Updating, and upgrading, the oldest systems we can support

exactly right - very useful insight, thanks @Stephen

5-6 years is a good run for a phone these days, but as innovation slows (who needs as many cameras as the S21 has anyway???) maybe we can learn to hold on for longer.

My previous phone was a mid-range Android bought in 2014, and I lost it (or it was stolen, I don’t know) in 2019. I was still very happy with the phone before I lost it, and if I had not lost it, I’m fairly sure I’ll be using it right now.

To be honest, most of my phones were either lost/stolen, or broken beyond repair (i.e.: very hard or impossible to find replacement parts). I’m one of the early adopters of smartphones technology, and since then I had only replaced two smartphone in reasonably good working condition. The first one is because Nokia abandoned their Symbian S60 system, and many years later (I mean, many… it was Nokia, and the phone was really robust), I just can’t find any app for the phone anymore. The second one was because (I believe) a design issue which had caused the power (turn on screen) button to fail frequently, and unfortunately the button is a part of a circuit board, so I had to replace this whole circuit board many times while the phone was still in service, and the costs were just keep adding up. At some point, I decided to invest in a new phone instead of more of those fast failing silly circuit boards.

For me, a smartphone can easily last 6-8 years. After that many years, the availability and cost of replace parts will become an issue, and as more and more components start to fail, the running cost of repairing it will no longer justify the decision to keep it in service any more.

From my point of view, the most obvious solution for app developers is to provide two versions of the app. One for the most recent (i.e. less than a few years old) phones, with the latest technology and full functionalities. Another lite/LTS version with only core functions, and kept compatible with old (personally, I’d say 8 years) phones. The lite/LTS version doesn’t have to be updated frequently, receiving only security updates, critical bug fixes and occasional (e.g. once a couple of years) core function updates is more than enough. An alternative to the lite/LTS version app is a web version without those fancy new stuff (e.g.: HTML5), so an old phone can still use it in the browser.

Same here, don’t even go into root and other tweaks :rofl:

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