Apple will update iPhones for at least 5 years in rare public commitment
Apple will update iPhones for at least 5 years in rare public commitment
arstechnica.com
Apple will update iPhones for at least 5 years in rare public commitment
71 comments
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From first supply date.
I’d be more impressed if the did it from last supply date.
They still sell the 13, so you’ll only get 3 updates, not 5 with this announcement.
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“At least”. Most iPhones have been updated for 7 years or more
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My last phone lasted me 10 years, and even then I was tempted to just swap out some parts to keep it running.
There's no reason 10+ years couldn't be the norm for a smartphone, at least for people that don't need a portable RTX 4090.
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My Pixel 4a 5G just died. Screen turned off, nothing turns the phone back on. Had it for just over 3 years.
I have a Samsung S8 that I'm using right now, and it accomplishes the vast majority of my day to day needs. I'm only missing a better camera, and Android 9 prevents the use of some apps. This this is from 2017! Glad I kept it in a drawer.
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iPhones routinely last 5-7 years just from security updates. I’ve heard of Genius Bar employees supporting iPhones over ten years old.
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My iPhone 6 was still getting security updates last year. Battery lasted all day (I replaced it myself 2yrs before that). Solid phone. Handed it down to my daughter. Definitely at that point with technology that the requirements for a phone aren’t going up as fast as tech has so there’s less reason to replace things all the time. My last PC was up to 12years before I turned it into a server and built a new one.
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They’ve been doing this for years
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They’ve been doing this, but because others have not been doing this, there is now regulation in this space.
Apple had to disclose this in writing to be fully compliant with PSTI.
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All in all, Apple had to agree to this in writing to be compliant with PSTI. They’ve already been doing this for a long time.
This is kind of like asking the Fast and Furious franchise to agree, in writing, to talk about family.
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First of all, you're implying it runs latest Windows - but Windows 11 shipped a few years ago.
Second - not really a fair comparison. 18 years ago the iPhone didn't even exist. And the oldest model (17 years old) had really weak hardware. 4GB of storage, 128MB of RAM, and the CPU was an order of magnitude slower than current spec CPUs (it was also 32 bit - and 64 bit ARM is a completely new architecture - similar to the failed Itanium).
Even if it was supported, it would be a horrible experience.
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The core 2 duo was released 18 years ago.
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Still low, my lineageos phone is going 8 years and is on latest android (and the device wasn't new when I bought it).
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Big difference: on android you can stay 6 version behind and you probably find any incompatible app during real life use. Browser and framework (google play services) continue to get updates
On iOS once your device stops getting updates it becomes ewaste as almost every app becomes incompatible after 1-2 years . Browser stops getting updates at all so your browsing experience will degrade fast
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Not sure where you got that, my iPhone 6 was still getting OS updates last year (mostly security ones). I didn’t have any issues with the App Store either. Now there were a few apps like Pokémon Go that the phone couldn’t handle, but that’d be true io any old PC. Devs gear their apps to the larger percentage of devices so they can leverage the newer tech. Progress is what it is. Devs aren’t going to code for a 10yo phone if 0.5% of people have it.
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That’s true, but this happens because usually 95% of people are always on the latest version a few months after the new version was released. For developers, it’s really not worth supporting older versions when the overwhelming majority of users already upgraded.
Still, many large companies still support older versions when the user base is very huge. I work for a huge bank and we had to support all the way to iOS 10. Only this year it was recently upped to iOS 14, which now covers probably 99.99% of users.
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Don't forget you can get 10+ years of software support through third party devs
LineageOS comes to mind
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And if you stay that many versions behind, you carry a gold mine of vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Your phone might work, but it’s far from a safe or good idea.
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Android and iOS developer here. Web and app.
I have so many damn phones floating around my damn desk. I have near old iOS devices that are still solid for web browsing.
The bigger problem is that mobile processors saw MASSIVE performance changes over the past decade, and apps that are developed for new silicon run like shit on old ass hardware.
In other words, performance with new apps is the pain I feel first. Browsing the web on an old iPhone 6 is generally fine.
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I'm on Android 9 and the only apps that haven't played nice are a couple banking apps.
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902 security vulnerabilities published for Android 9, 179 of which are “critical” (9+) vulnerability scores.
Including “This could lead to remote escalation of privilege with no additional execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation.”
Yeah, no thanks.
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71 comments
This isn't new at all. Apple has been consistent with long term updates for a while.
iPhones have been getting at least 5 major annual updates sense the iPhone 4. The average is 6 updates.
If anything, it gets to a point where the old hardware can barley handle the newer OS.
This is the equivalent of them promising to be called Apple in 5 years - it changes absolutly nothing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history
Edit: thinking about it, this gives them an excuse to reduce the number of years they support phones. Instead of 6-7, can we now expect that to become only 5 years?
This could be a huge loss disguised as a win
If they wanted to limit support to 5 years, they could've done so already. Apple never guarantees any support length, so they're just committing to the minimum this new UK regulation requires. This is probably nothing more than a formality.
Didn't Apple push updates to older devices that made them slower so that you'd buy their newest?
Depends how cynical you want to be and whether or not you trust Apple.
They claimed to slow things down so the aging batteries could run for close to as long as they could when they were new
This myth keeps propagating online and it seems people never try to even Google what the issue was.
Never forget the iOS 4 update for the iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2G.
Or broke their screens
A battery that lasts 8 hours and is a little slower, or a battery that lasts an hour… huh that’s a pretty easy choice, but yeah it can always be swung to make someone look bad.
Public commitment to what? That's two years less than Google's latest Pixel.
Those updates are easy when you have to release an system update to update the safari browser. Hell, you could call it a major security fix and fix some security issue on an old phone and every fanboy would be like "OMG iPhone 3s got an update.🤤" whereas Google can just ship browser fixes over the app store.
And version history means jack all when you can just name releases as you please. Google has been doing the same thing last 5-10 years. Emoji mixers, magic cleaner, launcher with google search bar at the bottom, turning a toggle into a big button on nav bar, enabling aren't major updates. Sure there are underlying changes, but they're mostly security patches and bugfixes. Android is still a bloated mess that needs ungodly amount of RAM and processing to keep even few apps running reliably in the background.
And guess where did Google learn this deceptive "long term update support" trend from?
The only thing they'll need is to decouple chrome and require a system update, and they could be providing updates for a decade.
Except that’s not what Apple means when they say they’ll update phones for five years. Security fixes aren’t the same as full iOS versions.
iOS 17, which came out September 2023, is available for the iPhone XR and XS, which came out in September of 2018. That’s a full OS update with all the non-hardware-based bells and whistles.
Security patches may very well release for older phones, but not full OS updates. Earlier this year they dropped a security patch for the iPhone 6S, a phone from 2015.