5 ms·

A while ago I quit buying new models and switched to refurbished ones. The 7 I had did more or less what its predecessor did (car services, chat, remote camera

A while ago I quit buying new models and switched to refurbished ones. The 7 I had did more or less what its predecessor did (car services, chat, remote camera control) and the one I have now (X or Xs?) does more or less what the 7 did. I can afford the newer ones, but I don't see the value relative to the four-figure cost.

eckza 7y ago
I would still be using my 7 if it had a decent camera. I loved - LOVED - that phone.
- Lammy 7y ago
  Ssh, don't tell me that! I've used my 128GB iPhone 7 since buying it used when the iPhone 8 was released, and I still think it has an excellent camera compared to my previous Galaxy Note 4.
  - spockz 7y ago
    There is also a difference between phones. My 7 only makes decent pictures under the best of conditions. In other conditions it yields grainy and water painting style pictures. My wife’s 7, ordered at the same time yields way sharper and higher resolution pictures in the same situations.
    - Lammy 7y ago
      Mine took this photo yesterday, and I can definitely see room for improvement both in overall sharpness and in detail clarity like the signs and foliage: https://i.imgur.com/U1mmscV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/U1mmscV.jpg It sits above my personal line of "good enough", though, and every photo will be mangled by $social_network JPEG compression before anybody else sees it anyway.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    See that's funny because despite switching to Oneplus I still miss the camera from my Note 4 every day. Even the "standard angle" cameras these days have such wide fields of view there's never enough detail on my subject to make my pictures worth having.
    - Lammy 7y ago
      I was running an AOSP-based build of Android with significantly worse camera results than Samsung's Android, presumably due to some missing proprietary driver. My fault :)
- hunterloftis 7y ago
  I still use a 7. I don't even notice it, which is exactly what I want in a phone - it does what I need and doesn't annoy me or have many annoying quirks. iOS's new text interface may still push me to Android. The affordances for text on iOS have historically been simple, dependable, and understandable. Now, I find myself struggling to select, copy, and edit text fields. Gesture-based cursor management doesn't work well on small screens.
asdf21 7y ago
four figure? I got the new XR for like $549 I think..
symlinkk 7y ago
Doesn’t really seem worth it to me, you get multiple years less of updates, slower hardware, and worse battery life for what, like $200 saved over the XR?
_bxg1 7y ago
When I got my XS ($1000) it was because I planned to keep it for a long time. It's been a year and a half and I have zero complaints of degradation in speed, battery life, etc. Still feels like new. I plan on keeping it for four years at least. Compare that to the $500 phones of the past that would limp across the two-year mark and it's really not unreasonable.
- 333c 7y ago
  I don't think this is the comparison that you're drawing, but I'd like to point out that my current iPhone SE has been doing well for three years (other than a battery replacement), and I think it has at least one more year left in it. So it's not just the top-end phones that have staying power.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    That's fair, though I'd think refurbished phones won't do quite as well, but who knows
    - throwanem 7y ago
      That depends a lot on what's meant by "refurb". I've had some that had had a screen and battery replacement, and they work and last like new, as they should. I've also had some that were sold as "refurbished" despite having had, at most, a wipe down with Windex to get the fingerprints off. Those don't do so well, but if you're handy, you can do your own refurbs with $80 in parts and an hour or so of work, and get the same like-new result modulo whatever damage exists to the case.
  - rgovostes 7y ago
    Another dedicated (first-get) iPhone SE reporting in. It did desperately need a battery replacement but it was only $50. I have noticed that increasingly apps and websites aren't designed for such a small screen, even Apple's first-party ones.
- samstave 7y ago
  Im going on 5 years on my 6S+ Best iphone i have ever needed.
macintux 7y ago
For me it’s all about the camera, so I upgrade as often as I can. Everything else is a distant second.
- goatlover 7y ago
  Too bad the camera isn't a replaceable part.
  - macintux 7y ago
    A lot of its capabilities is tied to the processing capabilities of other internal chips, so it's unclear what you'd gain.
    - goatlover 7y ago
      True, but wasn't there a project for a phone based on upgradeable parts? I forgot who was doing that.
      - macintux 7y ago
        Google’s Ara project perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara
      - dijit 7y ago
        Every industrial engineer and electrical engineer I know said that it was a doomed project, and when I repeated their arguments to me (huge inefficiency in battery life, very heavy, poor performance) nobody wanted to listen. (And I was heavily downvoted). my friends ended up being right, those issues could never be worked out because it’s a fundamental problem. Integrated circuits are more efficient than others and having high performance data and power contacts is wasteful at best, and heavy at worst. It’s the same as building a computer on a breadboard vs having everything built in like a raspberry pi.

eckza 7y ago

I would still be using my 7 if it had a decent camera. I loved - LOVED - that phone.

