I feel like the elephant in the room is that there's no phone battery that's going to stay useful in anywhere close to that time frame, and replacing phone batteries is usually a losing proposition. I've tried, several times. Fake, low-quality batteries are rampant (usually degrading within weeks), and genuine ones are prohibitively expensive -- usually a significant fraction of the cost of a new phone.
The other elephant in the room is that the EU is going to start mandating user-replaceable batteries in consumer electronics, and hopefully the US follows suit or big tech just decides to do it worldwide.
I absolutely despise that Apple made non-replaceable batteries the norm, and most of us have begun to accept this as "the way things have always been". Every cell phone I had before the iPhone came out had an easily replaceable battery before we all became a slave to Ives' "Preciousssss" demands for minimalism.
Edit: Folks seem to be misunderstanding why I brought up Apple. I in no way think they are now worse than any other phone manufacturer when it comes to irreplaceable batteries. But AFAIK the iPhone was the first phone to have a glued-in battery, and that has since become the norm. They have essentially helped lead the way in convincing consumers that replacing the battery shouldn't be an easy, user-accessible operation.
I mean it isn't just minimalism. It makes waterproofing way easier and allows for sturdier construction in a smaller device when getting said device apart again isn't really a priority.
Also who in the world needs all this replacement batteries anyway? I'm still rocking a 13 Pro purchased when new, I have no plans to upgrade and my battery is bloody fine. I still end every day with a good 40% charge at minimum and I'm an app developer, so I'm on my phone for a good solid portion of every day. And prior to this one I had an X which not only didn't have any major battery issues but my wife still used it for another year after I bought my 13, and then, near the tail end of her ownership, STARTED having some battery problems. At the end of year 4 of service as a daily driver.
See, you made a good point at first and then ruined it. You are absolutely right about the benefits, but:
>who in the world needs all this replacement batteries anyway
>I'm still rocking a 13 Pro purchased when new
Congratulations, your phone with a whopping 2-years of age still has a good battery. (Though I'm not sure losing 60% a day is really great imo...)
Try living in a world where a $300 phone is a big expense, and now it barely lasts a day when it used to last a week.
1: Some people have phones that are just fine, but have a dying battery. Replacing an otherwise perfectly functional phone just because the battery is going is massive e-waste.
2: Not everyone can afford constantly replacing their ever-more-expensive phones just because the battery died. Even if they can, it's a really wasteful use of money.
Consumers should have the choice. They can get a product with some compromises, but a replaceable battery - or a potentially more durable, more waterproof phone without one.
Of course they don't bother because the demand is a vocal minority. Most people don't care. But the e-waste effects everyone so something does need to be done.
> Congratulations, your phone with a whopping 2-years of age still has a good battery. (Though I'm not sure losing 60% a day is really great imo...)
Well again, I spend a lot of my day with my phone on and being used to do my job. And I also use it plenty for bathroom breaks, screwing around between tasks, the usual stuff. In my mind, running like that for 16 hours per day and still having 2/5th's in the tank is pretty good.
> Try living in a world where a $300 phone is a big expense, and now it barely lasts a day when it used to last a week.
I have never owned any smartphone that lasted even close to a week. When I was younger, my droid would occasionally go a couple of days between charges, if I was particularly busy and therefore not using it. I don't think I've owned a phone I haven't charged overnight since... gotta be like 2011?
> 1: Some people have phones that are just fine, but have a dying battery. Replacing an otherwise perfectly functional phone just because the battery is going is massive e-waste.
But again that's what my question is getting at and what I'm trying to understand: how are people frying out their batteries like they are?
We're not frying batteries quicker, we're using our phones longer. The only reason I'd have to replace my 3.5 year old phone is that the battery is dying, but it probably doesn't make sense to spend half the price of my phone (phone was only $200-ish) on a replacement. I just don't have any qualms with my phone or have any particular reason to need a new one. I resent having to replace my phone because a part that could be easily user swapable at a reasonable price point isn't.
Your assumption that phones would only be used for 2 years is pretty weird on an article about using phones for 8 years.
Or you could just pay $70 for Apple or an authorized dealer to replace the battery after three years.
Those same users don’t have to buy a $300 phone - which by the way is more than the average selling price of an Android phone - there are plenty of unsubsidized Android phones for less than $100.
> Also who in the world needs all this replacement batteries anyway?
Really?? I get that you personally may not see a need for this, but it takes special kind of blinders to pretend that your experience is universal. Tons of people want replaceable batteries. You're welcome to talk to the iFixit folks if you need more evidence.
My question wasn't do people want replacement batteries, they clearly do. My question is why they need them? I don't understand how one person's experience with a battery can be so much different than anothers. I would think, if anything, my usage of my phones in my day to day work would mean I'd be harder on phones than most people, not apparently easier.
What I really want is to be able to replace my battery when it's worn after after years of usage by undoing some screws and fiddling with a gasket. Trying to melt a ton of glue and pull out a glued-in battery without starting a fire is incredibly difficult and unnecessary.
Is it? Do you know that for a fact? Because while admittedly I've not designed a phone, I've owned and used many things that used screws and gaskets to provide protection from water ingress, and those things rarely survived full submersion which is what is offered currently on the iPhone (and has been for some time.) The other day I got in my hot tub after a stressful day of work only to realize my phone was still in my damn pocket, and while I had to take the case off for a bit and let everything air dry, apart from that I walked away from that totally consequence free.
I'm not opposed on principle to people having the option of repairability vs the sleek lines and watertightedness glue assemblies offer, that's completely fine. I just feel the need to push back on this narrative that's gotten so much traction here. There are a LOT of advantages to how newer phones are built that have nothing to do with forcing you over a barrel for maintenance costs, though I'm sure the suits are just fine with it if they do.
Can't comment on the details of your experience, but both my Pixel phones and iPhones (albeit earlier gen iPhones) all had significant, noticeable battery degradation between years 2 and 3.
If the EU does mandate it, like USB-C we will see the corresponding iPhone release tout how they have the greenest batteries and an amazing (same number) X hours of batterylife, but only the greenest battery life.
Snark aside and how most phones/etc are put together these days, I see issues in the general population of replacing the battery if it requires opening the case.
> Snark aside and how most phones/etc are put together these days, I see issues in the general population of replacing the battery if it requires opening the case.
Every phone (before the advent of eSims) used to come with a simple sim-opening tool that made it trivial to open the sim tray. I find it baffling to think that phone manufacturers would find it so difficult to add some teeny screws or other fasteners that could be easily opened with a 2 cent tool that would come with the phone.
It adds to the cost of goods and probably the manufacturing process. Yes, you used to be able to replace batteries easily. Most are long, thin & flat to go with slimmer phones. Possible, for sure, but we will see.
Apple is one of the most advanced consumer electronics companies on the planet. I may question its utility, but their VR headset is one of the most amazing feats of consumer product engineering I've ever seen. So excuse my scepticism if "replaceable battery" is somehow beyond their engineering and product design prowess.
I don't doubt they would be able to do so. I think the choice of doing so, maintaining esthetics, and making it such that a layman can do it while not making tradeoffs they don't want to probably play into it.
Yes, it's difficult to maintain the 'giant pile of scrooge mcduck gold' aesthetic in the apple corporate vaults if users aren't railroaded into buying a new phone every few years.
> Every cell phone I had before the iPhone came out had an easily replaceable battery
I’m not sure how important it is. My first phones with replaceable batteries sucked, the plastic cover would always pop out and was generally a point of failure. And it never did me any good, as most phones died before the battery became an issue.
Today I’ve had an iPhone for 3 years and the battery is still going strong. If I need to replace it… I’ll just find someone who can replace it, easy enough. Sure it would be more convenient to be able to do it myself, but if it happens once every 4-5 years I honestly don’t care, and will take the daily convenience of no plastic cover instead.
Honestly, at least with Apple, you can go to them and get a battery replacement for $99 (or less), even for pretty ancient iPhone models. I have no idea if other manufacturer with sealed phones have as straightforward a battery replacement experience.
