Okay but I’d rather hear this from someone who is actually using a 5+ year old phone, not a guy who has a 1 year old work phone that he “plans” to keep for an undefined amount of time. Everyone says this and then they break it and decide the cost of a repair isn’t worth it, or just cave to the first trade in deal they receive in their inbox. There is a lot of virtue signalling about e-waste and the environment from these tech reviewers and influencers on YouTube but very few of them actually follow their own guidelines.
My anecdote…I used my last phone until it died. It was around 4 years old and the eMMC storage failed from age, making the device a suddenly totally unusable brick. Before then, it had gotten very slow and laggy over time and the battery life degraded to be pretty sucky…barely surviving the workday on standby in my pocket.
From my experience, I don’t know that I would necessarily advise using a device for that long. The battery just gets too shitty and its sudden death made it a bit of a scramble to buy a new phone. Granted, my previous phone was fairly low end, but even with a high end device, batteries degrade to almost unusable levels after a few years. I know it sucks for the environment, but it seems like less of a headache to keep a phone for only like 2-3ish years and then upgrade it while it’s still working as opposed to waiting for it to irreparably bork itself.
Edit: If you’re able to do a battery replacement, I will say that it does change the conversation somewhat. But long gone are the days of easily user serviceable battery replacements for most phones. Yes, there are obscure phones out there that make it easier to swap out the battery, but these phones aren’t exactly prominent.
I have a Galaxy S10e, purchased the day it launched, 6 March 2019. Today, March 25 2024, it is 5 years old.
My phone is in good physical shape and running fine. The battery isn’t quite what it used to be, but it loads web pages and apps well, the UI is responsive, I look at new phones and there’s not a single thing there I want. When my previous phone, an S4 Mini, was this old (yes I had an S4 Mini in service for 5 years) it was getting kind of slow, there were apps in the app store that wouldn’t run, I had replaced the battery…I still wasn’t really looking forward to upgrading. My S10e is…fine. If it kept getting updates, I’d gladly keep it in service.
What’s more, I look out at what they’re advertising on phones now and I’m like “don’t need that. Actively don’t want that. Want to not have that. Okay the anti-glare coating would be nice. Don’t need AI. Don’t need titanium. I don’t game on my phone…”
Are you really getting updates though? Samsung latest phones are expected to be getting updates for 7 years but as far as I know the s10 range isn’t officially supported anymore. Samsung don’t need to provide security updates to your phone anymore. I think the last one was Q4 of 2023 and it made the news because it was unexpected.
and then they break it and decide the cost of a repair isn’t worth it
Yep, that was me with my previous phone, which I did indeed have for over 5 years.
But there’s another major factor to it.
I use Android phones, which get official software updates for only a couple years (3 years for the most part). This includes security updates.
So when I got my current one it was one of only two I even considered, because only those two manufacturers promised 5 years of (security) updates at the time.
It has gotten better though, but except for Fairphone they’re still all very hard or impossible to repair.
Okay but I’d rather hear this from someone who is actually using a 5+ year old phone, not a guy who has a 1 year old work phone that he “plans” to keep for an undefined amount of time. Everyone says this and then they break it and decide the cost of a repair isn’t worth it, or just cave to the first trade in deal they receive in their inbox. There is a lot of virtue signalling about e-waste and the environment from these tech reviewers and influencers on YouTube but very few of them actually follow their own guidelines.
My anecdote…I used my last phone until it died. It was around 4 years old and the eMMC storage failed from age, making the device a suddenly totally unusable brick. Before then, it had gotten very slow and laggy over time and the battery life degraded to be pretty sucky…barely surviving the workday on standby in my pocket.
From my experience, I don’t know that I would necessarily advise using a device for that long. The battery just gets too shitty and its sudden death made it a bit of a scramble to buy a new phone. Granted, my previous phone was fairly low end, but even with a high end device, batteries degrade to almost unusable levels after a few years. I know it sucks for the environment, but it seems like less of a headache to keep a phone for only like 2-3ish years and then upgrade it while it’s still working as opposed to waiting for it to irreparably bork itself.
Edit: If you’re able to do a battery replacement, I will say that it does change the conversation somewhat. But long gone are the days of easily user serviceable battery replacements for most phones. Yes, there are obscure phones out there that make it easier to swap out the battery, but these phones aren’t exactly prominent.
I’m still rocking a Galaxy S9+ with no intent of upgrading. I don’t even know what phone I would go with if I did need another.
I have a Galaxy S10e, purchased the day it launched, 6 March 2019. Today, March 25 2024, it is 5 years old.
My phone is in good physical shape and running fine. The battery isn’t quite what it used to be, but it loads web pages and apps well, the UI is responsive, I look at new phones and there’s not a single thing there I want. When my previous phone, an S4 Mini, was this old (yes I had an S4 Mini in service for 5 years) it was getting kind of slow, there were apps in the app store that wouldn’t run, I had replaced the battery…I still wasn’t really looking forward to upgrading. My S10e is…fine. If it kept getting updates, I’d gladly keep it in service.
What’s more, I look out at what they’re advertising on phones now and I’m like “don’t need that. Actively don’t want that. Want to not have that. Okay the anti-glare coating would be nice. Don’t need AI. Don’t need titanium. I don’t game on my phone…”
Are you really getting updates though? Samsung latest phones are expected to be getting updates for 7 years but as far as I know the s10 range isn’t officially supported anymore. Samsung don’t need to provide security updates to your phone anymore. I think the last one was Q4 of 2023 and it made the news because it was unexpected.
The S10e does have good custom ROM support so perhaps that’s how they’re getting Android updates.
Yep, that was me with my previous phone, which I did indeed have for over 5 years.
But there’s another major factor to it.
I use Android phones, which get official software updates for only a couple years (3 years for the most part). This includes security updates.
So when I got my current one it was one of only two I even considered, because only those two manufacturers promised 5 years of (security) updates at the time.
It has gotten better though, but except for Fairphone they’re still all very hard or impossible to repair.