it is known, and an easy fix.
As I understand it, Apple slowed down certain models to deal with the problem of batteries losing capacity over time. Which actually could give those phones a longer usable life (slower is better than shutting off completely). The problem was they didn't tell people they were doing it.
Also usable here should be in pretty big quotes. The phone didn't die and turn off, but it didn't get much done either. It could possibly still make phone calls
Apple gives performance beyond what you would expect for a similar phone, in terms of battery life and responsiveness. Then, as you burn through your battery's age beyond what even other phone manufacturers would warrant, the OS slows down the CPU to let you continue using it. So it's actually giving you more than you would've gotten otherwise.
But all the complaints are that iPhone sucks, I guess.
Is that really such a bold expectation that when I buy a phone the manufacture will not use hidden software to downgrade the performance without informing me?
>the past couple of months have seen a sudden increase in Nexus 6P battery complaints, with many users reporting that their phones suddenly shut down, even though there was plenty of battery life remaining
It's not a simple system crash, because your phone will stay dead until you connect it to a charger.
Is it really too much to ask of a company for them to tell us when they're throttling our phones? Yes, they had a technical reason to do so, but people are right to be skeptical about this when it takes a lawsuit for this to come out.
Where did I lie? Apple was hit with a $500 million fine for nothing?
I'm not an Apple hater by any means. I understand they had their technical reasons, I was just pointing out the dichotomy between their perceived willingness to support older models and the lawsuit that says they are slowing them down.
>This seems like an odd thing to say about a company that was caught purposefully slowing down older models <END>
That is a half truth and considered lying through omission. It's misleading because as written it implies that they slowed down phones without a valid reason, AKA to force upgrades.
Yeah, but I can buy 5 to 6 android phones for the price of Apple's high end phones. So while this makes sense for their cheapest product, even that is twice the price. So the comparison is between 2 to 5 generations of android phones and one generation of an apple phone.
Well, a smartphone is fairly bad for its small size, but we're talking less than 100kg of CO2[1][2] to make and operate for its lifetime. But driving a car for a year in the US produces 4600kg[3]...
My understanding is that CO2 output is the least worrying part of smartphone usage. It's all the other toxic waste released during mining. Also, if cars are more polluting, that just means cars are bad too, not that smartphones are magically ok.
You are right. Few do. If people cared about the environment that much, they would have lobbied for laws against planned obsolescence. Me buying 5 phones or even 500 won't make a difference to the environment. Laws forcing phone makers to support their phones for a minimum of x years might. Clearly, our society is not interested in that. Why should I then go out of my way to inconvenience myself to do something that will make zero difference? No reason to at all.
Typically price is a pretty good indicator of the amount of resources that went into making something. I'd expect the environmental cost of an iphone to be a similar multiple of the environmental cost of an android.
Socially and legally, we are ok with it, indeed. Otherwise, we wouldn't allow such a short support window. Our culture is now completely based upon planned obsolescence. I don't agree with it, but that's reality. These are the incentives society provides. In theory, it could easily provide others. In reality, Apple/Google are in many way more powerful than our government so it's unlikely. Like I said above, if this is a problem, it can be fixed. It's not a problem for me. I'd like more support, but I'm ok without support also. Not ideal, but I'm also not going to waste a thousand bucks on a phone either. Or even $400 for the cheapest iphone.
Based on support period, one can easily justify the most costly iPhone over the seemingly temporarily supported Google/Samsung etc. flagship.