What do you do with your phones that it doesn't last more than 24 months? I've had only two iPhones for almost 11 years. An iphone 6s and currently an iPhone 13 mini there entire time. They're solidly reliable

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adastra22 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	wilg 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		“feeling the need to replace it because a better one is available” is not a product reliability or longevity issue!

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Spooky23 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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skeeter2020 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>> 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.

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rogerrogerr 3 hours ago | parent [-]

“Pretty much bricked” sounds a lot like “didn’t brick”

	▲	rurp 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think a more charitable reading is that OS upgrades left their devices barely usable to the point of having to be replaced. I'm not a big Apple person so don't have personal experience but have heard similar stories from multiple other people, that OS upgrades wrecked the old devices they were still using.

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npsomaratna 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

	▲	reactordev 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The difference was “hang on let me pull over” to “just do it live!”. With 4G, you could actually do something quickly.

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gcanyon 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

	▲	wlesieutre 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I had a 12 mini for 5 years, it was a really lucky year to buy one because of MagSafe. The lightning ports just don’t hold up as well as the rest of it.

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bee_rider 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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sothatsit 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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bschwindHN 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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deaux 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Apple says they stopped producing minis because they didn't sell. It seems they sold relatively better than the Air, and pretty much everyone I know who still uses a device of "13" or earlier generation, is on a mini. That's about 5 people just in my social circle still on a 13 Mini, and 0 people on any other non-Mini 13th or older generation. I reckon that's the real reason they stopped making them, people who use them, are willing to stay with their phones for much longer periods. Could also be that they break less due to being smaller.

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SOLAR_FIELDS 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I have the 22 SE and I suspect I’ll get 3 more years out of it before they EOL it. I would have bought the 16e if it wasn’t such a blatant money grab. Touch ID is going to be hard to give up

	▲	microtonal 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Touch ID is going to be hard to give up I'm kind of the opposite, I would never want to go back to Touch ID. It's so nice that you can set your notifications to be private by default, but the contents will be revealed when you glance at the phone.

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cgh 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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whiterock 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

	▲	zippyman55 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Its a threesome! (cringe) Yes, our iPhones really get pounded on and end up with so much street credibility as they look like they were shot with bullets but they keep working.