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It was much easier to upgrade more often back then when you could sell an iPhone for $400 and a new one only cost $200 on contract. Nowadays you have to pay the full price of the phone, or rent it for near the full cost of the phone (broken up into monthly payments of course!), to upgrade more often.
A lot of the carriers hid the remaining cost of the subsidy in the price of your plan. By the time the two years were up you'd paid the rest of the cost of the phone in the price of your plan.

What the carriers did was separate the true cost of the phone from the plan, which is why the price of cellular plans are inexpensive now and the true price of the phone is no longer hidden.

But hey, turns out people liked the smoke and mirrors that give them the illusion of only paying half the cost of a valuable device.

Why, I don't know.
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I still use my iPhone 4s, shame on me.
I have a 4s. ;)

8GB unlocked, iOS 6.1.3. :)
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Nope, it was and is a great phone, loved the external design the best!
Never was a big fan of that stainless steel band. Still not a fan.

The 4s I have is nice, but I prefer my 5 in the aesthetics category.
 
A lot of the carriers hid the remaining cost of the subsidy in the price of your plan. By the time the two years were up you'd paid the rest of the cost of the phone in the price of your plan.

What the carriers did was separate the true cost of the phone from the plan, which is why the price of cellular plans are inexpensive now and the true price of the phone is no longer hidden.

People say that but plan prices have not gone down a bit even without subsidies. In fact after you add in the cost of the monthly phone payment it's more expensive than it was back when the phones were subsidized.

Back in the iPhone 4 days, a normal single line plan was about $80 a month with a subsidized upgrade every two years, give or take. Now a single line plan is the same price but you're paying monthly for your phone on top of the plan cost.

Personally I moved to prepaid when financing/leasing phones became the "new way" and am saving money every month, with no plans to ever finance a smartphone.
 
There's really nothing new technically that they can do with phones nowadays. I was quite impressed with the retractable motorised camera on one model I saw, but that is likely to create new problems such as crumbs getting stuck in it.
 
Should I be concerned that my iPhone 5 running iOS 10.3.3 doesn't have any problems?

Any suggestion on how best to force all this to happen to my phone since it refuses to do anything but just work?
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Oh that's an easy one!!!

Apple wants to prevent you from jailbreaking. Nagging you to update and preventing you from downgrading means you stay on firmware that hasn't been jailbroken yet.

Whether or not you WOULD jailbreak isn't relevant. Apple wants to remove all possibility of it occuring.

So Apple as a company promotes forced obsolescence of their products because of the 5 or 10 people in the world who jailbreak their phones?

The percentage of people who jailbreak is negligible. Besides what negative effect does a jailbroken phone have on the Apple eco system as a whole that they have to prevent it en masse? Makes no sense.
 
Not really understanding the "you really had to have the latest iPhone or at the very least one that was only a generation old" part here.

From 2009 to 2012 I used an HTC Touch Pro. That was Windows Mobile. And I was laughing at my iPhone friends because I had cut and paste and MMS and they didn't.

From 2012 to 2015 I had an iPhone 5.

For nine months in 2015 I had a 6+. I only upgraded because we left our carrier so I took the opportunity to upgrade since I was turning my 6+ in.

From 2015 to now (now being current and ongoing) I have a 6s+.

Nothing I do has changed since 2009. I don't need a bigger camera with more megapixels. I don't need a faster processor. I don't need mega amounts of ram - all the things presumably that are included in that statement of yours about really having to have the latest iPhone.

Hell, I did very well with phone calls, email, SMS and light web browsing on my old Sanyo Katana. And that's what I used my Touch Pro, my 5, my 6+ and my 6s+ for. Calls, email, texts and light web browsing.

So having to have the latest has never been a thing for me.

PS. I've had zero incentive to upgrade beyond my 6+ in 2015 due to that fugly camera bump on every iPhone (except the SE) made since then.
2007 to 2012 on the iOS side, you generally only want to update to one major firmware version (so 2 years usage) as firmware updates slowed down the device too much if you went longer.

It wasn't until iPhone 5 (A6/1GB)/iPhone 5s (A7/1GB) that you could comfortably go longer between upgrades (assuming battery holds).
 
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Iphone 7 is still smooth and fast. It could still compete with 2018's best phones and do well. IOS 12 optimizations is going to make it better. The only downside is that you have to put up with that old design with the thick bezels.
 
