> as opposed to having to use whatever hand-me-down device found its way to you
Given that Apple just issued another security update for the decade old iPhone 5s, your ability to hand down an iPhone is greatly extended, especially compared to the support policy you get with a bottom of the barrel Android device.
>Given that Apple just issued another security update for the decade old iPhone 5s, your ability to hand down an iPhone is greatly extended, especially compared to the support policy you get with a bottom of the barrel Android device.
I think this is a fair point in favour of Apple, but I would be surprised if many people who are weighing up hand-me-downs vs cheapest models are concerned with security updates
Build quality, years of OS updates and security patch longevity are absolutely reasons why iPhones hold their value much longer than a bottom of the barrel Android device does.
> based on handsets with an initial buyback price of $700 or higher, Android phones lose value twice as fast as iOS models over the first two years of ownership.
Low trade-in value is a reason a lot of those devices end up as hand-me-downs; there's no liquid market so they're notionally worthless, but they still work so people are likely to pass them on rather than trade them in. (Indeed one could argue that Apple pays inflated trade-in values to get their old models out of circulation and sustain their premium positioning)
One could argue that Android vendors intentionally refuse to support low end Android devices after the sale to force users to buy another device every year.
One could, but the competitiveness of low-end Android makes that pretty implausible; people buying a cheap no-name Android who replace it with another cheap no-name Android are unlikely to get that from the same company.
It's implausible that it would be for market control purposes, because no one player controls that market and competition is intense (unlike Apple's situation). If no-one's offering support in the low end it's because doing so is uneconomic in itself, not to create an effect in another part of the ecosystem.
Given that Apple just issued another security update for the decade old iPhone 5s, your ability to hand down an iPhone is greatly extended, especially compared to the support policy you get with a bottom of the barrel Android device.