24 months is on the low end. But I definitely feel the need to replace every 3-ish years, solely for the camera. I have kids and I want better photos.

The camera iterates significantly every other year. My kid plays baseball, from little league to now high school ball. The pictures I can take on my iPhone are incredible. (I’d do the same thing with a Pixel or Samsung if I was a Android person)

My work phones are typically on a 4-5 year cycle. I’m currently carrying a 12 or 13 pro. I would have upgraded early for USB-C with that phone, but MagSafe is good enough.

>> What do you do with your phones that it doesn't last more than 24 months?

Not an Apple product user, but my wife and kids are, and... install the OS upgrade? That pretty much bricked 2 of our phones and a friend's as well.

Same here. Had a 7 for years. Upgraded to a 13. So far not felt the need to upgrade.

I compare this to when I had an 3G and the 4 came out. The gap between the two was so huge that I upgraded quickly. Reminded me of how quickly PCs evolved in the 90s.

Similar -- I'm currently nursing a 13 mini (the lightning port barely works, so I'm on magsafe). and before that I had an iPhone XS I think -- that one I managed to break the screen (the only time I've ever done that, I dropped it in a metal elevator). I replaced the screen but it was never the same.

So I didn't go 11 years on two models, more like 7 years or so. But I'm definitely not on the two-years-and-upgrade plan.

I’ve had a 6+ and a 12. I guess 18 should be coming along soon, maybe it will be with an upgrade. But the 12 still feels… I dunno, really quite good.

I’ve also had it in a case the whole time, if I opened a box and found this thing I don’t think I’d be unhappy. Other than the inevitable gunk that gets in the speakers and the charging hole, it could be new…

I guess it is a race between battery health (80%) and update incompatibility, to see what will kill the thing.

I was using an iPhone 7 up to this year when I got a new 17. The 7 just kept on trucking for a long time, even if the battery did suffer near the end.

My only two iPhones have been the iPhone SE 2016, and the 13 mini.

I miss the SE but the 13 mini is really nice too. It's a shame because the SE is still perfectly capable of running most software I use on a phone, but that software has just gotten more inefficient over time.

Since 2010: 3GS, 6S and now an SE. All of them were dropped, submerged and generally knocked around. The SE fell off the top of a moving vehicle. I do use an Otter case.

Oh my, I have found my soulmate on hacker news <3

I know some people (me included) who get a new phone frequently, but it usually works by shifting down devices down the family. E.g. our daughter, my parents, and some of my in-laws all have devices shifted down from person to person.

With easier to replace batteries and 3.5mm headphone jacks, I'd wager the secondary market service life would be 2-3 times longer.

Not to mention the e-waste from non-repairable battery-based devices like air-pods.

Corporation make planned obsolescence decisions that happen to benefit themselves, then can dress it up as "water resistance".

Wouldn't be so bad but Apple's anti-consumer decisions are unfortunately imitated.

If the incentive is for consumers to buy more devices the incentive change.

I think it also has to do with the shift in computing population. It was easy to convince tech people to buy a new OS based on a feature list. When computers became more widely used, it became harder and harder. E.g. when OS X still had paid upgrades, it was very hard to convince non-tech family to buy the update. Buying a new device is easier, because the features are immediately visible to people and carrying a newer devices is also a form of social signaling.

At the same time, the internet became far more hostile and running an OS that has all the security updates is important. So, it's easier to get people to update when the updates are free.

So you replaced your perfectly functional phone because they made the battery (a consumable) too expensive to replace?