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Comment by alonzomorning77 | Hacker News Reader

apple upgrade forced obsolescence maybe?

FWIW Apple has had some of the best device support lifetimes of any smartphone. Google started guaranteeing their 7 years of updates sometime around the Pixel 6 or so I want to say.

This is all a relative scale though. But if we're looking at smartphones specifically, I'd argue Apple has been the least force obsolescence of anyone. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some smaller manufacturer niche cases that surpass it.

Apple devices generally have Longevity and resale value in comparison to PCs the only thing of value in a used PC usually is usually just the graphics card although memory may be coming into play these days.

if you are willing to run an old OS (and the OS's are getting worse too) then I think you should be OK

It's not a great option. My "old" phone that I use to install junk apps (e.g. I buy some hardware that requires an app to set up) and which mostly sits in a drawer is a 2nd gen iphone SE, and it's getting to the point where I'm going to be forced to replace it, because the OS hasn't been upgraded in a while (it errors) and some apps won't install on it now.

I am running an iphone 12 mini without problems.

I expect I will eventually run into them but at that point I'll just stop upgrading apps.

12 mini is pretty old. I have considered going to a 13 mini, but I sort of hate the idea of spending money on a phone that is already well on the path to unsupported. Then again, the compact options for grapheneos are limited to old stuff too. Sigh.

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