This is still garbage compared to Windows and Linux though. You can take basically any x86 computer from more than a decade ago and install modern Windows or your favourite linux distribution on it and it will work (albeit potentially quite slowly depending on the hardware). Are there any good reasons why Android and iOS are so much worse in this regard?

Tight coupling to binary blobs and proprietary HALs + vendor specific OS changes etc make maintenance a chore - everyone in the chain has to be on board for it to happen.

They are incentized not to, new phones means profit for carriers and new hardware means profit for chip makers.

Maintaining old products costs money, not maintaining products saves money, planned obsolescence prints money

The battery is a big part of that (IMHO). Even laptops, which obviously have batteries, tend to get used on a charger a lot. Mine are almost always on a charger.

Batteries degrade and on a device that is used 95%+ on battery power this is noticeable after 2-3 years such that there's no real point in making the hardware last longer than that.

You can argue the battery should be replaceable but that adds to the size and cost (to have the packaging and interconnects) and who is going to keep making them? I really wish there were standards for lithium batteries like we have for AA and AAA batteries. I'm not sure it's that simple though since there are bunch of parameters like peak power delivery, power storage and so son. But I'm no battery expert.

Anyway, newness of the form factor is also an issue. Back in the 90s, PCs used to be similarly short-lived. Microsoft's whole business model was built around people re-buying Windows licenses even 2-4 years.

I think this will improve as the market matures but we're still in the pioneering days in some ways.

> You can argue the battery should be replaceable but that adds to the size and cost (to have the packaging and interconnects)

This is one of those things which is technically true but practically a red herring. The amount of weight it adds is on the order of grams and the cost is pennies. They stopped making replaceable batteries because they want you to throw away the device and buy a new one.

> and who is going to keep making them?

This is the least of the trouble if the model is at all popular, because the margins on custom batteries can be quite large (e.g. charge $15 for a battery with a $3 manufacturing cost), so as long as the specifications are documented you can expect somebody to be willing to make a buck.

But what would really help is to standardize the batteries. The shape of phones hasn't really changed since the start of the iPhone era and there are only meaningfully a half dozen different sizes.

> as long as the specifications are documented

So this gets tricky and this is another reason why we can't have nice things. People produce things that look like an official thing, behave largely like an official thing but aren't to spec, sometimes with disastrous consequences like the man electrocuted by a shoddy charger [1].

As we've seen from the Samsung Note debacle a bad battery can destroy the device and even cause fires, which could easily result in death.

Imagine buying a phone battery on Amazon for your phone. The listing looks legit. The battery looks legit. Maybe that seller is even legit. But how do you really tell if it's not to spec? Maybe you order something that is to spec and because of inventory comingling you get something that isn't. What then?

You can say that it's not the phone manufacturer's fault and you may be right but it is likely going to result in a lawsuit the manufacturer would have to defend. Was the phone up to spec? Was there a compliance issue? The battery manufacturer and phone manufacturers will each point fingers at the other.

Replaceable parts are huge sources of potential problems so as much as it annoys me (and it does) that I can't upgrade the RAM in may Macbook I sort of get why and how we got here.

[1] https://www.ibtimes.com/man-electrocuted-death-while-using-c...

You can tell if it's the battery manufacturer or the phone manufacturer at fault because if it's the battery manufacturer then the same thing won't happen with the original batteries.

And how to ensure battery quality is a completely independent problem from whether you can buy a battery from someone other than who made your phone. There have been fires with original batteries and there have been third party batteries without any problems.

It's like 1975 AT&T arguing that you should have to buy an AT&T phone because it connects to the phone network. Of course they want you to buy theirs, the issue is that they shouldn't be able to require you to -- or there wouldn't be any iPhones to begin with.

To be fair, the integrated batteries can mostly be replaced. This is even easier than the proprietary casings manufacturers provided before, since you just need to match the correct voltage and a minimum current. You don't need a special casing that holds the battery.

Standardized detachable batteries would have been pretty nice of course.

But even if you buy a new battery from the manufacturer, it may already be 5 years old and degraded as well, since they would only be produced for a limited time frame. Today you just need to find one that is small enough to fit into your device and has the correct specifications.

So there are advantages and disadvantages for integrated batteries.

Except for device-specific fuel gauge / type sense pins. Some devices won't run with arbitrary baterry unless they can successfully communicate with the IC in the battery.

A tablet with a depleted battery and a USB power supply is still a viable computer/display.

