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Over at Vice/Motherboard is an article on the expected lifetime of apple phones, based on the proceedings in a class action lawsuit over problems with iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus devices.
When it released its iPhone 7 Environmental Report a year ago, Apple wrote that it "conservatively assumes a three-year period for power use by first owners," which is "based on historical customer use data for similar products."
Greg Joswiak, Apple's VP of iOS, iPad, and iPhone Marketing, told Buzzfeed last month that iPhones are "the highest quality and most durable devices. We do this because it's better for the customer, for the iPhone, and for the planet."
But in court, Apple argues that it is only responsible for ensuring the iPhone lasts one year, the default warranty you get when you buy an iPhone.
The case in question is related to problems with the touch screen, as the soldering connections to the controller IC fail. However this failure only occurs after months of normal usage.
In that court case, currently being litigated in California, the plaintiffs attempted to argue that "consumers reasonably expect that smartphones will remain operable for at least two years when not subject to abuse or neglect because the overwhelming majority of smartphone users are required to sign service contracts with cellular carriers for two year periods."
Apple's motion to dismiss in that case noted that the plaintiffs' phones broke more than a year after they were purchased, which is after the warranty expired. If your phone breaks after the warranty is up, well, you're out of luck, Apple argues.
Arturo González, the lawyer representing Apple in the case, wrote in the motion [...] that it is "not appropriate for courts to rewrite the express terms of a warranty simply because of a consumer's unilateral expectations about a product."
More background on the case from last October in Fortune
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Wednesday September 13 2017, @07:01PM (2 children)
Oh for goodness sakes! What in the .. wh sl I can't even.
This is really easy. Apple DESIGNS and MANUFACTURES their phones to last more than a year. They WARRANTY their phones for a year.
Was that hard? No, that wasn't hard.
Find me a company that warranties their product for a year, and designs it to last six months, and I'll show you a company on it's way out of business.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Lester on Wednesday September 13 2017, @09:47PM (1 child)
Are you sure? Do you know what Planned obsolescence [wikipedia.org] is?
(Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday September 14 2017, @12:57AM
Of course I know what planned obsolescence is. Do you, though? Kinda the whole point of the article is that phones are in general lasting LONGER than the warranty period. Calling something planned obsolescence because the new ones are shiny and ooh I want one is a bit of a stretch. That's out-of-control materialism, not planned obsolescence. The quote from TFS is Apple phones are "the highest quality and most durable devices. We do this because it's better for the customer, for the iPhone, and for the planet." Again, the opposite of planned obsolescence.
Supporting anecdote: I have a first generation iPad, 5.5 years old. It still works more or less as well as it did when new. I just pulled it out tonight so my daughter could read a Kindle book on it. Where's the "planned obsolescence"?
Have you looked at the major mobile phone hardware and OS makers and studied how long each of them generally support a hardware design with software updates? Of all the legitimate arguments one could have against Apple, planned obsolescence is an odd one to choose.