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My father is still using an iPhone 4, 6 years after its launch and is now thinking of upgrading to a 7 in the fall and I have had a 5S for 2 years now and thin

My father is still using an iPhone 4, 6 years after its launch and is now thinking of upgrading to a 7 in the fall and I have had a 5S for 2 years now and think I can pull another 2 years before I upgrade. These phones have longer lives then they use to but Apple sales I believe will remain steady since some old iPhone user has to upgrade and they most likely will pick an iPhone. There isn't much reason to switch to Android at this point. The only thing that could take them off there perch is another revolutionary device showing up on the scene, but I think that won't happen for another decade.

tedmiston 10y ago
I think this is your personal preference. After using a 6S for a few days, going back to using my 5S is painful.
- jmspring 10y ago
  I can second this. My wife has a personal 6S, her work phone (they pay for the plan, but not the phone) is a 5S we had laying around. She hates going on international business trips with that phone (we could swap the SIM), but "it's so slow", "it doesn't work", "i hate this phone" are common phrases with extended usage.
- ruipgil 10y ago
  Downgrading is always hard. Even minor differences in speed/fluidity will seem much more accentuated.
- vacri 10y ago
  I like how every generation of every phone is marketed as "This time, the camera does true colour!" - I wonder how much real difference there is between gens.
  - glandium 10y ago
    > "This time, the camera does true colour". ... this just sounds like commercials for detergents.
tooFastFuckYou 10y ago
Or stupid, anti-customer decisions that have already crippled the product to the point of embarrassment. Like removing the headphone jack on a MUSIC-CENTRIC PHONE. Or removing most of the battery capacity from a mobile device that you want users to employ for location-based (GPS-using, battery-hogging) applications. Or for pairing with an Apple Watch (via battery-consuming Bluetooth). Or for pairing with cheeseball headphones, again via Bluetooth. Oh, and since you now need a clunky adapter to NOT use Bluetooth for audio, you're blocking the charging port... so again you need MORE battery. Oh, and why is Apple deleting battery? Well its excuse is making the phone needlessly "thinner," which makes its ergonomics WORSE and is a fraud anyway because of course the camera sticks out. But instead of making the back of the phone flush with the camera's extremity and using the extra space for battery, Apple chooses to ignore the pitiful sight of people carrying power bricks and wads of wire around with their "elegant" iPhones, begging bartenders to plug them in or crawling under pool tables to do so. What will kill Apple? Jony Ive, making Apple devices so useless that even the ever-more-spineless public finally rejects them.
- jamesrom 10y ago
  Um. Just buy a different phone if you don't think the tradeoffs Apple have made suit your particular use case. Chill. It's all going to be okay.
  - tooFastFuckYou 10y ago
    They aren't trade-offs, and the use case is: mobile phone. If there's some other use case that dominates "mobile phone" for mobile phones, let's hear it.
    - logiclion 10y ago
      A billion "mobile phones" sold doesn't seem very anti consumer to me.
      - stephengillie 10y ago
coldtea 10y ago
Plus, for all the talk of "innovation" and all thrown around, has any other PC or smartphone vendor really done anything industry changing the last 15 years? I mean except putting out similar devices to ones Apple popularized (and notice how I didn't say invented)... I've seen Glass that went nowhere, Surface being an attempt at iPad (and capped at 1M unit sales or so), some smart watches that all together sold only 1/10th what the Apple Watch did (and are nothing to write home about anyway), anything else? (In software and services of course, Google and others have frequently produced new stuff that spawned imitators). I can only think of Amazon Echo -- but has than really sold that well, or is mostly a media thing?
- egypturnash 10y ago
  The Surface is a pretty damn nice device that will be really great in a year or two when it's finally ready for prime time, and Apple finally deigns to do what a bunch of PC manufacturers are doing and clone it. It will be hailed as the Next Big Thing then. I say this as someone who's been a Mac user since 2000, and finds Windows really annoying. Being able to run Serious Desktop Apps in a tablet is really amazing, and I would be using a Surface to type this right now if I hadn't had to return my S4Pro because my favorite Serious Art App ignores the first half-second or so of every stylus stroke. Instead I'm sitting in a cafe with my Air and my Wacom tablet next to it. Which used to be a delightfully lightweight portable art studio, but now feels absurdly massive. (The Surface may not feel like a big deal to someone whose Serious App is an IDE and always needs a full keyboard anyway - but sitting on a bus, a plane, or a crowded lunch counter, with the Surface and a desktop-class art app is pretty delightful. Well, aside from the terrible battery life, made even worse by its tendency to wake up in your bag and burn through half its battery, occasional reboot-requiring Bluetooth disconnects, and unpadded stylus.)
  - Retric 10y ago
    What separates the surface and iPad Pro? I get your saying desktop applications, but from a HW perspective that are basically the same device and the OS is equality capable. It seems more like the Surface just has better applications for artists, unless I am missing something.
Sukotto 10y ago
For what it's worth, I also use an iphone 4. I like the size and don't really care about apps that require a more recent ios version. Unfortunately, it no longer accepts my off-brand charging cable, and even using a (borrowed) official Apple cable results in the dreaded "accessory might not be supported" error. The repair place cleaned out the port and says the battery is fine. Most likely the port itself has broken ... and that part is not replaceable :( Now I'm limping along on a loaner phone from a friend and torn between buying another 4 (or 5), or buying a 6 in 2 months after the 7 comes out. :(
glandium 10y ago
My wife's old iphone 5, which is now 3 years old, now has a swollen battery. YMMV.

