Ask Slashdot: How Long Do You Expect Your Smartphone To Last? 393
Long-time Slashdot reader shanen is facing "the death of another smartphone from acute battery swelling." And he wants to know if you're having the same problem:
It seems to me that they've become quite good at designing smartphones to last two years and little longer, which is a bit worrisome since my primary phone is entering into its third year. Can you share your experiences...?
It seems fair to start by summarizing what I can remember of mine:
- First was an HTC that lasted a little over 2 years. Not so good, but at least it died slowly.
- Samsung Galaxy lasted about 4 years. Basically killed by battery swelling combined with lack of replacement batteries.
- Two Huawei's. First one died slowly after about 3 years of heavy use.
- Freetel died by battery swelling after 2 years.
- ASUS, which just died by the worst battery swelling I've seen. Mostly light usage for something over 2 years.
Pretty sure I'm forgetting at least one smartphone. Also I'm deliberately not counting a Sharp wannabe smartphone before the HTC... Maybe the real source of my grief is that most of my smartphones were low-end models. I just noticed a new smartphone priced over $1,000. Maybe it will last 3 or 5 times longer?
I've also been buying low-end smartphones, so they're cheaper to replace when I inevitably drop them after exactly two years, turning their screens into an unreplaceable spiderweb of cracks. But what's your experience? Share your own thoughts and stories in the comments.
And how long do you expect your smartphone to last?
It seems fair to start by summarizing what I can remember of mine:
- First was an HTC that lasted a little over 2 years. Not so good, but at least it died slowly.
- Samsung Galaxy lasted about 4 years. Basically killed by battery swelling combined with lack of replacement batteries.
- Two Huawei's. First one died slowly after about 3 years of heavy use.
- Freetel died by battery swelling after 2 years.
- ASUS, which just died by the worst battery swelling I've seen. Mostly light usage for something over 2 years.
Pretty sure I'm forgetting at least one smartphone. Also I'm deliberately not counting a Sharp wannabe smartphone before the HTC... Maybe the real source of my grief is that most of my smartphones were low-end models. I just noticed a new smartphone priced over $1,000. Maybe it will last 3 or 5 times longer?
I've also been buying low-end smartphones, so they're cheaper to replace when I inevitably drop them after exactly two years, turning their screens into an unreplaceable spiderweb of cracks. But what's your experience? Share your own thoughts and stories in the comments.
And how long do you expect your smartphone to last?
Not my experience (Score:3)
I am not someone who swaps out his phones often. I had an old Nokia until 2011, when I got an HTC Desire Z. That one lasted until 2017 and was still working (although the sliding keyboard had no backlight anymore) when I got a Galaxy A5 sometime during the summer, I think it was. Still using that today with no indication of any issues.
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How smart was that Nokia? I have had a number of mobile pre-smartphones that lasted many years, though the only Nokia I had was around 1995 and it was barely mobile, considering the coverage zone. I hated the phone and managed to quickly transfer it to a cowrker, but strangely enough I continued to admire Nokia until Microsoft nuked the company.
My Sharp had one of those sliding keyboards, but I did NOT regard it as a smartphone. The OS was Microsoft and it was dumb, Dumb, DUMB. It may have lasted 3 or 4 yea
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> I've heard that Windows Phone had gotten good right before M$ killed off that product line. :|
When Microsoft stopped updating my Nokia Windows phone last December (after years of keeping it up-to-date), I stopped using that phone...except I leave it next to my bed as an alarm clock, since that still works. And it turns out a lot of the other things still work: the weather app (which I still like better than other weather app), browser, camera (better than my new phone's camera), and a few other thing
Iphone 6 still chugging along (Score:3)
My iphone 6 is working just fine. I have replaced a cracked screen and had them install a new battery premetively at that time. I'm thinking of upgrading to a iphone 12 next year since my camera cover has gotten enough abuse to be slightly foggy when shooting into bright lights.
Re:Iphone 6 still chugging along (Score:4)
iPhone 5-S here. I have a FLIR back on it that I'd like to keep - it's incredibly handy to have sometimes. So I hope it keeps running, as the back is made to attach to this specific model and won't fit on a newer iPhone. The newer FLIR attachments aren't backs, they hang off the bottom lightning port like those little FM transmitters used to, and isn't as handy. (and I'd probably either lose it or break it...)
