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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

> It’s no secret that the pace of iPhone upgrades has slowed in recent years.

Gurman lists various reasons, but I feel like the biggest one by far is that the pace of smartphone development was incredibly exciting from 2007 to like 2017 (the iPhone X). Maybe a little later, but at some point you've got a fantastic camera and a very fast device with a great screen, so why would a normal person upgrade?

I think the cheap iPhone is one valid path, but you could also take the completely opposite direction, go all-in with on-device AI, with tons of RAM, a massively upgraded Neural Engine, etc. Find another big leap forward to offer.

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I hope they’re spending significant effort on creating an ai assisted phone. But if they don’t fix speech to text, it’ll be mostly wasted effort

Yeah, I'm still using an 11 Pro. The phone works great, fills all my needs, and I've seen no compelling upgrade reason. $15/mo for service from Mint helps too, I'm no longer seeing a $70/mo bill and thinking that I should be "getting more for my money".

Now that I think about it, it feels exactly like it felt when I paid off my first car. The phone even cost nearly as much as that beater cost me in my youth.

iPhone X for me. Bought in mid-2018, got a new battery in late 2022. I'll probably keep it for another year or two.

The reasons I'll eventually upgrade are:

1. I would like a better camera. iPhone X was before iPhone cameras had good low light performance.

2. The older I get the more I could use a larger screen.

3. It cannot run the latest iOS. There's not much I directly need the latest iOS for. I think there are some passkey things that don't work on mine, but it does have some passkey support, which is mostly good enough currently.

4. I cannot upgrade my Series 4 Apple watch to the latest WatchOS. The latest WatchOS requires iOS 17+. And new watches ship with the latest WatchOS so a phone upgrade will be necessary if I ever want a new watch.

I expect that the next time I get an iPhone its camera will be good enough that "better camera" will never again be a reason for me to update. I think they have reached the point where the cameras are better than any camera I will personally ever need.

I suppose losing iOS updates would compel me to upgrade. If history is a guideline I've got ~2 more years. Not too bad, that brings the daily cost of ownership down to $0.42.

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