So you’re blaming Apple - with 13% market share worldwide?
And I kind of care about waterproof phones. Before you bring up the old Samsungs, if you didn’t put the battery on just right (and Samsung warned you about it), you would lose water resistance.
They have a small marketshare but an oversized amount of trend setting power.
I would imagine nonreplacable batteries would happen without them, but it does seem like every other brand copies whatever crap Apple decides to put out, especially the aesthetics. There are so many very obvious apple clone products.
And you blame Apple instead of the 87% of the market that can’t come up with better ideas and set “trends”? Including little companies like Google and Samsung?
It really seems to infuriate geeks that normal people don’t have their same priorities.
Out of the literally dozens of Android manufacturers, if that was something people wanted, wouldn’t someone make it?
How is Apple to blame for non-replaceable batteries?
It's just the easiest way to construct a "modern" phone. Stick the battery in with a 3M Command Strip style sticker and it won't move, construct phone around it.
Having to add toolless latches while keeping some kind of IP rating AND not looking like a rugged phone is a whole different thing.
> How is Apple to blame for non-replaceable batteries?
How quickly we forget history. I'm not going to say they were the absolute first to do this as I'm not doing a full survey of 2007 phones, but before that (a) there was not a single phone I or my friends had that didn't have a simply replaceable battery and (b) there was a ton of conversation and press when the iPhone was first released about how unique the decision was to have a glued-in battery here.
Let's be real here: if having difficult-to-replace batteries was a money loser for Apple and other manufacturers, they would fix the situation in a heartbeat - it's not like this is a hard problem. The only reason they do this is because of desired planned obsolescence - tons of people will think "Oh, getting the battery changed is such a hassle, might as well get a new phone."
Again, essentially every consumer electronic device pre-2007 (except maybe some Mac laptops?) had easily-replaceable batteries. Convincing people that using glued-in batteries was a necessary design change, instead of a corporate decision to make more money, was a real coup for corporate marketing.
Compared to a modern iPhone you can throw in a pool and dig out safely a few minutes later.
Batteries post 2007 have gotten REALLY good, the capacity/weight ratio has gone up so much that swapping batteries mid-day isn't a thing people do. Drones weren't a big thing in those times because you couldn't get enough power to lift one up. Now a 249 gram DJI drone can fly ~45 minutes on a single battery that's about the size of 2-3 matchboxes.
I still remember the laptop I had around that time that had two batteries so that I could swap one and still keep it running with the other.
On the other hand my current M2 MacBook lasts for two full workdays without charging easily, even more if I just sit in meetings and don't do anything CPU/GPU intensive.
My Samsung XCover6 pro has a replaceable battery and an IP68 rating. It doesn't seem to be that hard to make the battery replaceable, you just keep it in a separate area from the rest of the water-tight electronics.
"Back away from the tribalism." This is not an Apple v Google v Samsung issue.
I'm in no way saying Google or Samsung is better in any way here, and in many ways Apple has improved their repairability scores over the past few years. The reason I highlighted Apple was because they really led the way in gluing down batteries everywhere, but the problem is definitely industry-wide now.
I replaced the batteries in my mom's iPhone and dad's Motorola at about the same time last year. I agree it should be easier to do, but it's definitely not a losing proposition. They both turned out very well and cost < $20 each.
I'd love a return to the old snap-fit plastic cases. Besides the ease of battery replacement, those phones seemed much more durable. Maybe because there was something that gave way on impact? I remember watching in horror as the plastic cover of an old LG shot under the display shelving at Home Depot at approximately the same speed the phone hit the concrete floor. I never used a case with one of those phones, nor did I ever crack a screen. It was tricky digging that cover out from under the shelving, however.
> Besides the ease of battery replacement, those phones seemed much more durable. Maybe because there was something that gave way on impact?
Metal cases give way, too— permanently. When they give way, they dent, shrinking the space available for the glass screen and, inevitably, cracking it.
Making phone housings out of something other than plastic is an obviously stupid kind of fetishism for certain materials as hallmarks of a vague 'quality' regardless of context.
Idk about the screens. Do we need glass for touchscreens as we know them to work really well? Can they be brighter or something? Or are they largely unnecessary, too?
The big points of using a glass screen are durability from scratches and better surface feel over time. A large plastic screen is going to get all kinds of scratched up.
I still remember the age of snap-fit phones with replaceable color covers.
When you dropped one, you had to dig at least 4 parts from around the room. Front & back covers, the battery and the rest of the phone all flew in different directions =)
The ideal design is to have a "dry" and "wet" side where you put the parts that need servicing on the wet side and the parts that don't on the dry side (to the extent possible). Specifically, you want the battery and the charging port on the wet side since those the two most likely to break. Those can then connect via metal pins/pads to the dry side which has the soc and all the expensive stuff that actually needs to stay dry.
What is the point of that? You drop phone in toilet and it stops working because the battery circuits are damaged, or the charging port is damaged. It might be cheaper to fix that way.
Phones currently can be dropped in the toilet with zero damage. It is a real benefit to have waterproofing. I would prefer waterproofing over easily replacing battery that happens rarely.
So far, I've only ever replaced smartphones because they stopped getting software support or had a battery failure. Never dropped lost one to water damage. Never cracked a screen or otherwise broke one physically.
Unless I forgot one, I think I'm on my 10th mobile phone in total since the late 1990s, so averaging just under 3 years per phone. And I think the interval was shorter in the feature phone days and longer in the last 12 years or so where I'm now on my 4th smartphone.
Maybe it's because I learned to be careful with my phones before smartphones existed, back when dropping it might mean the back cover, battery, and main body flying in different directions. As a result, I'm also the kind of person who might drop his phone/wallet/passport into ziplock bags if I was heading outside with a chance of significant rain...
> Never dropped lost one to water damage. Never cracked a screen or otherwise broke one physically.
Same here, but I don't pretend that my experience is typical.
Even if it is, and, say, only 20% of people end up dropping a phone in a toilet or cracking the screen, it seems worth it to build in water and crack resistance.
I spent a significant chunk of my teenage income on phones because of water damage. Getting caught in a rainstorm, having the canoe tip over, have people be too rowdy with splashing around a pool, forgetting it in a pocket when going swimming, it falling off a dock were all times Ive personally lost a device. Every one of those would have been fine with my current phones and they've survived all that and more without issue. Sometimes I'll even just rinse my phone under running water when the kids make it super nasty, it's no problem.
Similar thing with dust. Even though a lot of my phones in my teenage years lasted under a year, they always died with dust in their screens. Camping and riding bikes around dirt trails and what not can push a lot of gunk in those things.
I'm happy phones are a lot better sealed. It's a bit of a pain making it harder to swap the battery, but paying a shop $50 parts included to swap it and keep it sealed well is worth it to me. A replacement battery back then would have been like >$30 anyways, going by inflation that's not too much increase in cost.
Maybe you never had an issue, but today's phones are quite a bit more water resistant than the removable battery phones of yore. You can dunk them in water and you're usually fine! iPhones, at least.
I'm not sure dust was ever really a problem for most people. Although, for those in sandy/dusty environments (deserts, some industrial situations, etc) I bet it was a problem.
More to the point, though: I don't think it has to be an either/or choice. Casio makes a crapload of 200M water-resistant watches that sell for $50 or less. This includes both plastic (G-Shock, mostly) and full-metal models (MDV-106/107). The secret is (gasp)... a frigging thin rubber gasket. I frankly don't see any reason why we can't have this level of water resistance in a phone.
We would have to sacrifice thinness and lightness, but not by much. I think a lot of people would happily make that trade.
Well, the second secret is having a very rigid and precise interface between the watch case and back cover so that the thin gasket remains under the correct amount of pressure everywhere around the joint. This has been optimized at the small size of a watch.
On a larger object, this level of precision is harder to maintain. Due to spacing between fasteners or other flexing/distortion of the body, the gasket could be overly compressed in some places and loose in others...
No, but I never had a problem with that, either. I kept my first phone (not the one I dropped at HD) for seven years and only retired it because my girlfriend gifted me hers.
