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Comment by auxym | Hacker News Reader

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 Beside phones that simply become outdated (slow, small storage, RAM fills up) or accidentally damaged, I had a Samsung Galaxy phone which wouldn't read SIM cards anymore, and then a Motorola phone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.

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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!

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.

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.

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.

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