I had an iPhone 11. It was a good phone. It started giving up in early 2024. I held on with poor battery life until the new iPhones that year and bought the 16 Plus. I'm glad actually because they're discontinued the Plus models, annoyingly.

But I'm glad I don't need to upgrade for the next couple of years. I honestly want to get 4-5 years out of any phone going forward. There's basically no difference between models 12 months apart.

I can see the prices going up this year. IT's already happened to the PS5, which is bascially unheard of.

It really sucks more because the reason for it--AI--is just so godawful and pointless.

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tombert 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I bought my wife an iPhone 11 Pro Max in 2020, and, knock on wood, outside of replacing the battery it has been going on like a champ.

I've offered to buy her a replacement phone but at this point I think she's kind of curious as to how much life she can get out of it.

I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max; I bought it in 2023 but it was a refurb so I don't actually know how old it actually is. Regardless, it's still going strong, and I am hoping it can last through whatever RAM crunch is going on.

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

I had an iPhone 12 and just upgraded to a 17 because I don't see any point waiting - prices will just increase.

> It really sucks more because the reason for it--AI--is just so godawful and pointless.

Strong disagree.

AI is the best thing I've seen in 30 years working in software and expensive RAM for 2 years is a price I think is worth it.

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tombert 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> AI is the best thing I've seen in 30 years working in software and expensive RAM for 2 years is a price I think is worth it.

I think generative AI is pretty neat, but I'm not sure it's worth the RAM increases. I use Claude like everyone else does, and it's cool, but I am a little concerned at how much absolute low-effort crap is being produced with it.

It has made YouTube considerably worse; there was already a lot of low-effort shit flooding it, but now it's almost cartoonish. A lot of the videos that I'm recommended will have thousands of views, and give kind of a facsimile of a video with "effort", only for me to realize about a quarter of the way through a bunch of AI tropes in the writing and/or the visuals. It has made the already-mediocre experience of YouTube actively bad.

I am also not convinced that the prices will go down after two years. We already have big memory vendors completely leaving the consumer market, and we have these AI companies buying literal years worth of entire production lines of RAM chips.

This is something that could be solved by competitors jumping in to fill the niche, but it takes a lot of time to build new factories for this stuff, I think more than two years.

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nl 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Listen to the podcast I linked. 2 years is ramp up time for new memory factories (which are currently being built)

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tombert 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I do not see any linked podcasts.

	▲	motownphilly 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/dylan-patel

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gzread 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

New Chinese vendors are scaling up, seeing the opportunity for large profits. Prediction: in 5 years half the market will be Chinese brands

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h4kunamata 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>But I'm glad I don't need to upgrade for the next couple of years.

Said the user who didn't learn the lesson.

Apple, you do not own anything, if Apple wanna release an update next month that makes your current phone useless, there is nothing you can do to prevent it.

Apple was caught hacking battery level, hacking users GPS signal, etc.

You don't own an Apple device, Apple owns you!!!

	▲	fizwidget 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What? Apple support their phones for a very long time. I got 8 years out of my previous iPhone.