I'm on my 3rd battery. I paid for the first replacement at a cell phone repair shop nearby, (~$45?) but it's "lifetime warranty" on the battery (which seems a bit foolish of them to offer?) but so far I've already got one free replacement so I guess they're good for it. I asked the guy how they can do unlimited free battery replacements and he said he just sends them back to where they get them from, and he gets no-questions-asked replacements for them so he's ok with it.
Besides the battery, every now and then (once a month or so?) the bluetooth stops connecting to my car speakers, but all I have to do is reboot it to get bluetooth working again. I haven't had any other issues. It's had it's last iOS upgrade though so it's not getting anything new from now on. I'm fine with it as long as it keeps humming along, I'm not one of those that has to have the newest thing right when it comes out.
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I've gone through about a dozen small Bluetooth keyboards for use with phones, and by far this is the best of them: https://www.ebay.com/itm/29326... [ebay.com].
I've also got about a dozen different types of mechanical and ergonomic keyboards for the desktop as well, so I'm very picky. That $12 keyboard is almost as decent as some $80 keyboards that I've used.
Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hah. The last iPhone I had whose battery lasted more than 4 years was the original iPhone. Every iPhone or iPod Touch I've owned since then has lasted maybe two. (This is not true for all Apple products, though; I have an original iPad Mini that is still on its original battery, and I haven't had a MacBook battery fail since the polycarbonate days.)
The reason phone batteries fail is heat. You have a hot CPU and a battery that heats up when it charges or discharges, enclosed in a tiny little package, and to make that tiny little package less fragile, you wrap it in a case that creates a second thermal envelope. And to make the thing small and quiet, the manufacturer doesn't put any sort of fan into the thing. And then folks wonder why the batteries last only a couple of years.
It's even worse if you regularly use these devices in a case while plugged in, as you might do while listening to music in the car or whatever, because you have the heat of the CPU in that package *plus* the heat of charging your battery at the same time. No device out there handles that very well.
Phones are too thin. They are too fragile. Solve these problems, and you will stop having problems with batteries swelling and exploding, assuming the charging circuits are designed correctly.
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Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
my 7 year old iPhone begs to differ.
My daughter had an iPhone for 3 years. When she upgraded, she gave it to me. I had it for 3 more years.
So six years total.
I only replaced it because I smashed the screen when I fell while jogging.
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Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
For cell phones, lithiums aren't batteries, they're cells. Ni-Cd and Ni-MH are batteries (multiple cells), and need occasional cycling not only for the fuel gauge, but to equalize the individual cells. Ni-Cd "memory" only happens under very specific circumstances, which doesn't happen with consumer products.
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A 100% cycle or 5x 20% cycles are pretty close to the same.
That is actually not correct. There are publications on this, nicely summarized in the Accubattery documentation [zendesk.com] (also check the "related articles" linked to from that page).
Summarizing: most of the battery wear on a smartphone happens during the charge process from 80% to 100%. The same Accubattery app [google.com] for Android seems to use a wear model as follows (1.0 corresponds to the wear from a 0%-100% charging cycle):
90%-100%: 0.52
80%-90%: 0.23
50%-80%: 0.17
0%-50%: 0.08
If you keep your battery topped up all the tim
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The flaw with this analysis from Accubattery is that they don't know how much capacity the phone reserves. I expect many phones don't charge to the maximum capacity of the battery precisely because that last 10% is do hard on them.
Most EVs are the same, "100%" charge on the display is more like 85-90% of what the battery is capable of.
Having said that I think there would be some benefit to being able to charge to only 80%, but unfortunately no phone supports this AFAIK. Years ago I was thinking about making
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Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
The reason phone batteries fail is heat.
If my iPhones don't get heatstroke in Arizona, they're not going to get it anywhere.
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Hmm... No battery swelling in your MacBook? My MacBook Pro is deep into it's second swelling now.
Theoretical solution: What if the battery was only charged 80% unless I requested a full charge before going on the road? Surely the computer isn't too stupid to notice that I rarely went mobile.
(Unless the real goal is to pressure me to buy a fresh, sexier box. Don't hold your breath, Apple.)
