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Yea, that's one thing that I envy Apple for. I legitimately still use the iPhone 4S as my daily driver. It had software updates for around 5 years and has iOS 9. Still works as an alarm clock, a music player, and for everything else I use it for.

But it's also important to consider that lack of Android upgrades are also slightly disregardable, as API and app level updates will exist for years, and the majority of older phones support custom ROMs. I understand how that's not the ideal use case for people, just providing my own take on things.




I think I just have less patience for tinkering as I've gotten older (which is unfortunate in of itself, but I digress). I used to use custom ROMs on old Android phones that were no longer officially supported, but I got tired of the random and unpreventable soft bricks that would occur every few months. I overslept an important appointment because my old Nexus 5X soft bricked overnight and the alarm never went off. That phone ended up dying due to a widespread motherboard issue, one month after the hardware warranty expired.

I used to roll my eyes at my dad's frustration with his crappy old Windows desktops when I was a kid, but now I understand how he felt. I just want something that works and that I can depend on and use for basic tasks.


I was the same way and then stopped fucking with the roms when a car accident happened in front of me and I discovered dialing 911 crashed the rom I had. Testing later showed 100% crash rate on 911 calls. It was the most popular rom at the time for my version of the s5 as well...


That's terrifying! I stopped tinkering with ROMs because the one I was on would crash a call 5-10 minutes in. Calls are usually short, so it didn't bug me until it crashed twice during a long call with my parents. I realized my phone had become really bad at being a phone.

I switched to iOS shortly after because when using stock all my Google apps would constantly throw warnings that I had denied location services. Even apps like Gmail would prompt me with every new send.



Wow, that's a serious bug! Shame the car accident


Yeah tinkering just doesn’t feel worth it. I’d love for there to be a simple way to get custom more up to date ROMs onto older Androids. But right now it seems cumbersome still. I just want things to work too.

The issues you mentioned like the soft bricking sucks.


First off, having to do all the research and cumbersome work for the ROMs and such. I don’t like doing it. And I don’t want to spend time doing it. Especially with all the issues that can arise.

On to iPhones. I have an iPhone 4S on iOS 9 too. It’s jailbroken because the sleep button doesn’t work so I needed a work around. It’s too slow for me though. Great if you don’t want to be able to use your phone much. Otherwise the wait to load apps and the limited or weird acting ram is annoying. Nonetheless when I want to try reducing my digital “addiction” I can get by using it. My friends find it too slow to even use for more than 2 min.

On the other hand, I also had a chance to use an iPhone 5 or 5S in the summer. It was perfectly usable. Fast enough and not that old of an OS (I think iOS 10) to be useless for downloading new apps.


That leaves users wide open to the quintillions of security issues with older Android which will never be patched, though.




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