Not surprising. Phone upgrades in the last 5 years have been barely worth it. I'll be to first to criticize and mock The Google, but I've been plenty happy with my refurbished Pixel 5 that I not only plan on running it into the ground but getting another one if it finally croaks or loses too much battery capacity. Yes, I could just get the latest Pixel when that happens, but why switch from a phone that I know intimately that does everything I need?
Perhaps another contributor to the decline may be that the olds who didn't own a smartphone either have one by now or they're dead.
I'm starting to get nostalgic for the early days of smartphones (2008-2014 or so), back then every year the phone you upgraded to was miles ahead of the previous generation device. I remember walking into the Apple store a few weeks after the iPhone 3GS came out and being blown away by the performance compared to my iPhone 3G.
Phones have gotten way better since then but they also became boring and commonplace. Back then all the power users either jailbroke if they were on iOS or installed CyanogenMod if they were on Android. My 3 fondest memories of that time were:
1. Getting BiteSMS on my iPhone 3G: BiteSMS was an alternative SMS app that offered quick replies, something the native messenger didn't offer until a year or so later. I felt so cool at school when my friends saw the pink logo on my dock instead of the green one.
2. Hacking Multitasking on the iPhone 3G: IIRC when iOS 4 came out alongside the 3GS, the 3GS has multitasking but they never backported the feature to the 3G. When I jailbroke iOS 4 on my device it gave me the option of enabling multitasking. Once I enabled it I realized why Apple didn't backport the feature, the 3G was so down on power compared to the 3GS that it completely crawled to a halt if you had more than 2 apps running.
3. Around 2011 I got a Samsung Galaxy S2 and after installing various ROM's and quite a bit of hacking I got Google Wallet to work on the device. I remember the first time I tapped my phone and paid for something it felt like magic. Now we all take it for granted with Apple Pay and Google Pay but back then there were barely any terminals to even tap your phone so getting to do that felt like black magic.
I'm on Apple's yearly upgrade plan and still don't bother. I'm not interested in a device larger than their mini form factor, and they keep a) killing the mini and b) making their devices larger. At the moment the mini I have is better than their SE offering. So why bother updating my phone?
And as you say, everything works fine enough for me, so there's no pressure for me to move off my stance.
I deeply miss the iphone 5 form factor, their current "mini" and SE are noteiceably bigger than that size. I'm guessing smaller phones don't get people lost in content as well as the larger ones, and that's why they're not being made anymore.
A number of years ago an observation I had was that people mostly binned into 2 clusters. One was people who tended to use their phone on the go & thus using it one handed, for instance while walking around. The other was people who tended to use their phone while sitting down and/or handing it off to their kids who were sitting down, so mostly 2 handed use. These two bins also corresponded with preference for smaller vs larger form factors.
At least in the US there are a lot more people in the 2nd category than the first.
I think you're right. Apple's solution to that problem is the Apple Watch. Buy a large phone that you use two-handed while sitting down, use your watch on the go.
I just got an Apple Watch earlier this year. I have a nearly four-year old iPhone SE2 that I love for it's smaller form factor. When I replace my phone I'm definitely going to get a larger phone, because after getting my watch I only use the phone while I'm sitting down and I'd prefer to have a larger screen.
I have an Apple Watch and as someone in the using it on the go category it's not sufficient. It either doesn't serve my purposes and/or is worse for most of what I use my phone for.
I'll catch up on emails, msgs, social media, HN, etc while walking to my next thing. I *could* do *some* of that on my watch but it's objectively worse experience wise.
One issue is that your Pixel 5 won't get any more security updates (past October 2023). My wife's Pixel 4A is in the same boat - perfectly fine except no more security updates. Doesn't matter much right now, but will gradually start to matter over time.
That's true, though I kind of don't care. Many people of course do care. My risk tolerance is higher than most. I suspect companies like The Google hold security over people's heads in order to effectively inject code and encourage buying new phones. If I haven't installed new software in a very long time, and most of what I use is FOSS, and I rarely ever update my apps, and there's no reason to believe there's any vulnerability, then I'm pretty lukewarm on changing anything.
That said, I have been contemplating a migration to LineageOS, which would provide security updates beyond October 2023, and possibly make my Pixel 5 even better than it already is.