Lammy 7y ago
Ssh, don't tell me that! I've used my 128GB iPhone 7 since buying it used when the iPhone 8 was released, and I still think it has an excellent camera compared to my previous Galaxy Note 4.
- spockz 7y ago
  There is also a difference between phones. My 7 only makes decent pictures under the best of conditions. In other conditions it yields grainy and water painting style pictures. My wife’s 7, ordered at the same time yields way sharper and higher resolution pictures in the same situations.
  - Lammy 7y ago
    Mine took this photo yesterday, and I can definitely see room for improvement both in overall sharpness and in detail clarity like the signs and foliage: https://i.imgur.com/U1mmscV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/U1mmscV.jpg It sits above my personal line of "good enough", though, and every photo will be mangled by $social_network JPEG compression before anybody else sees it anyway.
- Causality1 7y ago
  See that's funny because despite switching to Oneplus I still miss the camera from my Note 4 every day. Even the "standard angle" cameras these days have such wide fields of view there's never enough detail on my subject to make my pictures worth having.
  - Lammy 7y ago
    I was running an AOSP-based build of Android with significantly worse camera results than Samsung's Android, presumably due to some missing proprietary driver. My fault :)
hunterloftis 7y ago
I still use a 7. I don't even notice it, which is exactly what I want in a phone - it does what I need and doesn't annoy me or have many annoying quirks. iOS's new text interface may still push me to Android. The affordances for text on iOS have historically been simple, dependable, and understandable. Now, I find myself struggling to select, copy, and edit text fields. Gesture-based cursor management doesn't work well on small screens.

asdf21 7y ago

four figure? I got the new XR for like $549 I think..

symlinkk 7y ago

Doesn’t really seem worth it to me, you get multiple years less of updates, slower hardware, and worse battery life for what, like $200 saved over the XR?

_bxg1 7y ago

When I got my XS ($1000) it was because I planned to keep it for a long time. It's been a year and a half and I have zero complaints of degradation in speed, battery life, etc. Still feels like new. I plan on keeping it for four years at least. Compare that to the $500 phones of the past that would limp across the two-year mark and it's really not unreasonable.

333c 7y ago
I don't think this is the comparison that you're drawing, but I'd like to point out that my current iPhone SE has been doing well for three years (other than a battery replacement), and I think it has at least one more year left in it. So it's not just the top-end phones that have staying power.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  That's fair, though I'd think refurbished phones won't do quite as well, but who knows
  - throwanem 7y ago
    That depends a lot on what's meant by "refurb". I've had some that had had a screen and battery replacement, and they work and last like new, as they should. I've also had some that were sold as "refurbished" despite having had, at most, a wipe down with Windex to get the fingerprints off. Those don't do so well, but if you're handy, you can do your own refurbs with $80 in parts and an hour or so of work, and get the same like-new result modulo whatever damage exists to the case.
- rgovostes 7y ago
  Another dedicated (first-get) iPhone SE reporting in. It did desperately need a battery replacement but it was only $50. I have noticed that increasingly apps and websites aren't designed for such a small screen, even Apple's first-party ones.
samstave 7y ago
Im going on 5 years on my 6S+ Best iphone i have ever needed.

macintux 7y ago

For me it’s all about the camera, so I upgrade as often as I can. Everything else is a distant second.

goatlover 7y ago
Too bad the camera isn't a replaceable part.
- macintux 7y ago
  A lot of its capabilities is tied to the processing capabilities of other internal chips, so it's unclear what you'd gain.
  - goatlover 7y ago
    True, but wasn't there a project for a phone based on upgradeable parts? I forgot who was doing that.
    - macintux 7y ago
      Google’s Ara project perhaps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Ara
    - dijit 7y ago
      Every industrial engineer and electrical engineer I know said that it was a doomed project, and when I repeated their arguments to me (huge inefficiency in battery life, very heavy, poor performance) nobody wanted to listen. (And I was heavily downvoted). my friends ended up being right, those issues could never be worked out because it’s a fundamental problem. Integrated circuits are more efficient than others and having high performance data and power contacts is wasteful at best, and heavy at worst. It’s the same as building a computer on a breadboard vs having everything built in like a raspberry pi.