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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

I bought iPhone 4S few years ago, and now with new iOS it's very slow, so I'm going to buy new smartphone soon. It has some hardware problems, but new software really killed it. Same story with iPad 3.

I hope that current smartphone generation will be able to sustain longer, I don't like buying new things every 2-3 years.

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Same. The SE is a solid 4S replacement, though; I haven't regretted the change.

(Not a bad idea to put a bumper on it, though, because the aluminum is wimpy as hell compared to the proper steel on the 4S - I've already had to take a file to my SE after a drop from waist height onto bathroom tile. Look out for the screen, too; mine chipped in a few places from a foot or two drop onto asphalt. Better hardware and it can run iOS 10 without flinching, but physically less robust, so don't expect you can get away with slinging it around the way you can with a 4S.)

Every 2-3 years? Your 4s is almost 6 years old.

The 4s will be 6 years old this year, and iOS 10 dropped support for it in 2016. The iPhone 5 will likely not be compatible with iOS 11 when it arrives in September.

I think 5 years is a pretty good run, and it seems like the standard now.

If you bought your 4s 2 years ago, that's on you. If you're buying your phones used, then it's in your best interest to not buy a phone that's already 3 years old.

4S became less usable with iOS 7 and that's 2 years. It started to lag. With iOS 9 it's almost unusable and that's 4 years. I bought my phone new, just after iPhone 5 was released.

That's not unintentional, though. It's just a form of planned obsolescence, which can be avoided by getting an Android phone that can have CyanogenMod installed on it. Alternatively, you can get a Nexus phone, which recieves OS updates directly from Google instead of a third party.

Progress != planned obsolescence. The iPhone 7 has more than an order of magnitude more compute power compared to the 4s, and app developers are targeting that device as it's actually selling today.

That's true, developers can focus on the new platforms, but that doesn't mean new iOS versions should make older phones become much slower.

That alternative effectively means dropping support entirely (or allowing the whole ecosystem to stagnate based upon the lowest common denominator), something most android OEMs do after a year or two. You can't have it both ways. We're lucky that competition in this space means consumers have choice as to which style best suits their needs.

You can have it both ways. They can support the old version by providing security and stability patches without adding the new, computationally expensive features to the old phone.

They can at least allow downgrading to old iOS. I don't really understand their reasoning. I can decline upgrade request for years, but if I hit "OK" once, it's game over. Either upgrade automatically and don't ask me, if you're so security-consicous, or allow downgrading.

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