this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Honestly, modern phones last 4-5+ years. The two-year upgrade cycle made more sense when the technology was rapidly improving and there were significant changes in user experience from year to year.
The only thing is you may have to replace your battery halfway through the life-cycle of your phone, but that's not a big deal.
I genuinely don't get the appeal of the Fairphone. Just keep your normal smartphone (be it Android, iPhone, or whatever) as long as you can then recycle it once you're ready to upgrade.
This is not the phone for phone enthusiasts who wants the best everything. But this is the phone for the average joe who asks the tech enthusiast.
Having a phone that's they won't need to change for >5 years can be a nice thing. My parents refuse to switch from their mi mix 2 because it still runs well (except for the battery) and they dread transferring datas
The average Joe isn't going to upgrade or repair their own phone. So realistically the advantage is what, that it's slightly easier for the professional repair service to fix it if they break the screen or charge port?
also at least in the UK the two year upgrade cycle existed because phones on contract lasted for two years, end of contract? here basically extend it another two years and have a brand new phone
Well, the security updates on Android don't because Qualcomm kill support by not signing updates anymore. Hence why this phone is using an obscure "embedded long life" chip from Qualcomm.
depends on the brand, my samsung will get 3 more android updates (already got one) and 4 more years of security updates
I feel people nowadays upgrade out of battery degradation rather than new features/specs.
phones became so damn frustrating to service that people just swap them when their batteries start to degrade, instead of swapping batteries and continue using it.
I'm still using Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 from 2015. Replaced battery 3 times. Each time for <10$ from aliexpress. The last swap was few months ago and surprisingly this one was the best out of all swapped batteries so far.
I don't plan to replace the phone any time soon. I just wish phones were made more like PCs - you buy a hardware and then you put any software you want on it. Now you buy a hardware and a year of software support then good luck.
Batteries got harder to access, making battery swaps a lot harder and error prone for regular users. The battery used to be easily accessible via the back cover, which was made to be easily removable. Now you have to unglue your screen with a heat gun, get to the battery through the phone guts, remove the original battery which is likely glued in, put the new one, put the phone back together and somehow glue the screen back and hope you didn't damage anything. Also, from my experience, 3rd party replacement batteries typically don't last as long as the original ones do. An original battery lasted me 3 years, after which I had to keep replacing 3rd party batteries every 4 months because they kept dying.