One of the devices that started this thread would be a tablet Trello-board/calendar on our refrigerator if not for the fact that the device hasn't had a security update in many years.

The market will bear it. Especially in the age of subsidized phones people didn’t mind the cost as much. This may change with $1000+ flagship phones.

This is the area where Apple now sucks, hard.

Go back 5-10 years ago the the Macbook Air (not the original form ~2008 but the second one from 2010-2011) was an awesome piece of hardware. I mean it still had soldered RAM (I think?) and lacked upgradeability but it was cheap and good.

Apple's current leadership didn't like this so we end up with useless features like the Touch Bar, which exist for one reason and one reason only: to drive up the ASP (average selling price) of Macbooks.

The same thing has happened to iPhones. The last iPhone I bought was the 6S 4 years ago and I think it was $649? Expensive but not ridiculously so. Like paying that every 3 years wasn't terrible.

But now? The 11 Pro is >$1000. WTF?

And these things keep getting worse as they add features no one wants or needs to drive up the ASP (eg Force Touch).

Oh and current iPhones use FaceID which is terrible. The false negative rate is really high and having no home button actually sucks. For example, you used to get to the home screen by pressing it. Now you need to swipe up. But which direction you have to swipe up from depends on the orientation of the app you're using. That may not be obvious. It sucks.

But I don't want to pay $1000+ for a phone with a battery that noticeably degrades in 2-3 years. To hell with that.

I'd be tempted to buy the iPhone 8 (the last one with Touch ID) but for a now 2 year old model the price is unjustifiably high as they want to drive you to buy the 11 or at least the XR.

> The last iPhone I bought was the 6S 4 years ago and I think it was $649 But now? The 11 Pro is $1000. WTF?

Ridiculous argument. Apple still makes a current-generation phone roughly on par with the price that you found acceptable. Just because they also added a more expensive mode does not in any way discount that fact.

I don't think this is true, Apple has definitely been raising prices significantly in the last few years even on the cheapest models. Unless you're counting still being able to buy a generation or two behind for cheaper as "current generation"

Edit: this article has a nice chart https://www.gsmarena.com/price_history_of_apples_iphones-new...

There's a couple of blips with the 5c and the SE but for the most part even the "budget models" are more expensive than the flagships of old, and the flagships are significantly more expensive.

I'm curious how long they can continue this and still sell phones. I wonder if prices being spread out along 24 month contracts with carriers is what's protecting their sales despite the price rises.

I don’t know how you can say “I don’t think this is true”... it’s not an opinion it’s just actual fact. The iPhone 11 is $699 and the person found $650 to be acceptable. That’s roughly comparable prices.

Again, just because Apple added a more expensive model doesn’t mean the iPhone 11 is any worse nor is it “budget” or “a generation or two behind”. It’s actually called iPhone 11 not iPhone 11c or iPhone 11SE or iPhone 11R, the iPhone 11 is the model Apple expects people to buy which is why it’s called iPhone 11 as a follow up to the iPhone XS which was a follow up to the iPhone X.

The iPhone 11 at release was $699, $50 more than the person paid for the 6s 4 years ago. They got the model with 16gb and a 4.7” screen. The 11 starts at 64gb with a 6.1” screen.

Is this raising prices significantly?

Assuming 2% inflation for 4 years, the inflation adjusted price of the 6S is $702. The 11 is actually cheaper.

Coincidentally, I almost broke down and bought my first ever iPhone simply because the 8 is the only phone with a reasonable screen size that can still be bought brand new.

Those are not useful parameters to compare. Even if they were, consider prices of flash memory in the same timeframe, and the answer is yes.

I see the error of my ways now.

The breaking point is already there now that companies like Apple have a leasing plan to obscure the total cost from consumers.

I have to disagree wholeheartedly. The open source android community has kept my android phones going for years after google/the oem stopped supporting them. Meanwhile, everyone knows that if you update your iPhone to the latest version you run the risk of it running dramatically slower or with worse battery life. And there's no such thing as open source iOS. Apple is the king of planned obsolescence. Google isn't any better, but if you know what you're doing you're never locked in.

Community support is not the same as vendor support.

4-5 years doesn't sound significant to me.

I still have an iPhone 6, bought new nearly the day it was released. It plays music, it does podcasts. I can text, answer calls.

It's no longer supported by Apple.

I was planning on upgrading to the iPhone 11 Pro this year, but my current phone still does what it needs to do and does it well enough. It's a little slow though.