Well, first of all, phones are most certainly not waterproof.
Second, it's possible to make the battery connections water resistant, so yes, you can have a water resistant phone AND have a replaceable battery in it's own compartment.
You can't have the thinnest/sleekest possible phone and an easily removable battery. Have to choose.
Frustrating thing is, mainstream phone manufacturers don't give you a choice. There's no option to buy e.g. an a slightly more ruggedized iPhone that is 15% bulkier but gives you easy battery access. That's a thing I'd buy, even if it cost a bit more.
The quest for "sleekness at all costs" made more sense 15-20 years ago, when full-spec smartphones and laptops were clunkier.
Hopefully the tide is turning. Apple is offering beefier and thicker laptops (M1/M2 Macbook Pros) and likewise now gives buyers an option for a beefier "Explorer Edition" watch. No battery access sadly. But hopefully the pendulum might swing the other way a little now.
Edit: This is getting downvoted, but it's a regularly-updated phone line from a mainstream manufacturer with decent specs. You can absolutely vote with your wallet here as OP laid out.
> You can't have the thinnest/sleekest possible phone and an easily removable battery.
Is this true? Plastic covers seemed thinner than the glass/metal shells that have replaced them. Also, from my limited experience, the batteries in the glued-together phones have adhesive strips that secure them inside the case, which again add a little extra thickness.
I could be wrong about those things, but I stand by my assertion that the plastic snap-fit phones were more durable. Durable enough that they didn't need cases for protection, which above all else rob a phone of its thinness/sleekness.
The first time I dropped a glued-together phone, I cracked the screen. I thought it must have been a fluke, since I'd dropped plastic phones tons and they'd always been fine. I was so sure it was a weird one-off I refused to get a case after having the screen replaced. My girlfriend called me an idiot. Two months later, I dropped the phone again. Now I have a case.
> There's no option to buy e.g. an a slightly more ruggedized iPhone that is 15% bulkier but gives you easy battery access. That's a thing I'd buy, even if it cost a bit more.
Why not buy a $100 rugged waterproof case and an external battery?
Surely you understand why a person might want to carry and charge one thing instead of two?
A 25% bulkier "rugged" iPhone 15 Pro would still fit nicely in most people's pockets. Unlike an encased iPhone plus external battery pack.
Like a lot of men, I carry a phone and wallet in one pocket and my keys in another. I don't typically carry a bag. Not gonna carry a battery pack too.
Also, an external battery pack achieves one thing (extended battery life) but not the other -- still wouldn't be able to easily replace the internal battery once it has aged out.
Motorola Defy did the same 13 years ago. Loved the size and the white frame design, would buy a remake with modern chips and camera without hesitation.
I don't know what Pixel replacement batteries cost, but Apple typically charges a flat $89 to replace an out of warranty battery, less than 10% of the cost of a new phone, which is a totally reasonable proposition if you think you can get at least another year out of your phone. Unless Pixels are dramatically more expensive, then this doesn't check out at all.
I think the point of the OP is that after ~5 years (when you have to change your battery), your iPhone is not worth $890 dollars anymore, but more like $200-$300, out of which $89 is a significant portion.
Not sure why you would consider the suspected re-sale value of the phone here?
From a users perspective the question would seem to be whether they want to spend $89 for a battery or $890 (maybe minus that re-sale value of 200-300, so still around $600) on a new phone.
> whether they want to spend $89 for a battery or $890
No, they can pay less than $120 on a new phone in the budget tier which will be at least comparable in capabilities to a 5 year old phone in any tier and also have about 2 years of life.
I don’t know how happy many people would be going from a $900 flagship to a base-tier budget phone.
Granted it might be faster (though looking at Geekbench scores between budget Android phones [0] and the 5-year-old iPhone XS [1] I’m not overly convinced of that either), but the price of manufacturing “nice” doesn’t drop nearly as fast as silicon.
Budget phones often compromise on build and camera and screen quality (even though the latter two often look great on spec sheets) and I think the average person would notice that far more than raw performance.
Aside from all the other problems a genuine pixel 3 (or iPhone XS) battery is bellow 3000 mah, so like replacing your redmi battery with a defective one.
If they are price sensitive, they would have gone for something like the $399 2016 iPhone SE, which is currently in it's seventh year of support, having gotten another security update last month.
That works out to around fifty bucks per supported year, and you aren't creating a mountain of e-waste by throwing away a perfectly good phone every other year.
Buying something like the Samsung A14 every 4 years would cost about the same and seems a lot more realistic than aspirational.
I think its great that phones are being supported for 7 years but in a way it is a marketing chip based on consumer's using unrealistic linear depreciation.
Some consumers can pass down, repurpose, or only need very basic things, but most consumers need much of the relative performance they first bought, break screens, can't handle embedded battery replacement logistics, etc, so most probably have replaced something like the iPhone SE before 4 years is up and are paying more than they would have expected.
To me that's just a marketing induced cognitive blind spot. You don't have to know what $200 phone you buy in 4 years, but you want to harp on one 90% imaginary one you will hate when there's almost no chance a choice made 4 years in advance is better than all possible choices with actual information. If for example, mediatek continues to widen their gap then Samsung will choose another one that can match the last generation in Moore's law.
A refurbished iPhone SE 2023 that has a new battery and working screen is probabilistically worth more than the iPhone 2023 you buy today, and will be less than $200 unless there's a serious shortage because they have a high failure rate?
In my thinking the cost of similar products in an industry like tech is the best available estimate of how much environmental damage is involved (I.e. upgrading tooling is itself likely to produce waste) so planning to buy a $400 phone once every 7 years and actually buying one every 2 is much worse than trying to get 3-4 years out of what people have tried to make with popular runs of somewhat outdated commodity parts.
Swapping the battery means you save the carbon footprint of manufacturing the non-battery parts, which have a pretty high cost to all of us in aggregate that should somehow factor into the "is it worth to keep it going" equation. I wonder how we can make that happen.
My current phone is an S21 that's facing a plethora of failures (screen damage, flaky USB-C connector, weak battery, back cover delaminating) that are all individually fixable, but altogether I also find it hard to resist the pull of getting a new phone at that stage when I add up the numbers.
But I feel increasingly really bad about not trying harder to go repair-first. Also because there's otherwise virtually no tech/feature reason to "upgrade" from something as recent as an S21 these days.
So? They're not investments. They're simply devices.
But, let's go with this. After ~5 years, phones will sell for $990 (up from 5 years ago @ $890). 990 - 250 (splitting the difference) is what ... 740? That's a LOT more than $89 (or even 99 in 5 years).
If my phone is still up to date and performant enough for my tasks, I would be stupid not to pay 99 vs 740.
if by "equivalent" you mean a new modern flagship phone, then no, you won't find one. but a $200 new phone this year is at least the equivalent of a pixel phone from five years ago.
And the (Android) phone from five years ago won't be getting OS or security updates. Granted, your current phone that needs the new battery probably isn't getting them either. In which case, why not just pay $80 to get the battery replaced in your current phone?
If so, that's a pretty disingenuous way to look at it. If I'm going to be comparing the cost of a battery replacement with an alternative, that alternative is going to be "buying a new phone". The depreciated value of my current phone is irrelevant.
Would love to see what others have to say on this but I suspect Apple replacement batteries are inferior compared to the one that comes with the new phone.
4 years of usage and battery max capacity was around 76%. I replaced my iPhone X battery last year.
The new one I got is at 86% already and it is not even 12 months. (No usage pattern change. I replaced it from an Apple Store.)
I wonder if that can be accounted for by the fact that the software of today is more taxing than it was four years ago. You're probably using more battery charge every day today than you were four years ago to do the same things. That increases wear on the battery and will reduce its lifetime.
We're specifically talking about the kinds of people who will spend $700+ on a new phone. Those people can surely afford $89 to replace the battery a couple years down the line.
But for how long will good batteries be stocked for older phones?
My frustrating experience with lots of older tech like cameras and laptops is that the battery formats are constantly changing, and none are being manufactured in the required format 5+ years later, when I'd really want a fresh battery.