Disclaimer of sorts. I was quite gratified when Apple did replace the first battery under warranty. And yet overall I am
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To contribute to the anecdotes, the only smart phones I've had have been iPhones. Everyone of them still works fine and I still have them all.
3GS - used for 3.25 years
5 - used for 3 years
6S - used for 4.6 years
SE2 - my current phone
Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:4, Informative)
You make it sound as if it's the end of an iPhone when the battery craps out. It's really not that difficult to do a DIY battery replacement, and there are 3rd party phone repair stores that will do it for a reasonable cost if futzing around with small electronic parts is outside of your comfort zone.
Realistically, unless you drop/smash/lose it or catch upgraditis, an iPhone will last until Apple stops pushing out OS updates for that model. Even then, it will still technically function, but by that point the last supported OS version usually runs very poorly and application updates may no longer be supported.
Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don’t disagree with your general point about batteries. But it is a tad pessimistic, based on my experience - and, even if an iPhone’s battery fails that doesn’t mean the phone has to be tossed. Sure, I’d like a user-replaceable battery... but Apple does (*now*, at least) offer battery replacement for a decent cost.
And obviously Apple leads the pack with regards to software support for old phones. My 6S is still getting OS updates.
Regardless of all that - doesn’t Samsung and other Android manufacturers also offer battery replacement? Why does a failed battery have to mean completely replacing one’s phone, at least in the mind of the author?
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if anybody asks me if I'd recommend any iPod Touch model right now
My answer would be "Why would anyone want an iPod Touch? The use case has all but disappeared". As a matter of fact, the current iPod touch was designed in 2016. Even Apple has abandoned the product.
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Don't get me started on these [expletive deleted] keyboards. My old work MBP had five keys no longer attached by the time I stopped using it, and constant problems with keys sticking even before that. My personal MBP hasn't done that yet, but at two years, I fear I'm living on borrowed time, since I got them around the same time (as a result of theft of the previous hardware).
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Silly iPhool, apples are for eating. Android devices might not be supported by their vendors for more than a few years but that doesn't mean that much for the type of person who I expect to find here. I'm using an 8 year old Samsung SIII which runs Android 9, I can update it to 10 but have not done so yet. Updates within the current version are OTA, just like they were when the thing runs the stock distribution (which I never used).
Just make sure to buy a device which has good developer support and you shou
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Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
Correct, the iPhone 6 no longer supports the current version of iOS. However, iOS 12 (the latest version it supports) is still receiving security updates and was patched to version 12.4.8 earlier this month.
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Heh, the only Android phone I've had that didn't last 4 years is the one I dropped. That one was broken just last year so I just swapped back to my then 5 year old Samsung S5 and used that for a bit before buying my current and it worked just fine (aside from being underpowered relative to modern phones of course).
I also powered up an even older Motorola when I was looking for the S5 (it was maybe 9 years old at that point and saw a good solid 3 or 4 years of steady use before I retired it) and that phone w
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Probably the only phones that last more than 4 years, aka iPhone.
My iPhone 6s is 4 years old and going strong. I put a glass protective screen on it, have it in a case, I drop it from time to time, replace the glass protective screen if it cracks (only thus far once), the real screen is fine. I expect to keep it for 4 more years, fingers crossed. The battery is still fine.
Re:Hmm... I wonder what phone he forgot... (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly this. My last phone was an iPhone 5s that I purchased in 2013. I replaced it in 2019 when it finally stopped receiving software updates. I expect my current iPhone 11 will last just as long or longer, given that each one I’ve purchased has lasted longer than the previous.
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Ineed (Score:2)
I'm still using an iPhone 6 Plus. Battery is at 85% lifespan and I just received an OS update in May. The phone was released in 2014 for those keeping track.
My LG Stylo is pushing 4 years (Score:2)
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You're buying the wrong "low-end" smartphone (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm still using my Motorola RAZR HD. Bought it unlocked in 2013. I use it for phone calls, texts, occasional web browsing when nothing else is available, and listening to music when nothing else is available.
No battery swelling, and it still lasts >1 day on a charge.
