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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: 3, Insightful) by davester666 on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:28AM (2 children)
Perhaps you could start listing the Android manufacturers that:
1) have warranty's longer than a year
2) support their devices with OS updates as long as Apple does (for example, I have an iPhone 5S, released in 2013, that I just updated to iOS 11)
"got a broken screen" is bullshit. "X broke the screen" would be accurate. And broken screens are not an Apple-specific problem, or even mostly an Apple problem, AND CAN BE REPAIRED. You do not have to throw the phone away, you can get just the screen replaced for a fairly low fee.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday September 14 2017, @01:19PM (1 child)
I should have expected an Apple sycophant to reply....
Perhaps you could start listing the Android manufacturers that:
1) have warranty's longer than a year
2) support their devices with OS updates as long as Apple does (for example, I have an iPhone 5S, released in 2013, that I just updated to iOS 11)
First, my 3-year-old Samsung is still getting updates. But the comparison is invalid: I can buy a very nice Android phone for $150 or less now (new, even less used). An Apple phone now costs $999. For the price of one iPhone, I can easily afford to buy a new Android phone every year, or whenever one breaks, and still come out way ahead.
As for iOS updates, those are bullshit. I'm constantly reading complaints by older iPhone users about how the OS gets updated and now their phone is slow as molasses. Having a 5-year-old iPhone with the latest iOS isn't very helpful when it's so slow you can't use it effectively.
You do not have to throw the phone away, you can get just the screen replaced for a fairly low fee.
Not on iPhones you don't; the parts are controlled by Apple and are very expensive, and you have to go to an Apple store to do it because of their control of the parts. For the price of the repair, you can buy a brand-new Android phone that'll likely be faster than a non-new iPhone that's been slowed down with a new iOS version.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday September 14 2017, @05:44PM
Talk about an invalid comparison, namely the price of a high-end Apple phone vs a old, used Android phone.
Yes, you can buy a cheap Android phone every year. But a $150 Android phone every year means that $150 is full retail and that will be one crappy phone, compared to the $999 iPhone. It won't need a Android update to go slow.
And does new iOS update make older phones feel like they are slower? Yes, because the phone is DOING MORE. And, you have the choice of doing the upgrade or not. With Android, you don't have that choice. Samsung decides the phone doesn't get an update, it doesn't get an update. If you buy a $999 Samsung, it is more likely to get the update than those $150 throwaway phones.
And I guess all those stores in malls and elsewhere (which, btw, aren't Apple owned/operated/sanctioned), which I have used to replace one iPhone screen personally, don't exist and didn't fix my screen.