So even though it is designed for easy field replacement, it is effectively obsolete because the only product available is some dodgy counterfeit part. You never know if it even meets the specs, avoids being a fire hazard, and isn't an outright fraud like relabeled old batteries...
The fact that it took a 3rd party tool, which cost $50, and 3 hours to change an f'in phone battery is so beyond bonkers nuts. To emphasize, just commenting on the grossly insane state of non-replaceable/difficult-to-replace batteries in phones and laptops and the guaranteed planned obsolescence it entails.
For contrast, it took me 10 minutes to change the battery in my car.
You're right that it should be easier to replace a phone's battery than your car's, but it's not $50 for the tool, it's $50 for the factory battery from Google. The kits basically get tossed in more-or-less for free.
Also, it really doesn't take three hours to swap a phone battery, even in our sad state of planned-obsolescence affairs. That's pretty extreme. As I wrote elsewhere in the thread, I did an iPhone and an Android last year and each took less than a half hour. The iPhone was fiddlier, but it was also the first I'd done. The Motorola was surprisingly forgiving. But I agree, gluing mass-market devices together is bonkers and only benefits the manufacturers.
For contrast, some people need YouTube videos with step-by-step instructions to even open the hood of their car. They will take far longer to replace a car battery than it took you. Likely they'll also need to purchase a screwdriver.
This hasn't been my experience. Chinese battery tech become much better in the recent years. I've replaced battery in my Pixel 3 with an 8$ knock-off from AliExpress with good reviews and it's performing just as original, both subjectively and by AccuBattery metrics.
Same for me, I paid someone to replace my Pixel 3 battery for $40 and have had nothing but a positive experience. It saved me ~$400 on a new phone, I'd gladly do it again.
> A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.[0]
So, for example, Apple's chunky multi step DIY battery swap kit is perfectly allowable if it's provided for free.
"Commercially available tools" also includes stuff like Torx screws. So, again, the current system by most manufacturers is doable with very minor modifications. Open a few Torx screws, slowly pull off the command strip sticker under the battery, replace new battery, done.
The HN/Reddit crowd's minds went right back to the 90s and 00s where you could (and had to) carry 3 separate batteries and could swap them on the go, which isn't the goal of this regulation at all.
"A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it. Commercially available tools are considered to be tools available on the market to all end-users without the need for them to provide evidence of any proprietary rights and that can be used with no restriction, except health and safety-related restrictions."
I think a deposit for specialised tools is fair to ensure a return of the tools, other than that, there is nothing controversial here.
I think that's still too restrictive. I would imagine the intent of "Provided free of charge" is more like "Tiny stamped metal key thingy included with the device" not "Request it, then they send it, then you lose your deposit when you try to send it back and the package is lost".
> usually a significant fraction of the cost of a new phone
For my phone a battery replacement from the manufacturer is right at 10% the price of what's probably the equivalent new phone. (Not that I'm having battery issues yet for my ~2yr old phone.)
To me that's well within the range of being worth it vs. a new phone.
I don't have a Pixel, though, so maybe it's different.
Apple will replace batteries for iPhone 5s and up, for $69-89 in the US. No issues with fakes or low quality.
People who want to do some work themselves can buy replacement kits from reputable part suppliers for $29-59.
Your problem only occurs if somebody wants to do the work themselves _and_ they think they can source the parts without assistance from a reputable part supplier.
This was one of the reasons I selected the Samsung XCover6 pro.
It still has a replaceable battery. It is also remarkably sturdy, which has paid off since mine has been dropped on concrete from hip height twice now with no additional phone protector and with no visible damage (apart from nicks in the plastic edge).
It might be that the fact that the back explodes off on impact helps dissipate some of the energy? It is a relatively rugged phone for the slim profile though.
Another nice thing about the replaceable battery is being able to keep a spare around for quick recharge.
I have a nexus 6p with a battery charging to 60% and the battery is on year 4 right now, runs android 11, and seems to have no end in sight for the battery. The phone itself is 2015 I got from a relative who bought a Pixel 3.
So battery if handled properly will last a very long time. So while battery issues can't be dismissed, at least it often can be replaced or otherwise worked around. The bigger issue is storage errors and being permanently locked out.
The Google Pixel 3 phone he bought died after 2 years due to the operating system not properly handling errors in the non-volatile storage, which is a very common error in Pixel 3/3XL/4 and maybe future ones as well. Google doesn't offer the firehose so owners are out of luck not able to reformat or recover the phones at all and completely locked out by the qualcomm bootloader with phones stuck in EDL mode.
Google Pixel 3 EDL to see how prevalent the problem is, and google just doesn't care to help people fix the issue.
I woke up one day thinking I had that problem with my Pixel 3. Literally all the things described were going on and I was about to throw in the towel and rage post to reddit, but then I had a brief showerthought that maybe the battery was bad and the charging firmware was being retarded. Pixel 3 had this habit of autobooting when charging from dead when it thinks the battery has made it far enough to survive boot... it boots into this "battery charging" mode and then it will boot up when that's gotten far enough. But when its wrong (because the battery is dying) it never has enough power to make it past some initialization stage. Ultimately I "fixed" it by draining the battery completely (until the phone would not respond to anything) and then plugging it in to charge and watching it like a hawk to jump in and long-press power to force shutdown immediately when it tried to boot to keep it in powered-off charging (not the mini-boot it does where it shows you battery charge). It happened a second time and after rescuing it again, I replaced the battery and all was good.
Apple charges, what, $90 for a battery replacement? I don't consider that a significant fraction of the cost of a new phone. Admittedly, once you're in year six of phone ownership it's going to look pretty bad compared to newer devices but I'm not sure what can really be done about that.
What's annoying if that Apple will only replace a battery if they deem your battery bad enough for replacement. I had an iPad that only last 90 minutes on battery power and I couldn't pay them to replace it because the battery passed their diagnostic tests.
Go to an Apple authorized repair shop. They will replace it if you simply pay them to, and they are cheaper than Apple while using the same authorized parts.
Not true. There are plenty of people, like my mother, who are perfectly happy using a 5 or 6 year old phone. Does it still make calls, send texts and allow them to access some assortment of apps? Good enough. Is the battery shot? Totally, she's got it plugged into the wall, a battery or the car at least 50% of the day now. Doesn't care, it's good enough.
My mother has zero desire to upgrade. I told her in another year her phone may no longer be supported by the latest iOS, in which case she was getting a forced upgrade (by me). Because everyone's phone has becomes the center of their lives and security of that device is of the utmost importance.
Is that really the case? Maybe if you DIY the replacement? When my Pixel 4 battery started expanding (and popped the back off the phone) 2 years ago, I contacted a local repair guy who came to my house and replaced the battery for me for $80. That was 2 years ago and the battery has been fine since. It's certainly degraded a bit over those 2 years, but no more than I'd expect. I still get a full day of charge out of it, and then some.
Yes, we absolutely need to be in a place where DIY battery replacements are reliable and cheap. But using a local repair shop seems to be a perfectly fine alternative for now.
I have a Samsung J3 Prime from 2017. That's 6 years or so. Still entirely usable, with one or two small caveats. I got new batteries for the phone in 2018, and have not had to do so again.
i charge my phone to only 70% and my previous phone (pixel 2xl) after about 5 years of usage had still about 95% of capacity
I'm using Accu battery app for alerting when my battery is charged and chargie dongle to cut power when I want to just plug phone for night
At least on my Pixel 7, it doesn't actually charge it all the way if I plug it in at night. It will charge until 80%, then very slowly over the course of the night until my first alarm (of many, I'm a heavy sleeper lol) it'll get itself to 100%.
Phones these days take good care of their own batteries, 100% doesn't actually mean 100%, same with 0% since both are extremely bad for Li-ion batteries.
My Pixel 7 doesn't. It'll slowly charge to 100% if you plugin overnight and have an alarm set, but most of the time I don't need more than 80% as I'm usually at home.