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My user experience was different. I got a cheap Moto G5 in late 2017. In 2019 battery swelling became in issue and I knew not to be stupid with stuff like this so I used the remaining warranty. Fortunately they replaced the battery with a brand new one with charging cycles that should last me another couple of years. Which I guess still makes a great value product. But the battery swelling after less than 2 years isn't something that speaks for long
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Same here. Needed a new phone for some remote work app with biometrics. The Moto phone I bought has a replaceable battery. I guess this is a feature expensive phones do not have, same as the headphone jack this one has as well. No idea how well you can phone with it though, this one is not getting a SIM card.
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They get security updates longer than most, but they'll still stop after a couple years. To me that's the bigger issue than battery death. (Custom ROMs, if available, can present their own problems.)
Samsung Galaxy Note II (Score:2)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Note 7 is the one with the exploding battery.
7 years as "main" device + 3 as "backup" (Score:2)
Going by historical data I expect my devices to last around 7 years as "main" device (i.e. the one hosting my main phone number) plus another 3-5 years as "backup" or "dangerous work" device (hosting my going-into-the-woods-with-a-motorsaw phone number). I'm currently using a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 as a main device and either a Samsung SIII or Motorola Defy as backup. All of these run an AOSP-derived distribution, all of them are Google-free.
5+ years (Score:2)
My son uses my old iPhone 6s currently. The battery gives more than a full day off a single charge, small crack on the back. Works flawlessly otherwise.
It was released in September 2015, so we're going on 5 years.
4 years, more or less (Score:2)
I had the iPhone 3G, and it's the only phone I replaced for performance/spec reasons before the 4 year mark.
My iPhone 4 lasted until I got an iPhone 6. (4 years)
My iPhone 6 needed the battery replaced after 2 years (under warranty) but was stolen not long after.
I got an iPhone 7 on the day the iPhone 8/X was released, so I guess I had an iPhone 6 in some form for 3 years.
My mother wanted a phone, so she asked me to give her the 7 and she bought me the XR as a replacement. (Don't ask me how that logic works.
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Here's my list, in order, for contrast:
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Well, my list doesn't include the 2 iPad 3s, one 5th Gen iPad, and the iPhone 3G, iPhone 4, iPhone 6, and iPhone SE that my partner had. I also had one swollen battery in a MacBook. It's wild that you've had such a bad track record. I don't doubt that you've had those problems, but it really IS remarkable.
Not long (Score:2)
I break em pretty regularly. So gave up buying iPhones or top of the line Samsungs a long time ago. By the time my latest el cheapo Android is too old to run the latest and greatest it'll probably already be smashed, at the bottom of the pool or otherwise lost.
I buy my phone to last 5 years (Score:4, Informative)
At least 4 years. (Score:2)
I am thinking replacing it wit a cheap flip phone when it breaks.
As long as possible (Score:2)
My previous phone was a Samsung Galaxy S4. I got it about when it first came out, so whenever that was. I replaced the battery at least once to keep it alive. It did everything I needed and I don't see any need to upgrade to the latest toy all the time, but it was at the end of its functional life and was having issues keeping up with newer apps. So last year I upgraded to an S9. I like the phone but it doesn't have a replaceable battery, so I doubt it will last as long as the S4. I actually have two
LG V20 (Score:2)
I got my LG V20 used about a year ago. I hope it'll last another two or three years at least. OK screen, removable battery, fast enough for browsing and emulators, what more do I need? I am taking a risk, I guess, with unpatched vulnerabilities, but the upside of these is that I was able to root it. (And somehow I've never actually had any security breach on a phone that I know of.)
Galaxy Note 4 still alive (Score:2)
My phone is more than 5 years old now and it doesn't want to die. I had a swollen battery once, good thing it is user replaceable.
With its little brother the Galaxy S5, I consider it as the last "good" flagship phone: robust build, replaceable battery, headphone jack, SD card slot,... It has enough processing power to run pretty much anything and a decent camera. Anything after that is all about looks, uniformisation and diminishing returns.
Should I change my phone right now, I may consider the Samsung Gal
A few more years (Score:2)
Nokia N900 (Score:2)
I have a Nokia N900 that I have been using for the best part of a decade.