tedmiston 10y ago

I think this is your personal preference. After using a 6S for a few days, going back to using my 5S is painful.

jmspring 10y ago
I can second this. My wife has a personal 6S, her work phone (they pay for the plan, but not the phone) is a 5S we had laying around. She hates going on international business trips with that phone (we could swap the SIM), but "it's so slow", "it doesn't work", "i hate this phone" are common phrases with extended usage.
ruipgil 10y ago
Downgrading is always hard. Even minor differences in speed/fluidity will seem much more accentuated.
vacri 10y ago
I like how every generation of every phone is marketed as "This time, the camera does true colour!" - I wonder how much real difference there is between gens.
- glandium 10y ago
  > "This time, the camera does true colour". ... this just sounds like commercials for detergents.

tooFastFuckYou 10y ago

Or stupid, anti-customer decisions that have already crippled the product to the point of embarrassment. Like removing the headphone jack on a MUSIC-CENTRIC PHONE. Or removing most of the battery capacity from a mobile device that you want users to employ for location-based (GPS-using, battery-hogging) applications. Or for pairing with an Apple Watch (via battery-consuming Bluetooth). Or for pairing with cheeseball headphones, again via Bluetooth. Oh, and since you now need a clunky adapter to NOT use Bluetooth for audio, you're blocking the charging port... so again you need MORE battery. Oh, and why is Apple deleting battery? Well its excuse is making the phone needlessly "thinner," which makes its ergonomics WORSE and is a fraud anyway because of course the camera sticks out. But instead of making the back of the phone flush with the camera's extremity and using the extra space for battery, Apple chooses to ignore the pitiful sight of people carrying power bricks and wads of wire around with their "elegant" iPhones, begging bartenders to plug them in or crawling under pool tables to do so. What will kill Apple? Jony Ive, making Apple devices so useless that even the ever-more-spineless public finally rejects them.

jamesrom 10y ago
Um. Just buy a different phone if you don't think the tradeoffs Apple have made suit your particular use case. Chill. It's all going to be okay.
- tooFastFuckYou 10y ago
  They aren't trade-offs, and the use case is: mobile phone. If there's some other use case that dominates "mobile phone" for mobile phones, let's hear it.
  - logiclion 10y ago
    A billion "mobile phones" sold doesn't seem very anti consumer to me.
    - stephengillie 10y ago

coldtea 10y ago

Plus, for all the talk of "innovation" and all thrown around, has any other PC or smartphone vendor really done anything industry changing the last 15 years? I mean except putting out similar devices to ones Apple popularized (and notice how I didn't say invented)... I've seen Glass that went nowhere, Surface being an attempt at iPad (and capped at 1M unit sales or so), some smart watches that all together sold only 1/10th what the Apple Watch did (and are nothing to write home about anyway), anything else? (In software and services of course, Google and others have frequently produced new stuff that spawned imitators). I can only think of Amazon Echo -- but has than really sold that well, or is mostly a media thing?

egypturnash 10y ago
The Surface is a pretty damn nice device that will be really great in a year or two when it's finally ready for prime time, and Apple finally deigns to do what a bunch of PC manufacturers are doing and clone it. It will be hailed as the Next Big Thing then. I say this as someone who's been a Mac user since 2000, and finds Windows really annoying. Being able to run Serious Desktop Apps in a tablet is really amazing, and I would be using a Surface to type this right now if I hadn't had to return my S4Pro because my favorite Serious Art App ignores the first half-second or so of every stylus stroke. Instead I'm sitting in a cafe with my Air and my Wacom tablet next to it. Which used to be a delightfully lightweight portable art studio, but now feels absurdly massive. (The Surface may not feel like a big deal to someone whose Serious App is an IDE and always needs a full keyboard anyway - but sitting on a bus, a plane, or a crowded lunch counter, with the Surface and a desktop-class art app is pretty delightful. Well, aside from the terrible battery life, made even worse by its tendency to wake up in your bag and burn through half its battery, occasional reboot-requiring Bluetooth disconnects, and unpadded stylus.)
- Retric 10y ago
  What separates the surface and iPad Pro? I get your saying desktop applications, but from a HW perspective that are basically the same device and the OS is equality capable. It seems more like the Surface just has better applications for artists, unless I am missing something.

Sukotto 10y ago

For what it's worth, I also use an iphone 4. I like the size and don't really care about apps that require a more recent ios version. Unfortunately, it no longer accepts my off-brand charging cable, and even using a (borrowed) official Apple cable results in the dreaded "accessory might not be supported" error. The repair place cleaned out the port and says the battery is fine. Most likely the port itself has broken ... and that part is not replaceable :( Now I'm limping along on a loaner phone from a friend and torn between buying another 4 (or 5), or buying a 6 in 2 months after the 7 comes out. :(

glandium 10y ago

My wife's old iphone 5, which is now 3 years old, now has a swollen battery. YMMV.