My 7 plus I got in spring 2017 is good enough. ;)

When I gave my 7 plus to my wife I did so because she wanted more storage. I had to constantly delete stuff on her 6 plus because it was always full. I gave her mine instead of buying a new one because 128gb was the perfect size. The new phones only offered 64gb or 256gb, nothing in between.

So we switched and I used her 6 plus for a while.

Here is the thing. For me personally, the difference between the 6 and 7 was noticeable. The six was noticeably slower, the camera was not as good, and storage on the base model was pathetic.

So after a few weeks of torturing myself I upgraded to the 8 plus. I found my 7 plus case fit perfectly on the 8 plus. With my 7 plus case on my new 8, the 7 and 8 looked identical. I found right away I liked the wireless charging on the 8. Very convenient. Other than that? Not much really. You can recite better specs in the 8 plus, but as a whole, using my phone day to day, I did not notice much difference between the 7 and 8. Moral of the story, the 7 plus is a fine and still relevant phone.
 
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iPhone; turn them over an they all look the same.
the thrifty iphone owner might plan for the 5g network upgrades in their city.
iPhone7 is just fine. I got mine this spring too.
 
Upgrade cycles are getting longer nowadays, it certainly isn’t what it used to be like back in the 2010-13 period when you really had to have the latest iPhone or at the very least one that was only a generation old.

Now, probably starting with the 6S and especially with the 7, there seems very little incentive to upgrade as these phones are essentially “good enough”, which must be why fewer people are upgrading as often. We are way past the point of an iPhone being a status symbol now

If the upcoming 6.1 inch iPhone turns out to be an updated 5C, then surely that is cool with all the new colours. But apart from that there is ultimately very little reason to upgrade, not to mention the huge elephant in the room that all the new iPhones will be giant, completely impractical phablets and this will surely make people hold onto their 6S or 7 longer
Larger smartphones are impractical for you maybe. But I am very happy with the size of my iPhone 6s Plus, and presumably the future iPhone X Plus.

It's true that upgrade cycles are getting longer as the product becomes more mature, and the hardware is able to further exceed what is required by the software at release time. Even Apple is sensing this, and supporting increasingly older iPhones in the new iOS versions; just wish they would do the same for Macs, where 2010 and 2011 models remain viable in 2018.
 
A lot of the carriers hid the remaining cost of the subsidy in the price of your plan. By the time the two years were up you'd paid the rest of the cost of the phone in the price of your plan.

What the carriers did was separate the true cost of the phone from the plan, which is why the price of cellular plans are inexpensive now and the true price of the phone is no longer hidden.

But hey, turns out people liked the smoke and mirrors that give them the illusion of only paying half the cost of a valuable device.
True for a time when it came to 4+ line family plans. 1-3 lines, the new plans were sometimes more expensive even when you calculate TCO. Alas, carriers have increased the rates again with the recent unlimited plans.

I considered switching to unlimited for video streaming but for 4 lines plus one iPad, the new plans would've cost me $80 more per month (higher rates + loss of corporate discount) or $1920 every 24 months. That's pretty much what carriers used to give in subsidies only this time, you'd still have to pay $$$ on top of plan cost for your phone.
 
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Should I be concerned that my iPhone 5 running iOS 10.3.3 doesn't have any problems?

Any suggestion on how best to force all this to happen to my phone since it refuses to do anything but just work?
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Oh that's an easy one!!!

Apple wants to prevent you from jailbreaking. Nagging you to update and preventing you from downgrading means you stay on firmware that hasn't been jailbroken yet.

Whether or not you WOULD jailbreak isn't relevant. Apple wants to remove all possibility of it occuring.
You obviously didn't hear Apple admitted to slow old iPhones through updates.

Don't worry. There you go.
 
So Apple as a company promotes forced obsolescence of their products because of the 5 or 10 people in the world who jailbreak their phones?

The percentage of people who jailbreak is negligible. Besides what negative effect does a jailbroken phone have on the Apple eco system as a whole that they have to prevent it en masse? Makes no sense.
I never said they promote forced obsolescence. That was someone else.

As to the percentage of jailbreakers to non-jailbreakers I can't argue that; it's a fact that there are less of one than the other. But I doubt the number is 5 or 6.