The bezel around the screen is a little loose, several key caps have come off (although the underlying keys can still be pressed) and I cant even access slashdot.org on it anymore since the ancient inbuilt Mozilla-fork web browser doesn't support TLS 1.2. But I will take my N900 any day over a shiny new new device with less features (no physical keyboard, far less open on the software side, more fragile, no user-replaceable battery)
I i
Other than crappy work required/provided phone (Score:2)
I have had quite a few in the last 30+ years. Treo, G1, various Android phones.
All android phones after Handspring went to the big corporate graveyard.
The one that lasted the longest was a cheap samsung that I had for about 7 or 8 years (with only one update ever for the system) I replaced it just in time since the battery was bulging so much I couldn't put it back into the phone once I got the Xd card out.
Latest phone is a Pixel 3a XL. I really like this one, it should be paid off in about 1.5 years. I'm s
iPhones work well (Score:3)
I went Droid -> iPhone 4S -> iPhone 6S -> iPhone 11.
The Droid was barely functioning by the end of my 2 year contract. The iPhones both lasted 4 years, but that was really pushing it. Battery life was really bad for the last year of the 4S, and both phones were showing their age near the end. You could still use them, but they were getting held back by lack of RAM. The 6S battery was doing great, but I did take advantage of the cheap battery replacement Apple was offering after 3 years. The battery was still strong, but I figured it was worth replacing anyway while the offer was there to get it done cheap.
I'm currently planning on using the iPhone 11 for 3 years. I'm sure it would be usable for at least 4, but I think I'd rather spend the money to upgrade sooner than deal with the 4th year. Also, the trade-in valuable is significantly higher after 3 years than after 4, so that lessons the blow of upgrading more often.
my rule: (Score:2)
Apple... (Score:3)
Still have a reasonably functional iPhone 6 as a backup/travel phone, 6 years old. iPhone 4 was also still functional, but battery life was in the “minutes” range. Could have replaced the battery had I wanted to though.
My Blackberries and Motorola RAZR were obsolete long before the replaceable batteries were an issue.
My expectation now is 3 years minimum, with 4 preferred when purchasing a newly released phone. Right now not sure if there will be a compelling reason to upgrade my iPhone X this year. Part of my just wants a dumb phone now with a tablet as my tethered “smart” device.
Just get a new battery (Score:5, Insightful)
Why all that ruckus?
Just buy a new battery from amazon for €3 and swap it with the old one. It only takes like ten seconds to change battery on my Moto G4.
Oh, wait, current smartphones no longer have easy accessible batteries.
Right to repair now!
I would say every gadget which is hard to repair or hard to replace consumables should get ten years of warranty by law.
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Oh, wait, current smartphones no longer have easy accessible batteries.
I've always wondered why they put batteries in smartphones at all. Put them in the case most people buy to protect their phone!
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I have the G5 but I think after that model even they stopped making phones with removable batteries.
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Oh, wait, current smartphones no longer have easy accessible batteries.
You can still get quite reasonable phones where a battery change is a 1 minute affair. You just have to make it a priority when buying.
As long as I want (Score:3)
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3 years (Score:2)
is a good amount of time. Phones can keep working longer but they are obsolete and cant handle the latest apps so 3 years is a good time to upgrade. I expect my laptops to last 5 years. Kitchen appliances should pretty much last forever. Cars 10 years. Solar Panels 20 years. House roofs 40 years.
Everything has a life. I expect to last 70 years.
Re: 3 years (Score:3)
My 3 year old phone (Axon 7) has a snapdragon 820, 4gb ram, a nice high res OLED screen, a micro SD card slot (currently with a 128gb card), and quick charges through USB C.
I haven't seen anything app-wise that needs beefier specs than that to run.
It was fairly quickly abandoned by ZTE, but the final OS release got it into Project Treble range (even though it didn't launch with 8.0 or better). So it's running fully v updated 10 now and I can't see changing phones for a long while.
The initial leaps and bound
My main problem is the lack of OS updates (Score:4, Interesting)
Mine have worked almost indefinitely. The key is charging the battery in a careful way. I keep them charged between 20 and 80%, and use USB 2 instead of a battery charger in order to charge them slowly. You can use the app Battery Charge Notifier to sound an alarm when it's sufficiently charged. It works well if you turn off the Android features that kill sleeping apps after a while. There are several similar apps, but it's the smallest one with the least invasive permission requirements.