Not everywhere you have first party service to swap battery and usually after 3rd party swap you cannot trust water resistance anymore, therefore this tactic might not be for everyone
Also by looking at metrics of my wife phone you are basically even after about 1.5y - 2y (gets to 80%), so you loose battery life first but after that time you are net positive.
If you plan sticking to your phone for longer time, then it's good investment.
Huh, I had a pixel 4 that I just loved, but the battery got so so so bad I would need to charge it after about half of a day, so I just had to give up on it.
I'm using a phone right now that I bought in 2016. The battery lasts me the day more or less.
I bought a pixel just recently because Slack told me my phone is too old for them to support, and I need it for work. The camera is messed up on this phone, but otherwise, I would happily keep it another few years.
The EU is mandating 80% capacity after 1000 cycles or a user-replaceable battery. Assuming you drain half the battery on an average day, that'd be over 5 years, and 80% is still more than I'd need. Assuming they actually enforce the law, of course.
I've replaced batteries very successfully on Nexus and Pixel phones. They're usually $30-$40 or so... I have gotten crappy batteries from Amazon but I've never had a problem with ifixit supplies. And if you're not into doing it yourself, you can just take them to Asurion or whatever. I'd be totally shocked if battery replacement costs more than $100... so nowhere near the $400-$700 original price of the phone. If you're comparing the battery to the resale value of the phone, maybe you have a point. But you're not buying a used phone with a fresh battery, either. Batteries generally cause enough issues that I plan on replacing them every three years.
I got my iPhone 6s life extended 2 more years with a non official battery. It degraded faster than the original one but also the OS updates probably caused more consumption after using the same model for 6 years
Exactly what glitch is fixed here? Is there a problem with highlighting to a customer that the battery may not be authentic? They aren't preventing you from installing aftermarket batteries at all... This works just as well on a 6s as it does on the brand new ones.
Shareware-style nagging? You get the pop-up when you boot the phone... then you can just dismiss it. What are you talking about? The notification in the Settings forever seems fully appropriate, since that is something I would want to know if I was buying a phone from someone.
I suppose it depends on how long they sell this model. If they continue to offer it for three years, you may be getting a new battery, but the support clock has been ticking the entire time.
Disagree that battery replacement is prohibitive. Current cost to replace battery on my iPhone 12 Pro Max is $90 ($100 for a newer one, $70 for older ones).
I definitely replaced batteries on my family's iPhones when they ran the discounted battery replacement special. My phone is at 85% health and still manages to get through the day but paying $90 instead of buying another phone is a good deal for me for say, 2-3 years of additional use.
Even if properly replacing the battery costs 2/3rds of a new phone, I'd be happy to pay that a couple times over its lifetime to squeeze extra years out of it and reduce how often I have to go through the gruelling process of successfully migrating everything over to a new phone (it's a real pain for those who prefer to avoid forking your data over to Google, which I gather is required by the built-in options like cloud backups and D2D transfer).
I hate this. Why do I have to relogin to every app on a new phone? Why are some apps missing after every migration? Why do some apps just randomly lose all config and settings and force you to set them up again?
I want Google/Apple to force app devs to make backup and restore seamless. Like, if I am halfway through typing this comment on HN and then lightning fries my phone, when I restore to a new phone I want the exact same chrome tabs open with the same half-written comment. I don't want to have to battle to re-pair my printer or watch. I don't want stupid cookie warnings on every website again. I don't want to have to retrain every single fingerprint. I don't want to yet again opt out of data collection. I don't want to re-accept the same T&C's for photo backup I already agreed to last year, and the year before, and 10 years before that.
Please... just make migration work the way it should have always worked.
Google/Apple management could make this happen. All they have to do is have a big bin of phones outside the weekly team all-hands meeting. Everyone must throw their phone in before the meeting. At the end, everyone takes a random phone, resets it, and logs in.
While engineers refuse to do that, the process is still too cumbersome.
Best suggestion I've heard all week. Maybe it would finally realize my desire to cleanly keep a constantly-synced "hot standby" phone ready for deployment in case my primary one is lost. (Even better both would "just work" so I could grab either one on any day).
Root your phone and use Neo Backup to do backups instead of Google's offering. This helps because Neo Backup backs up data from all apps, whereas Google's offering refuses to back up data from apps that say <application android:allowBackup="false">.
On the other hand, I'd preferentially have the cloud backend have exactly zero of that information. I'd be worried about privacy getting deprioritized in favor of the above.
Why do I have to relogin to every app on a new phone? Why are some apps missing after every migration? Why do some apps just randomly lose all config and settings and force you to set them up again?
Why indeed.
A major part of the problem is instead of charting a coherent strategy for backups from the beginning, Google constantly changes their minds as to how it should work and what behavior is expected from users and app developers.
Once upon a time a simple pair of adb backup and restore commands did the trick.
Then they introduced the android:allowBackup="false" app manifest flag[1], which silently breaks adb backup. (Yes, this got me once, resulting in lost data). That effectively wrenched sovereignty over your data out of your hands and shifted its control into the hands of app publishers, many of whom couldn't be bothered to change defaults. There are also limits (e.g. even when enabled, I gather Google's cloud only allows 25MB of data per app). I think more recently it's been enhanced with a flag that allows backups only if encrypted.
All this degraded the user experience upgrading phones, so they carved out a Google-only exception in the form of a Device-to-Device (D2D) transfer process which has the privilege of totally ignoring the flag (so it can capture apps that advertise themselves as do-not-backup). But I've never seen a means of triggering that process without first being forced to turn on backups to Google servers[2], and allowing Google Play services to collect data like your email address.
It's a horrible state of affairs that makes it impossible for third-party solutions like SeedVault to work reliably (to the point where users have suggested bastardizing/impersonating D2D to bypass the restrictions[3][4]).
I don't understand why anti-trust efforts aren't examining lock-in like this, which forces you to use Google's cloud instead of your own, and intentionally creates an unequal playing field for competitors whose clouds you might trust more. It causes real harm to users like me.
The only reliable method is rooting your phone, which recovers your sovereignty and allows apps like Titanium to bypass all this nonsense. I suspect that's a major reason some people still choose to root, despite all the security warnings against it. Of course depending on what exactly you're backing up you can still run into issues if restoring to a different model phone or version of the OS (although in the past I've had some success surgically extracting the desired records via a sqlite explorer).
I wish someone would compile a flavour of Android with a Developer Option that undoes or ignores the effects of android:allowBackup. Depending on your viewpoint that would "break the Android security model", or fix it.
Some users have even resorted to decompiling their app's stock APK, patching android:allowBackup to true, self-signing and recompiling [5], which I presume would have to be done after every app update (maybe there's a niche market opportunity for a service that automates this).
If I created a mobile device platform I'd make darn sure critical functions like backup, restore, migration, maintaining "hot standby" devices, etc. just work(tm), seamlessly and reliably, out of the box. The architecture would make it easy and simple (instead of difficult and convoluted) for developers to ensure user data is captured (incidentally the normalized Palm pdb system didn't do a bad job of that), provide tools and examples of how to maintain forward compatibility, and generally funnel developers into good habits. It's not an easy problem to solve but I'm convinced it can be done with 100X more elegance. And users would have the power to backup to wherever they choose, with an easy way to custody their own encryption keys (with peer-to-peer recovery models e.g. X of Y friends or commercial-designates).
The real elephant in the room is that Google has claimed a commitment to this or that for X number of years so many times and changed their minds it isn't even funny. They just killed a Pixel support program last month before ever fulfilling the commitment they made for it...
Nobody should buy this marketing line unless they have a contract guaranteeing some penalty for Google for failing to uphold this.
A friend still uses their iPhone 6 as their daily driver, with its original battery. The battery has lost some capacity, but not so much that they are constantly worried about recharging it.
And yes, I've told them they need to replace it -- for security, if no other reason. But, they are a teacher (a very good and dedicated one, I'll add), and money's tight.
