5 ms·

None of the phones I had to toss in the last few years were due to battery giving out. It was because they become too slow or weren't updated by the manufacture

• dale_glass 4y ago
  That's coming to an end. There's only so much a cell phone needs to do. I think a Note 4, which is 8 years old at this point is still a perfectly functional phone, with only software related issues. And the battery is replaceable.
  • paulryanrogers 4y ago
    My Note 4 worked for years, then for my SO, then again for me a while. In the end we only had to change the battery once and sold it to someone else, still serviceable if a bit slow. Every form factor since has been a pain in comparison.
  • falcolas 4y ago
    Small nit - using a phone as a phone (voice calls) is fairly uncommon usecase anymore (speaking as a 40+ any my cohort, not even mentioning the younger generations). SMS et.al. is quite common still. But most non-SMS apps will probably not work on 4-6 year old phones anymore.
    • dale_glass 4y ago
      Why wouldn't they work? What stops Signal or Discord from working on a Note 4?
      • pantalaimon 4y ago
        Usually it's when there are no more OS updates and the latest versions of those Apps no longer work with the old OS. This can be somewhat mitigated if you have a popular device that is supported by 3rd party ROMs.
      • falcolas 4y ago
        What pantalaimon said. Plus, there's an insidious combination of changes to the underlying hardware and changes to the APIs. When old hardware is no longer supported by the app maker, and their APIs have changed enough that you need a new(er) version of the app (or they just force you to be on the latest version), you're often SOL.
      • AdrianB1 4y ago
        I just replaced my 6 year phone; some apps did not work because they required more recent versions of Android, my phone came with 7 and I upgraded it to 8. It was a painful way to see one app at a time no longer working after an app update, some that I could not avoid.
• nicoburns 4y ago
  > It was because they become too slow This can also be because of degraded batteries. It will also be much less of reason over time as phone processors mature.
• anonymfus 4y ago
  That is an example of a privilege that people don't notice they have until pointed out.
• auxym 4y ago
  Same here. Beside phones that simply become outdated (slow, small storage, RAM fills up) or accidentally damaged, I had a Samsung Galaxy phone which wouldn't read SIM cards anymore, and then a Motorola phone which stopped being able to get a GPS fix. Both shortly after the 1 year warranty expires. The result is I only buy cheap phones now (~200$), with the expectation that they'll last about a year. I have no idea how people can justify spending the price of iPhones and other flagships when they are apparently so expendable.
  • Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
    Sorry to be so frank, but IMHO you probably didn't choose the most reliable brands. I had 3 high-end HTC smartphones and one Huawei, which all lasted at least 4 years of use. And the reason for retiring them was wanting better hardware, camera, etc., not really that they stopped working or became slow (there only was a "physical" reason in in the case of the Huawei: the screen broke in a fall and it was expensive to replace, otherwise it worked just fine). I don't have experience with Motorola, but from friends/family who have or had Samsung, it tends to be just... not good. Even if the hardware survives, which it not always does, after 1-2 updates they tend to lag like hell. I don't really get why they are so successful while e.g. HTC's smartphone business basically went under.
  • tomp 4y ago
    Because iPhone’s aren’t expendable. My iPhone6 still works. I’ve moved on for other reasons (more space, better camera) but the product still works better than most Androids. I even had Apple replace the battery!
  • AdrianB1 4y ago
    For the last 2 phones I paid about $300, with the expectation to last at least 5 years. One did last 6 years, the current one is work in progress. At $200, current phones models are too low quality to expect to work for 3-4 years.
  • kewrkewm53 4y ago
    There's a healthy used market for iPhones because they indeed do last long, and Apple provides many more years of software support than cheap Android manufacturers do. IMO when it comes to electronics with little to no moving parts it's almost always better to buy used quality than cheap new crap. An iPhone that has lasted two years without failing will probably last 5 more without anything else than battery needing replacement. Mid-range Android phones often aren't bad either except for lack of long-term updates.
• Gigachad 4y ago
  I think phones are the least important devices that this regulation could involve. Phones already have a vibrant market of repair stores which can swap the battery on the spot quickly and cheaply. The real issue is the other devices, laptops, the nintendo switch, game controllers, etc which have embedded batteries that are hard to borderline impossible to replace and which are uncommon enough for stores to not stock parts. Something like the switch for example has no waterproofing and isn't ultra compact, it's really just not acceptable that the battery isn't a screw in panel like previous consoles.
• ekianjo 4y ago
  > . It was because they become too slow Using POS software that is never optimized does not help, indeed. > or weren't updated by the manufacturer. That is a real problem, and there is no good solution - apart from having eventual Linux phones but we are a very long way from there.
  • fsflover 4y ago
    > apart from having eventual Linux phones but we are a very long way from there This depends on your use case. Sent from my Pinephone.
    • ekianjo 4y ago
      Use case is complete replacement of Android for example
      • fsflover 4y ago
        I am using my Pinephone as a daily driver, so it's probably possible. However if your bank requires an Android/iOS app, you may have a hard time. Can't blame Linux for that.
• chupchap 4y ago
  Phones are slowed down with updates to maintain battery.
• temporallobe 4y ago
  Just updating the OS can make a device obsolete, though I’m not 100% convinced that this is due to planned obsolescence. I have an old 16GB iPad that was perfectly adequate when I first got it, but subsequent updates of the iOS version gradually reduced the available storage to the point where, as of the latest version, iOS itself consumes nearly ALL of the device storage, leaving very little for apps, much less for storage of actual files. Basically my iPad is now useless. This is such a shame because I only really use it just as a sheet music reader. This could be easily solved by expandable memory, but of course Apple is only concerned with selling more devices.
• fsflover 4y ago
  > or weren't updated by the manufacturer. This is exactly why we need GNU/Linux phones, which will have lifetime updates (Librem 5 and Pinephone).
• grumpyprole 4y ago
  You do realise that your Apple phone slows down precisely because the battery is less able to deliver high current bursts? This is the reason Apple gave for intentially slowing down phones.