I still have a Samsung S3 Neo with LineageOS 16 (Android 9) which gets weekly updates, but it's too slow for normal usage. Hopefully the LineageOS build for S9 will still be there when Samsung stops updating it. It will be powerful enough for many years to come.
iphones last (Score:3)
I'm still using an iPhone 6s I bought around 2016 or so. I bought an Apple case when I got it and that absorbed a few drops, when the last iPhone came out I decided to sink a whole forty bucks or so into a new case because the old one was starting to fall apart. I can't remember how much I paid for it when I got it, it was shortly after the 8 came out so it was last year's model. Plus AppleCare. Which is expired now.
No battery swelling, still works with my old wired headphones/earbuds. Still does what I need it to. I'm hoping to get at least five years out of it, maybe more; all I really do with it is maps, check email, and the usual web bullshit.
5 years is resonable to expect ... (Score:2)
... if used every day, intensely. If your phone borks earlier it's either a crappy phone or you have been mistreating it. The latter is the most frequent case I presume. Don't proactively abuse an electronics device and expect it to last long. Most phones that only last 2 years or less are either cheap garbage or have been run over by a tank at some point in their short lifetime. I always wonder how people expect eletronics with a shattered screen, and a bent case, that they use as a bottle opener, to last.
Three over two decades (Score:2)
My current phone is relatively new, only had it three years or so, my tablet is a 2013 Nexus 7, only replaced its battery once.
Be kind to batteries, I've never cracked/broken a screen (probably jinxed it now), buy last years for cheaper prices, especially nowadays that there hasn't really been any significant changes in the past decade.
I expect 3+ years (Score:2)
3.5-4 years (Score:2)
I'm closing in on 3 years. Battery sucks, but otherwise it's fine. I don't want another phone this big though, and that's all they make now, so I'm hanging on to this shit.
Batery swelling isn't a terminal illness (Score:2)
You can hit ebay or your favorite Chinese web shop and order a new battery... For screens, plane ahead, check if there are replacements and how much do they cost. My mother is on her fifth screen on the Redmi 4X. A new one is below 20 USD. If it was an OLED screen, it would be over 100 for sure.
Internet experiences (Score:2)
This would have been better written by the that anonymous coward internet troll guy who rants about his experiences on the internet.
2 phones reluctantly (Score:2)
I have had a succession of iPhones (Score:2)
I keep each about four years, and have never had one fail. I replace them because of technological obsolescence.
2 years (Score:2)
I don't rely on anything electronic after 2 years. Some last, some don't.
As long as if it said "Western Electric" on back? (Score:2)
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Guess I will ditch mobile service entirely then, as I do not want a spy-computer that cannot be controlled (the candybar is an embedded system with no Internet or data access at all), have no need of any "apps" or anything but a real keypad and voice calls.
I know this won't change your mind one bit, but you can also just buy any Android phone and use it as a dumb phone.
It's not even hard. Don't sign into google. Turn off mobile data and wifi if you must. Disable all the installed apps you won't need.
And you'd have a huge advantage in that you wouldn't care about performance at all, and your battery life will be awesome, so you could buy just about any low end phone for that use case.
If you really wanted to strip the phone down, flash an AOSP GSI to it that
5 years at least (Score:2)
13 years and still going strong... (Score:2)
Got my current cell-phone, a Nokia 2630, in 2007 and am still using it 13 years later. Bought it because it was the smallest one in the shop at the time, dirt cheap and PAYG. When new, the battery lasted 320 hours on standby. I'm still on the original battery but it's more like 50% of that these days.
I don't make many calls but I like to have it with me, just in case.
2 to 6 years (Score:2)
I usually change them once a year and do the family trickle down. Currently the oldest one on the fleet is 4 years old.
The trick is to be nice to the battery. As much as you can. Don't let it go too low (below 20%, ideally not under 45%), don't charge to 100% more often than necessary, most batteries have a a high durability sweet spot in the 30%-80% range.
I would love if smartphone OSs would allow you to set charge bands and charging alerts. A Li-ion battery charged in the 45-65% band can last many
Just a little bit longer... (Score:2)
It's been a full 3+ years. Going strong with this iPhone 7 Plus with 256 GB.