> there's no phone battery that's going to stay useful in anywhere close to that time frame
I am writing this on a six-year-old Android phone. Still same battery. It lasts me through the day of light usage, including about three hours of podcasts/youtube playback during commute.
i don't think this needs to be the elephant in the room. batteries have a lifespan, and that's unavoidable, so it makes sense that battery degredation might be the thing that causes the end of your phone's life.
software doesn't necessarily have a finite lifespan, so it shouldn't be the thing that causes the end of your hardware. providing seven years of updates is long enough that it probably means the software EOL won't have to be the reason to stop using your phone. that's how it should be.
My OnePlus6T just hit 5 years old and the battery is plenty usable. I just slow charge it at night every night. Is it as good as it was when new? No. Is it still perfectly usable? Absolutely.
The value judgment of "not worth it" is relative to perceived improvement in getting a new phone, but for many people the judgment is "can I get a new phone for $69?" Outside of carrier subsidies in the US, that's still not possible.
But you can get a better phone with great battery life for 250$. Motorola and many other manufacturers sell perfectly usable devices with 5000 mAh batteries for that price.
Smartphones started hitting the same plateau of "good enough" performance that PCs hit years ago, where today's phone hardware is more than adequate for years to come. Going forward it would become more and more advantageous to keep old phones going by replacing the one consumable component. The biggest difference from PCs is that you're still locked into whatever OS the phone came with so when the OS gets artificially bloated there's little recourse, no lightweight OS that just works and can keep the phone going.
So 7 years of updates would be fine, maybe with one battery swap in the middle, as long as Google starts paying a bit of attention to their phones' quality assurance and control.
Not just one component, the flash memory doesn't last forever, and it's so unnecessarily small these days that it's almost more of a limiting factor than CPU and RAM.
I'd personally like to see swappable storage and mandatory external SD card support.
We could probably get to 15 years with current phone tech, unless they invent something really revolutionary that makes everyone want to upgrade.
15 years is a really, really long time even with Moore's law being dead. The ios AppStore launched pretty much exactly 15 years ago and everything has changed since then.
Quick reminder what we had 15 years ago: a single camera on the back, 128 MB ram and samsung processors in the iphone.
What we had 15 years ago vs. today is not a good predictor of the level of change we're going to have over the next 15 years. Especially when we're talking about something that was a brand new product category and brand new technology 15 years ago.
I know people who are still perfectly happy with 7+-year-old iPhones. The limiting factor for many people is not processor speed or RAM or storage space, but the lack of OS updates (especially security updates).
(Certainly those other things are limiting factors for some people, but I don't think it's anywhere near as common as it is for the HN crowd. And the storage space issue can be solved with a microSD card slot, which, sadly, few phones include these days.)
I suspect that given all the partners involved in these projects, it's likely infeasible to go back to those partners and ask for retroactive extended support from all of them. If any of them (or transitively any of your partners' partners) say no, you are likely screwed.
It's no coincidence that companies that make their own chips have longer support cycles.
When a chip is supplied by a vendor and needs to be supported in the kernel, the whole thing can be EoLed by one stubborn vendor. That's one of the promises of Fuchsia - decoupling hardware support from the rest of the system, so you can keep everything else up-to-date even if Qualcomm tells you to kick rocks.
>Do people have any faith in the these sorts of notices, when nothing ever produced by the company has yet been supported that long?
Absolutely. If they decided to make this announcement, I have faith that they'll stick with it. Whether Pixel 9, 10, 11 etc. will have similar pledges, we'll have to wait and see.
> Just a month ago there was news of Google scrapping and not honoring Pixel Pass.
They're still honoring it - they're just not continuing the program after all current subscriptions expire. People who paid for it are still getting what they paid for through the end of their subscription, although because the program is not continuing, your subscription will end at the end of two years. In other words, the Pixel Pass was more or less equivalent to Google's existing 0% APR financing (which is still offered, including on the Pixel 8!). The only difference is that the Pixel Pass autorenewed at the end of 24 months, whereas otherwise you have to manually reorder the next phone with the financing offer[0].
That's different from not delivering the product/service that customers have paid for.
The promise of 7 years of updates is legally binding. If Google promises 7 years of updates, and then doesn't deliver those, that will be a violation of both state and federal law (California is now requiring 7 years of updates, and it is additionally a violation of federal law to advertise a product with a service, sell that product, and then fail to deliver that service).
[0] The 0% APR financing offer is actually now slightly better than the Pixel Pass, because on the Pixel 8 it's now amortized over 3 years instead of two (which is new - previously it was amortized over 2 years).
In general, yes, but google specifically, no. When a company has a decent track record I'm willing to accept on faith that they will do what they say, or at least try to get close to it. Yes, business reality may change in that time.
However, Google has repeatedly demonstrated that they'll sell you something only to kill it off very quickly. They're great at innovating cool new ideas and absolutely terrible at getting anyone to maintain those ideas. And you can see that based on their hiring. They want the best of the best, people who want to do nothing but blaze new trails. Maintenance? Techdebt? No... not for these esteemed engineers. Which leaves... basically no one at Google to mop up after.
it's not a fair point, it's factually incorrect. Google has supported plenty of products for longer than seven years. those things just haven't been consumer hardware.
It would be nice if they did that, but if you pay for 3 years of support, then you should only expect 3 years of support. Google is clear about this and haven't failed so far:
"Clear" is pretty generous, I only discovered that support page one month ago when I saw someone mention that the Pixel 5 will end support this month. It is obviously not ever mentioned during the purchase process, and it's not proactively communicated to customers.
I bought a Pixel 5 less than 2.5 years ago, I didn't even consider the possibility that it could be EOL so early so I never sought out that page. I've never had another phone or laptop last such a short time.
It's usually on the specs page, but I'm not going to defend the 3 years of support older Pixels had because it's bad. It was a problem on all Android brands (some haven't improved yet).
With this said, updates on Android are different from iOS updates. Things like the browser, camera, gallery, etc, are updated via the app store, so your Pixel 5 still runs the latest Chrome and will continue to do so for years. They can also update system components (media engine, bluetooth, etc) via Play Store updates. Many new features (covid app support, earthquake alerts, etc) are backported via the Play services. On iOS all this requires a system update, on Android it doesn't.
This new Pixel 8 has 7 years of support, which is in line with the 6 or 7 years iPhones get. At least from now on Pixels should be as good as iPhones.
Although I do think google will probably follow through with their support claim, at least in some technical way. I also believe you're completely correct about this point. It's a small sample, but I've told around 8 people over the years about the support life of various nexus and pixel phones specifically (in casual conversations with job interviewers, coworkers, and strangers about our phones). Zero people have already known about it. The most common reaction is that I am just mistaken, they would never do that.
It's very frustrating. The phone works perfectly well and probably will for years, and it would be incredibly wasteful to buy a new one now, but at some point it will be irresponsible to keep using a phone that hasn't gotten security updates in years. I would never have bought it if they advertised a 2.5 year lifetime (and obviously they knew that).
Android took longer to catch iOS on full system updates, probably because it was hard to keep it up-to-date.
Google itself used to offer 3 years of support. The last 2 generations of Pixels have 5 years. This new phone is 7 years, which is in line with Apple's 6-7 years.
Parts of the system are also kept up-to-date via the app store. Apple released a system update not long ago for older iPhones just to fix a WebKit exploit... Google would release that as an app update, you wouldn't even have to restart the phone. Any Android running a 7 year old OS (Android 7) is still running the latest version of Chrome. On newer Android versions, parts of the system - from the media engine to the bluetooth stack - can also be updated via the store.
Are Android updates messier than iOS? Yes they are. But a lot of what's considered to be "system updates" on iOS are just app/module updates on Android. They happen in the background are keep on going for years after you get a full system update. They don't get any headlines though.
This is a really great step in the right direction, especially with the updates and repairability offered by iFixit with Google partnership. The only fear I have is what if Google shuts down the Pixel line or whatever because they are not doing well a couple of years down the line? Traditionally, they have not been great at keeping their promises. Hopefully Samsung follows the lead set by Google.
