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Comment by sajithdilshan | Hacker News Reader

Smartphone for 10 years seems like a bit of a stretch. The technology is evolving exponentially. iPhone is only 13 years old (the phone which popularised smartphones around the world) and I‘m pretty sure in 10 years we would be using something totally different than a smartphone as its replacement. I really don‘t understand why would want to use the same phone for 10 years.

Further, this would be a nightmare to developers when it comes to supporting the software for the phone. They would definitely reach a point where introducing new features are arduous due to tight requirement of backward compatibility.

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It doesn't really feel to me like smartphone technology is evolving exponentially anymore. The difference between the phone I have now and the phone I had 3 years ago is very, very small compared to the phone I had 3 years ago and the one I had 6 years ago.

That's what it felt like before the iPhone too. Lots of new models every year with mostly aesthetic and minor feature changes.

The iPhone is probably your best bet for a 10 year smartphone. The 6S is 6 years old, runs the newest IOS and is still being updated, Apple will replace the battery for $50 ($70 in the newer iPhones).

Apple's SOC's are years ahead of the competition and they support the devices longer than any other company. And Apple will exist in 10 years when this company likely won't. I say that as an Android user since the HTC Evo.

I bought my previous smartphone 5 years ago. I would still use it, if it wasn't for very serious Android security issues which are not fixed due to support expiry (3 miserly years).

I don't perceive any difference with my new one, which is a newer generation. But maybe it's because I don't spend my life glued to a mobile phone.

I'm pretty sure though, that I would have been very happy to use it for other 5 years. Heck, I'd be happy even to use my very old Galaxy S3 (but not the S2 ;)), which unfortunately broke.

Although a pain requiring backwards compatibility is an incredibly strong force in helping remains competitive in the market that is one of the reasons Windows continues to stick around despite it's many other copious flaws.

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