Yea, I paid a bunch for that memory, likely twice what I need, but I'm not going to run out of space. Oh, and the battery will need to be replaced soon, it's capacity is falling into the lower part of the 80% range so I suspect it won't be long before I have to open it up and shove a new battery in.
Personally, I run my phones until they DIE... My last Samsung Note 4 went nearly 4 years before it crashed and wouldn't be revived.
H
I expect about 6-7 years total (Score:2)
Due to my work I need to have two phones available, so I buy a new one every 3-4 years and swap out the older of the previous ones.
Current ones are a iPhone 6s Plus (bought late 2015) and iPhone Xr (bought early 2019), so next swap is expected about 2022-23 or so.
Stop buying trash (Score:2)
I can count how many mobile phones I've had:
Motorola T193, early 2000's. GSM single band
Nokia 3360, early 2000's (replaced above) , GSM Triband
Nokia 6xxx, mid 2000's (replaced above), GSM-EDGE, Quadband
Nokia N95 , 2008 (replaced above), UMTS(3G), Quadband
iPhone 6S, 2015 (replaced above, stopped charging with iOS 12), LTE
iPhone XS, 2018 (replaced above), LTE
Ideally, the phone should last you until the carrier upgrades their network. So the next device will not be before 5G has widespread rollout. I live in a
I've also been buying low-end smartphones.... (Score:2)
Found your problem.
Nokia 6015i (12 years) and Alcatel Go Flip (Score:2)
I got a Nokia 6015i on a Pay-As-You-Go plan with Virgin Mobile Canada (Bell Canada subsidiary) back in March 2006. It worked fine, and would still be working but Bell's 2G support had been dropped outside of central Canada by fall 2017, and eventually all of Canada.
I got an Alcatel Go Flip in March 2018. It supports 2G/3G/4G/LTE, and has a basic camera, so it should last me for a while. But in some ways, it's almost luddite...
* it actually has physical keys
* it's a flip phone
* it has a user-replacable batt
Depends more on the manufacturer at this point (Score:2)
iPhone 6 was released in 2014 and
didnâ(TM)t receive the iOS 13 update released
In 2019 so in theory it would be 5 years
Before being deprecated.
It is still perfectly usable but at that point it doesnâ(TM)t have the most recent hardware, software, or security so is basically obsolete at that point.
BB Z10 battery does this (Score:2)
I am now on my 4th one. Got 10 replacement ones cheap for $5 each (original equipment) a while back. Replacement is a 10 seconds affair (excluding reboot).
Comment removed (Score:3)
Apple phones tend to hold up better than Android (Score:3)
I had a Motorola Droid X and a Samsung Galaxy S3, and both of them were ready to go into the trash after their 2-year contracts were up. The phone manufacturer stopped offering Android updates for them, and there was so much (unremoveable without rooting) carrier and manufacturer bloatware on those phones that it killed the battery life and caused applications to randomly crash.
The iPhone 6 that replaced them lasted 4 years, though. I needed to get a new battery for it around year 3, but that only costs $29 to replace from Apple. It was the charge port eventually wore out, but I was still getting iOS updates during the entire lifetime of the phone. I'm hoping that the iPhone XR that I got to replace it will last just as long.
2 phones lasted 8 years (Score:3)
Gave it to my dad who used it with 1 battery swap until late 2019 (!) when I gave him my next phone.
My iPhone 6+ lasted from late 2014 to late 2019 - 5 years on 2 batteries.
As noted above my dad is using it now
Hope that my iPhone 11 will have similar lifespan. Apple isn’t cheap but I feel like I get good mileage out of their devices.
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Must be nice. A large percentage of those early iPhone 6S devices exhibited premature battery failure within the first few months (mine included), resulting in performance throttling in an attempt to prevent premature shutdowns, and in spite of that, they still exhibited premature shutdowns when the battery got below 10% (or 20%, or eventually 30%).
I gave up trying to get mine repaired, because the one time I was near an Apple store, they told me I'd have to have a reservation, and that it would take an h
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Indeed. That is why getting a smartphone with non-replaceable (or hard to replace) battery is really dumb.