They're on year 8 of Pixel (and 13 years of selling phones directly) and year 15 of Android. These aren't exactly likely candidates for killedbygoogle.com anymore
I guess only time will tell. Google also had Nexus from 2010 to 2016. Who’s to say the Pixel line won’t see a similar demise (and as a tangential point, probably an abandonment of support) in the next few years?
With the Chromebook obsolescence fallout and the decision to extend software and security support for those recently, one would assume that the Pixel may be subject to similar thinking within Google. But the sales volumes of Pixel phones are a lot lower than Chromebooks. Google doesn’t seem to generally handle hardware quite well.
I think it was more of a rebranding, at least from Pixel 2 and onward. Nexus devices were often primarily designed by another manufacturer with Google oversight.
That was definitely the idea behind the rebranding, and we're seeing that with increasingly more Google-controlled stuff like the SoC. But at first it wasn't that different from Nexus practically speaking.
I've heard that once a phone no longer gets security updates, the best thing to do is to install a third party rom. Is this still the case in 2023? Is using a 3rd party rom like lineageOS a comparible experience to stock when it comes to running apps and such?
Committing to 7 years is a big step! Apple does't commit to its support timeline at all and seems to average around 6 years, so this is more firm and also longer.
I would like to see Apple respond by committing to their timeframe but they won't.
Apple provides only certain highly critical security updates to older devices. There was an Ars Technica article a year ago on Apple’s support policy for security updates. [1] Officially, Apple guarantees security updates for all known security issues only for the latest version of the OS. [2]
Quoting from Apple’s page [2]
> “Note: Because of dependency on architecture and system changes to any current version of Apple operating systems (for example, macOS 13, iOS 16 and so on), not all known security issues are addressed in previous versions (for example, macOS 12, iOS 15 and so on).”
They certainly have a few outliers. They released 12.5.7 in January 2023, which supports the iPhone 5s and 6 - 10 years after the 5s was initially released! However, that was an outlier; they haven't backported most security patches to older devices.
They only do it when there's clear evidence of in-the-wild exploitation or it's a big compatibility bug that would prevent you from migrating to a newer device.
Google's announcement was for full OS support for 7 years, not just security fixes. Comparing it to Apple's ~6 years of OS support is fair.
Hasn't Apple been doing this for years? The difference between 6 and 7 years is hardly a line in the sand, especially considering the quality issues the Pixel has had.
You’re right. We only have 15 years of data showing Apple tends to provide excellent support. Without a published commitment they could move to a one year model any day.
On the other hand Google put out a press release!
Come on, this seems unnecessarily harsh given Apple has been the industry leader in how long they provide software and security updates for their phones.
According the Wikipedia, the iPhone 4 got only 4 years of updates (released in 2010, last update with iOS 7.1.2 in 2014). And Apple was still selling it in 2015.
That's maybe the worst example but it illustrates the difference between "typical" and a guarantee.
To me what's interesting is that Google feel the need to make a commitment, and Apple don't.
Apple isn't perfect, but they have a good track record of providing updates/security patches and in general supporting the hardware they put into the world. On the other hand Android updates have been a mess forever, and Google have a reputation of pulling the rug from under customers that adopt their products.
I have more faith in Apple delivering six years of updates for my iPhone without a formal commitment, than I do in Google delivering seven years even with this statement. I wonder how many other people feel the same.
Any way you look at it, this is great news, and it sets a wonderful precedent for other manufacturers of all sorts of electronic devices.
Lots of people are happy to be able to keep using a phone even if the battery is a bit degraded, and the fact that Google plastered this all over their marketing material means they have some legal obligation to follow through on this promise (or compensate their customers if they don't).
I am in awe at all the "I gave to my 8 years old daughter my original iPhone 1 and she's still delighted by it every day, it's stille great" folks.
You could put out a free device with a battery that lasts forever, fast and it fits in every pocket and some crowd woud still make comparisons and have some brand win them.
I am still using my Pixel 3 (now without upgrades) without major issues. So, happy to see the new phones have longer promised update cycles. Hopefully Google doesn't clawback this promise in the future.
I've owned a few Pixels over the years, but after my Pixel 3 bricked itself (and my kid's did the same a few months later), Google did zilch to remedy it, and I have stuck with Samsung Galaxy phones since
Same here (well, a 3a)! This phone does everything I need, and then some. Granted, I'm relatively light user who mainly uses the browser, a chat app, and not much else aside from snapping a pic here or there.
I'm honestly confused about the lack of updates (I really only care about security updates). I run Xubuntu on a 13 year old computer, and I get updates. Is this just a cash grab from Google, or is there more to it?
Until recently, Qualcomm provided BSPs (binary support packages) including the kernel for Google phones. For whatever reason -- possibly that their one and only corporate purpose is to sell as many chips as possible -- Qualcomm only briefly updated their packages for chips they no longer sold.
Google updates as much of the Android ecosystem as it can. First-party Play Store apps, system webview... if you look at the normally hidden system apps on your phone you'll see that the Android team has "unbundled" many parts of the formerly monolithic system to allow updates to as much of it as possible even if the kernel is marooned at an older version.
Unfortunately, some bugs are in the kernel or drivers, so there's nothing any Android OEM (including Google) can do if their chipset vendor won't do the (admittedly non-revenue-generating) engineering to update that firmware. And eventually the system itself requires newer kernel features, so there's a limit to how far back Google or other OEMs can reasonably backport a newer version of Android.
This is part of why Google's recent phones are based on Google-designed, non-Qualcomm chipsets. It was a truly Herculean effort to scrub the Pixel line of Qualcomm, and especially of Qualcomm's incentives to abandon still-good phone hardware in order to sell more chipsets.
Your PC's OS distribution is nearly totally open-source, and the economic incentives for the Linux ecosystem are completely different from Qualcomm's. That contributes to any given general-purpose computer's longevity if it runs Linux.
Yeah I use this for very limited functionality like maps, whatsapp, uber eats. I am also mostly interacting with Google playstore for apps/apks etc. This does still leave the phone open for any day0s etc. but we will cross the bridge when we get there. I am not important enough for anyone to target me specifically and I also keep a low profile.
I was thinking about upgrading this year but I am now thinking of waiting another year since there are no immediate problems.
Which applications you use is almost irrelevant -- over the past several years, there has been a steady stream of "zero-click" exploits that allow an attacker to compromise phone with no user interaction. The remote code execution vulnerabilities discovered last year and this year in the modems used in Samsung devices require nothing more than knowing the victim's phone number.[1] And you don't need to be particularly important to be caught in a wide net, cast by criminals looking to build up a bot-net or harvest data from as many devices as possible.
All of this makes me think I should just switch to a flip phone. It's exhausting having to constantly drop hundreds of dollars every 3 years just to stay safe.
I have a Pixel 5 that does everything I want. Google will stop supporting it within the next year. It doesn't make sense to me that this device already needs to be recycled. Yes, I know about custom ROMs, but even those end support for perfectly OK phones (GrapheneOS for example no longer supports Pixel 3a).
I completely agree. My phone lost official LineageOS support last year but it still works fine and I cannot justify throwing it away to replace with a new expensive device full of features I don't give a damn about.
Probably I'm just stupid but I'm going to keep using it until it breaks.
My understanding might be limited but I don't see this being a big enough risk to warrant spending couple hundred dollars every few years for a new phone when the old one still works.
> My understanding might be limited but I don't see this being a big enough risk to warrant spending couple hundred dollars every few years for a new phone when the old one still works.
There are enough zero-day RCE exploits on both Android and iOS devices at this point that, if you're running phones that are that far out of date from security updates, you should basically just assume your device is fully compromised.
As stated above, many of the RCE exploits don't even involve any user interaction, so it's not like you can argue "well, I don't visit sketchy websites so I'm fine".
So basically, stop using smartphones, because it's fucking ridiculous to drop hundreds of dollars every 4 years on a device that is virtually the same thing as your old one. This is a huge joke, and Google and Apple need to do better or stop milking us. I was safer using a Nokia 3310 in 2007.
