That actually surprises me. Maybe I live in a priviledged part of the world (Canada), but I don't think I see any iPhones that old anymore.
I just think it is a sad world when people feel entitled wnough to actually complain over an issue, that was not an issue when the device was launched over 6 years ago. And if yuo are still using an iPhone 11, perhaps it's time to upgrade...
I live in Canada too and we are fairly well off, but we would still have an XR in use by one of our kids if the XR hadn't died last year. That means it had a life of ~7 years until it died. We replaced it with a 16e. I would have preferred to get a refurbished 15 Pro, but they weren't available from Apple Canada at the time, and I didn't think a new 15 was a great value considering it cost more than the 16e, didn't support AI, and had significantly worse battery life. MagSafe support isn't an issue since we always get MagSafe cases anyway.
BTW, back in the day when the iPhone minis were still around, I noticed that the kids in our local school would shun them despite their lower price and would instead get regular sized iPhones on the used market that were 3-4 years old.
In effect, we are doing the same thing in our family. The parents get new phones and use them for 4-5 years, and then they get passed down to the kids to use for several more years (after a battery replacement).
iPhone 11 is getting iOS 27. Apple wouldn’t upgrade the 11 if no one was using it.
Yep, and my other kid's 12 Pro Max will likely get iOS 28 as well. That means the 12 Pro Max which was released in 2020 will likely get the most current iOS version until 2028, for a total of 8 years of the most up-to-date iOS support. And then it will get another couple of years of security updates too, bringing it to a decade of iOS support. However, in 2027 I will replace my wife's iPhone 14 Pro Max with a 19 Pro Max, and pass down the 14 Pro Max to replace the kid's 12 Pro Max. The 14 Pro Max has a battery health of 82%, so we will replace that battery soon so that it should be good for several more years.
With 6 GB RAM, the 12 Pro Max still has decent overall performance. It does lag a bit here and there, but I could still use it as my main driver if necessary. The main reason I upgraded from it to the 17 Pro last year was not because of the overall performance but because I wanted the new 4/8X telephoto on the 17 Pro.
Given the fact that iOS is kept up-to-date for such a long time and the performance remains very decent on older iPhones these days, having an 8-9 year usage cycle of iPhones is reasonable, even in more wealthy countries like Canada and the US, especially when half of those years of usage is for devices passed down to kids or relatives. And even if they are sold, that means someone else will be using it for a while.