> That's true, though I kind of don't care. Many people of course do care. My risk tolerance is higher than most.
It shouldn't be - common smartphone malware attacks now steal banking info, personal info, and even look for sexting pics that are used as blackmail.
> I suspect companies like The Google hold security over people's heads in order to effectively inject code and encourage buying new phones
The former is nonsense but the latter is kinda true. Or rather, manufacturers bake the cost of updates into phones, which are already low margin devices. This encourages shorter lifespans, which is actually a problem for Google.
> there's no reason to believe there's any vulnerability
There's always going to be vulnerabilities. And, they'll likely come via web views, not through attacks directly on the app.
All it takes is a service you use that embeds a webview (tons of them), to get SCA'd or injection attacked, and you've got a huge problem.
They're not so common anymore, largely in part due to focused attention on that attack surface and continual software updates (!) via the playstore - google decoupled the webview rendering libraries from the os. Malware such as SpyNote/CypherRat is commonly a sideload attack, but occasionally webview rces have been used to deliver it and others.
But as mentioned above, webview malware is rare today, largely in part due to fast patching and updates!
And why does that problem roll downhill to me? If Google can't convince me to upgrade they should be supporting devices longer.
Obviously I know they won't, because they want me to stay on the upgrade treadmill to generate profits. And realistically, even if it's only a small chance, any security issues could potentially cause unauthorized access to my banks accounts or whatever, so the short term pain of upgrading is probably worth it.
But on principal, this should not be allowed. We desperately need laws in place that any product that is not perishable needs security support for at least 10 years. We're digging ourselves a hole of e-waste for no reason other than shareholders demand it.
as a Pixel 4a owner myself, I was caught off-guard a bit that updates were EOL this fall "already"—the past three years have really flown by.
While I'd always previously driven either a pre-owned model or a new, on-production mid-grade, the announcement of the Pixel 8 road map with seven years of updates sealed the deal for me. I went the full monty for the Pixel 8 Pro with 1Tb storage.
It is a little big for most of my back pockets when I'm on the go, but since it's very close in dimensions to the Nokia 7.2 that I used prior to the 4a, it's already feeling quite natural in the hand.
And having the flagship optics package is pretty cool; something I'd always given up with the previous scheme.
But if the SLA had just been four or even five years I don't think I would have made the same choice.
(And don't even get me started on how the non-flagships have crap options for storage: 256Gb is not enough for active mobile users, but that's usually the cap unless you pop for the flagship. Grr.
The first Pixel is still getting updates if you install LineageOS https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/sailfish/ and I'd expect the Pixel 5 to similarly live on past Google's official end of life.
Reading this thread reminded me to check my Pixel 5 (primary phone, purchased new just over 3 years ago) for updates. And to my surprise, there was a Android Security Update available which, now that it has been downloaded and installed, is dated Nov 5, 2023! Maybe that'll be the last one this phone gets, but maybe not.
Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with my Pixel 5 (aside from slightly declining battery performance, it's "as good as new"); I even bought a "excellent" refurb'd Pixel 5 9 months ago to use on a second/backup line (I was also thinking to use one or both for anticipated trade-in's on Pixel 8's, but with nominal updates all in the rearview mirror, Google's trade-in value has declined to negligible, so I plan to just keep using the 5's; the cost of the 8 vs it's value add was not compelling). 8GB RAM and 128GB of local storage is plenty for my needs, and I certainly don't want a bigger phone!
As the technology matures, you don't really need to upgrade it every year. You can already see that the updates in phone are incremental. For a person updating their phone every 3 years, it's a big update but that's not the case anymore for a person upgrading their phone every year.
I basically ran my Galaxy S9 into the ground before replacing it last January. I replaced it with a Xperia 1 III because I didn't see the point of paying a extra $500 to get the IV. The new phone runs noticeably smoother than the old phone, but not by a game changing amount, nor by the amount one would have come to expect from about a 5 year leap forward in technology.
The processor is faster when compared to a 2017 phone and the camera is much better when comparing images side by side. I wouldn’t have noticed but I put a Motorola Android 2017 next to a iPhone SE 2020 and it became very noticeable.
Perhaps another contributor to the decline may be that the olds who didn't own a smartphone either have one by now or they're dead.