> So basically, stop using smartphones, because it's fucking ridiculous to drop hundreds of dollars every 4 years on a device that is virtually the same thing as your old one. This is a huge joke, and Google and Apple need to do better or stop milking us.
I mean, you're literally posting this complaint on a thread about a phone that is now legally bound to receive seven years of updates.
While there have been flagship phones that have received support for seven years, no other phone has been released with a legally binding up-front commitment to provide support for seven years.
It feels very misplaced to complain about obsolescence on a thread in that context.
As someone in a similar situation to other poster, I'm still annoyed at the choice between buying a new phone (with the financial and environmental consequences) or having to deal with the maybe I'm invisibly hacked maybe I'm not when all I want is security updates and/or a software that is built with enough safety to avoid zero-click exploits.
But yeah, this is a good news thread, thank you Google.
Could you link one at-the-time zero-day RCE that is really without user interaction and will hit any user with an old phone regardless of the user applications (like the browser) used?
> Today we announced our commitment to providing seven years of software support for Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, including Android OS upgrades, security updates and regular Feature Drops.
So is it seven years of full feature OS updates, or the usual ~3 years plus only security updates after that?
Phones don't change that much anymore so people keep them for longer. It's easier to offer OS updates when not much happens and you're creating new versions of your OS anyway so there is very little downside.
I have a Pixel 5, which has a known defect preventing it from connecting to the mobile network at times. This is a documented issue. Go to the Google Store and they will hand you a new one... which probably has the same issue. I will have to buy a different phone for hundreds of dollars, even though I have a perfect-condition Pixel 5, because it doesn't work and apparently there is nothing that Google will do about it (except giving me a brand-new phone with the same issue).
I don't care how long the support is. It's useless.
I have a Pixel 7 and I have the opposite problem, I often have to use mobile internet while at home because, on wifi, it will randomly lose connection for no reason regardless of what router or network type I connect it to.
I think the challenge is: Does your hardware support the updates? Hardware vendors from time to time have the tendency to change the OS in ways that it works nice on brand new hardware but is very sluggish on older hardware - to the point of being unusable.
So if I get an update 6 years in that renders my phone unusable, I haven't gained anything.
I would prefer 7 years of sec updates in that case.
That might be part of their calculation. After five years or so, most people aren't going to want them. So they might run poorly, but at least they're not abandoning them.
Anyway, it was mostly Qualcomm that was preventing longer upgrades, so I respect them for finding a way out of that. Maybe Qualcomm will now have to support their chips longer, due to new expectations.
Google themselves are stepping up but this needs to be legislated for the whole ecosystem. I don’t care if it’s hard, it’s important. This is a major stream of e-waste that is directly caused by google and their policies around android.
Microsoft can figure out how to enforce hardware standards on new systems via partnership with vendors while maintaining an independent hardware ecosystem for users. Google doesn’t want to, but it shouldn’t be their choice anyway.
As a Pixel user I hope this isn't a case of: Be careful what you wish for. Will future OS updates be better across the board or will they remove features?
Well as an iOS user, the last iOS release fucked me up pretty badly. Ergo, I would assume the same is possible from Google.
What I'd like is an exit route for my hardware aka LineageOS. But of course the core of Android is Google Play Services, not the OS so that's a painful situation if you want to retain some apps when you switch over.
I used a Pixel 6A for 3 months while I was travelling internationally and I liked most of it.
Exactly. What I want is only security updates and no feature updates unless I explicitly consent. It's simply in vogue for designers to redesign the software interface every once a while and they invariably fuck up niche use cases.
Yeah I stopped wearing my watch almost instantly. It’s a shit show. It was terrible for activity tracking already. So many malfunctions and fuckups when doing hike tracking in the last year I went back to an ass end Garmin eTrex.
> What I'd like is an exit route for my hardware aka LineageOS. But of course the core of Android is Google Play Services, not the OS so that's a painful situation if you want to retain some apps when you switch over.
I'm not following; it's easy to install Google Play Services on lineage
MicroG is an option, it's an open source implementation of a good portion of play services, though not everything "just works". But for the bare minimum like functional push notifications, location services, etc it's not half bad. There exists a fork[1] of lineage with MicroG installed from the get-go, otherwise installing it can be a little painful.
It's still a separate issue though; you can use Google Play Services on an old version of stock Android, an old major version of Lineage, or on a new version of Lineage, or you can decide to run an old major version of Lineage or a new version of Lineage without it. All of these except the first should fix the "vendor removing features from Android" problem.
Half, really? I don't run them and haven't had issues with apps not working in recent memory, though I try to stick to F-Droid stuff almost entirely. A lot of the time you can use your mobile browser instead of some company's app.
Or will they bring even more terrible UI redesigns than "Material You" where a third of the screen area is whitespace? Google's incentive structure does that to products. No one has ever got promoted for fixing bugs or listening to user feedback.
I was thinking of getting a 7a for graphene, but I think I'll wait for the 8 to get graphene support and spring for that.
From what I can tell graphene really is a much more secure OS from an encryption and tracking perspective. Its multi-profile configuration and Google play sandboxing alone would be worth it.
Yeah, it is definitely really nice if you care about privacy/security and can live with some minor limitations. I just switched back to stock Android from GrapheneOS though, to get Android Auto working. My car's built-in navigation just isn't good enough any more.
Yeah, that is annoying that Android Auto requires such permissions.
OTOH, I have used it twice in two models of car, and in both instances it would stop working until I unplugged and replugged the phone. I just keep the phone visible in the cup holder now.
In the case it's part of their official marketing, it's probably safe to assume they'll either pay out if they don't follow through or a class action would soon follow. As incentives for a corporation to follow through go, those are fairly solid IMO.
I wonder if it has to do with the recently passed EU regulation about sustainable smartphones. The same one that mandates user removable batteries.
The regulation mandates 5 years of updates after the end of commercialization. That usually makes it 7 years after launch date. And the Pixel 8 is water-resistant (IP68), so it doesn't need a user replaceable battery according to the regulation (but a repair shop shall be able to).
Whatever happened to normal phone design? This thing is huge and has some sort of shelf at the back, that's not very convenient in the pocket, if it is even possible to fit it in pocket. 7 year support promise is great, but what if Google will switch to Fuchsia after year or two?
So this implies that seven years from now, Android, a long-time feature-complete OS, will still somehow be incomplete and in need of regular updates. We have this saying in my language: a samurai doesn't have a goal, he only has a path.
In the modern world, every piece of software that isn't cut off from the outside world needs security updates. This isn't the fault of Android developers or anyone else really, it's simply the reality that software (and hardware) is made by humans and humans make mistakes.
Yes, they are found in old software because that software was abandoned by its developer in favor of a version with more features that required refactoring and introduced new bugs in the process. The thing I'm saying, or at least something close to it, was only ever done with games. Games are somehow the only kind of software where everyone agrees that it can have a defined end state.
I think people were surprised Google did the work to upgrade it to Android 13 but only did a couple months of patches for it. I think the old promise was 2 years of major os and an additional year of patches.
Google doing it puts competition pressure on others to do it if it turns into sales results (aka, if people actually care about this when it comes time to fork over money).
I don't know if sueing them is an option, but I'm pretty sure you can get (part of) your money back here if you can prove that you've used marketing and claims like these to come to a purchasing decision. You may need to go to court to actually get your money back and third party resellers may pose a problem if they don't copy the guarantees, but I don't think Google stands much of a chance here.
With phone prices being what they are, it makes more and more sense to actually take legal action. Google would be foolish not to meet their promises.
It helps that they haven't come back on their promises before. The Pixels have always received the years of support ad promised at launch. In some cases that was a mere three years, but customers knew (or could easily have known) that was a possibility when they bought their phone.
Beyond this sentiment just being obnoxiously repetitive in these comments, it's also plain as day to see why this might be different. The projects in that link don't have a fixed, set date that support will be extended to from the get-go as a selling point. This phone does.
I wouldn't expect a Google messaging app to be around 8 years from now, but they've been selling Pixels for 8 years and have always delivered the promised updates.