Apple is all about control and they want total control of the iPhone. That means stopping people from jailbreaking because doing that allows you to control your device and not Apple.
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You obviously didn't hear Apple admitted to slow old iPhones through updates.

Don't worry. There you go.
Maybe I should tell my iPhone 5?

It refuses to slow down. Sorry…
 
The 7 is still very powerful. At this point all phones from 3 years ago are powerful enough.
I had the 7 Plus and got the X. But to be honest I would have been fine with the 7 Plus. Besides the gestures and the OLED screen they do exactly the same things. I still have my iPad Air 2 that works very nice on IOS 12 beta. I have zero incentive to upgrade my iPad Air 2.
 
I never said they promote forced obsolescence. That was someone else.

As to the percentage of jailbreakers to non-jailbreakers I can't argue that; it's a fact that there are less of one than the other. But I doubt the number is 5 or 6.

Apple is all about control and they want total control of the iPhone. That means stopping people from jailbreaking because doing that allows you to control your device and not Apple.
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Maybe I should tell my iPhone 5?

It refuses to slow down. Sorry…

True, but forcing all of us to update the iOS on our phones whether we like it or not, creates issues for people with older phones. They are not as fast, responsive, or usable. To me that's the same as forcing users to upgrade by making their phones almost unusable, using the excuse that security is necessary. Which means we then need to buy a new phone to keep the cycle going.
 
The 7 is still very powerful. At this point all phones from 3 years ago are powerful enough.
I had the 7 Plus and got the X. But to be honest I would have been fine with the 7 Plus. Besides the gestures and the OLED screen they do exactly the same things. I still have my iPad Air 2 that works very nice on IOS 12 beta. I have zero incentive to upgrade my iPad Air 2.

Valid points. Every year the iPhone increasingly becomes more powerful, but does that really change the consumers perspective on iPhone because it slightly faster? Likely not. What they look for is exactly what Apple markets the iPhone for, such as the camera, features like 3D Touch, Live Photos, Portrait mode or Portrait Lighting, , Animoji‘s, etc. Those are the things that they try to persuade the consumer on why they would _want_ the iPhone, not the processor or ram upgrades. (Even those are also good considerations as well.)
 
I feel that with each generation, there are less new “killer features” that makes me want to upgrade.

As a 7+ user, I don’t see much compelling in the 8 to upgrade and I don’t care for FaceID so not interested in the X.

I’ll probably pick up an 8 if it will be the final TouchID iteration and hang onto it as long as I can.
 
Valid points. Every year the iPhone increasingly becomes more powerful, but does that really change the consumers perspective on iPhone because it slightly faster? Likely not. What they look for is exactly what Apple markets the iPhone for, such as the camera, features like 3D Touch, Live Photos, Portrait mode or Portrait Lighting, , Animoji‘s, etc. Those are the things that they try to persuade the consumer on why they would _want_ the iPhone, not the processor or ram upgrades. (Even those are also good considerations as well.)

You could argue that a lot of the software features nowadays (regardless of manufacturer) are not exactly anywhere near as innovative as something like going from a potato quality camera to a really nice one or when retina displays appeared. Phones have become so homogenous that software is the main differentiator.

In the last few years a lot of the new software features have been silly stuff like animojis that will mainly appeal to the younger Snapchat crowd. They don't make the experience of using the phone better. By comparison UI improvements have been a lot less interesting, especially if you don't care for some of the stock apps.
 
You could argue that a lot of the software features nowadays (regardless of manufacturer) are not exactly anywhere near as innovative as something like going from a potato quality camera to a really nice one or when retina displays appeared. Phones have become so homogenous that software is the main differentiator.

In the last few years a lot of the new software features have been silly stuff like animojis that will mainly appeal to the younger Snapchat crowd. They don't make the experience of using the phone better. By comparison UI improvements have been a lot less interesting, especially if you don't care for some of the stock apps.
You could also argue that anomojis are manifestations of advanced software features not possible without a Faceid type of technology.

And these types of features enhance the normally drab opening an app type of existence by providing a playful interaction.
 
I find the battery poor, otherwise I may have been inclined to keep it until next year.

And before someone says get your battery replaced, I had the whole unit replaced 2 weeks back so my battery is 100%. And its better than my previous unit which was at 80% but still doesn't impress.

Other than that yes the phones generally okay for another year.
 
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