Forced to upgrade
I've been happily using an iPhone 8 for the last 7 years. It has been, and still is, a perfect smartphone. I've never bumped up against the limitations of the hardware (gaming on a phone is a bit of a mystery to me), and all of my photos and videos are synced to the cloud, so I've never even run out of the 64gb of storage space.
About a year ago the battery wasn't making it through a full day. So I replaced the battery and breathed new life into my phone. It felt brand new.
But then this year, it started happening. Certain apps become unavailable, requiring iOS 17 or later. The iPhone 8 will never support iOS 17 since Apple only provides software updates for 6 years after the device's release date1. So I'm stuck at 16.7.10 in perpetuity.
And now I feel quite bitter. I have a perfectly functional iPhone that is becoming obsolete, not through any fault of its own or depreciation of the hardware, but due to dwindling support. And the worst part is, I get it! Very few people keep a phone for 7 years. Apple seems to be the best at supporting older devices, and yet I don't actually expect them to support hardware for longer than that.
I just feel like I'm being punished for taking good care of my stuff.
I ended up buying the iPhone 16 in the hopes that it'll last the longest (6 years of software updates starting this year, let's go!). And on setting it up I realise that it does exactly the same stuff that my iPhone 8 does. But the number is doubled from 8 to 16...so why doesn't it feel like it's twice as good?
Now it doesn't fit in my hand properly, all new iPhones are veritable tablets. I also miss TouchID. The new camera is fine.
I'm going nowhere with this post. I'm trying to voice my frustration with something that is entirely reasonable.
I just can't shake this feeling that I've been forced to upgrade to something worse.
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As far as I can tell Apple has the longest support lifetime of 6 years, followed closely by Samsung with 4 years of major Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security updates. edit: It seems that Googles new flagship phones now come with 7 years of updates.↩