Apple iPhone 7

My 10 year old iPhone 7 can play 1080p AV1 video in software for more than 200 minutes with VLC. The iPhone 7 was released a year and a half before AV1 was. So I think it's a safe bet the current Apple TV devices are capable of playing AV1 video in software. There's a VLC release for Apple TV: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-appletv.html https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vlc-media-player/id650377962?p...

> Your "old iPhone 7" probably wont even boot up now, let alone play 1080p AV1 video for more than 5 minutes. None of your predictions came true. In fact, you were more than 24 times wrong about it. My 10-year-old iPhone 7 with its 10-year-old battery and a small crack in the screen, hardware which was released before AV1 was released, did boot up. I charged it to 99%. I downloaded a 4 minute music video. It's 1080p25 1609kbps AV1 video, 48khz 122kbps stereo Opus audio in an MP4 container. Using VLC 3.7.2 (which uses dav1d for decoding AV1), I played the video continuously on repeat. It took 122 minutes for the battery to go from 99% to 20%. At 20% the phone switched to low power mode and kept playing the video. I should have put it in low power mode the whole time. I'll try that next to see if it can go longer. In the meantime, what we can conclude is that the iPhone 7 is mighty. dav1d is also mighty. petcat isn't.

I don’t think this is the correct comparison. The iphone doesn’t just die after 5 years. I still have a 10 year iPhone 6 and a 8 years old iPhone 7 both still working just fine. Apple stopped releasing OS upgrades with NEW features, but they are still releasing security updates. (In this aspect it’s better than most (all?) modern TVs. Those iphone are still working the same way as when they were released. The only issue is that some apps doesn’t works anymore. So part of the blame is on app developers. Sure, maybe the app needs some feature which the old phone doesn’t have, but more likely is that the company just can’t bother to maintain their app in older OS versions.

My turn to complain about bugs. I used to balk at people when they complained about bugs on MacOS/iOS. My iPhone 7 which I used for 7 years straight, was more bug-free than my current iPhone 15 Pro. There’s no shortage of visual bugs with iOS 26, but that’s not my point. Recently I had to restart my phone (literally unheard of in Apple land) because I put it in Guided Access and it wasn’t possible to get it out without a force restart , which I had to learn how to do for the first time. That bug persisted for at least a month. A few days ago the camera app would just show a grey screen and the fix was to restart your iPhone. I’m sorry but that’s Android. If you have to restart your phone because of a bug, or core functionality like camera doesn’t work, you are not using an iPhone. But apparently, you are, and apparently Apple has finally succumbed to organizational corruption like every other company. Still miles better than Android though, in which the OS is still an active warzone between Google and the manufacturer.

> In 2017, Apple put out a new iPhone, and in the same week, made my 1 year old iPhone unusable on purpose overnight to make me buy a new one. I often see people claim something along those lines, but it differs from my experience. In early 2017, I bought a refurbished iPhone 7 which has served me well for 7 years. I've never noticed any sudden deterioration in performance.

Please stop spreading unsubstantiated FUD. If you have the data to prove otherwise, please share the links. I have had an iPhone 7 for many years; yes, same device. I don't remember the exact time when I got it, but it might've been around 2017. So this device is over 5, if not 6, years old. In all this time, I've had to replace only the screen due to physical damage, but the phone is otherwise perfectly functional. I've been told a few times that the battery needs replacement, but that's primarily because the phone reports battery's "Maximum Capacity" is 73%; but I'm reluctant to replace the battery because I haven't had any problems with the current battery. Another data point: I bought an iPad Air 2 in November 2016 for my kids, and it's been used by my kids, changing hands as the older one grew out of it, and has had zero issues. Yes, it's screen has got scratches, and it's got blemishes on the body. But it's been running along just fine for over 7 years now. It's getting OS updates, even though it's been discontinued for over 5 years. I cannot say that for any of the Android devices I had bought, not even the ones made by Google. Before getting the iPhone, I was firmly in the "android is best" camp, and I was almost against buying Apple devices, primarily for the cost of the hardware. I have bought phones, and a tablet, powered by Android, but none of them lasted long enough for me to extract value out of my investment. Either they died early because of some hardware fai

Some of us just don't do that sort of thing. When I took my five year old iPhone 7 in for a battery replacement the person serving me commented on the good condition. This was a phone I used daily without a case.

It’s not that easy. I switched to iPhone mainly because of Android phone makers’ abysmal update policies. Heck, I had a Nexus 5 and it was “killed” merely 1.5 years after I bought it. Because newer Android required newer graphics drivers and Qualcomm said “no”. Supposedly things are better now, but are they really? My iPhone 7 was my daily driver for 5 years and was only retired because I got an offer that was too good to pass up. And then there’s also the degrading storage on many Android phones. They just become sooooo slow. My iPhone 7 is slow now, too. After 7 years, not after 3.

The phones also last a long time, being very durable and getting updates for a quite a while, so you can buy an older refurbished iPhone and save quite a bit of money. I only just upgraded a year ago from an iPhone 7 I had owned for about 4 years and bought refurbished for under $300 (that still worked fine, I just wanted to start developing mobile apps again and needed something with the newest iOS) to a refurbished iPhone 12 for $250, and it feels plenty modern to me. It still has the latest iOS version on it as well.

I think it depends a lot on how you handle your phone. I used to have screen protectors, which would always end up scratched, coming off, etc. It was a total PITA to replace them. The last one I had was on my iPhone 7. Took it off for the last 4 years of use I've got out of that phone. The screen is still like new. For mew new phone, I didn't bother with a screen protector. It's a year and a half old now, and no scratch to report.

> I think mac users have been happy so long as the actual machines last about 8-10 years before becoming obsolete, which they generally do. Phone users can make do with 4-6. This is exactly right. My MacBook Pro from 2013 is still running fine and all the day-to-day productivity apps I have been using still work just fine. 90% of things I do are via a web browser, so there's that. I might buy a new M2 based MBP this December, depending on what they release in September/October. Same is true for iPhone. iPhone 7 lasted till iPhone 12. I'll likely replace iPhone 12 only with iPhone 17 or so (likely when 5G is being replaced with 6G).

I took the dive into the medium Xs with Apple Care. My hobbies can be rough on things and I lost my 7 kayaking. Lately I’ve been thinking what the hell did I spend almost $1500 on a phone for. I’ve bought spec-ed out laptops and home built computers for that price. I loved my 7 and almost had it for 3 years. It would’ve lasted 4-5 years.

I've been using iPhone7 for almost 3 years now. Not even a single problem. I love this phone, and got the battery replacement from apple for $29 last december. Will keep it for the next 2-3 years too. I wouldn't worry about the Audio IC issue, which I just heard only today.

Don't those settings reduce the security? If not, why aren't they enabled by default? I should add that, in the general case, FaceID works well enough. I'd say it's better than touch id on my iphone 7.

Hard disagree, I'm still rocking an iphone 7.

Hardly niche. My laptop isn't new and it has hardware AV1 decoding and encoding. My 10 year old iPhone 7 can play 1080p AV1 video in software for over 200 minutes with VLC. The iPhone 7 was released in 2016, a year and a half before AV1. The dav1d decoder is mighty. Netflix uses AV1: https://netflixtechblog.com/av1-now-powering-30-of-netflix-s... YouTube uses AV1. It's tough to be more mainstream than that. Right click on a YouTube video and select Stats for Nerds. If your system is capable of it, chances are it will be playing back in AV1. Most of the YouTube videos I watch these days are AV1 encodes. Sometimes it's in VP9 and occasionally it's H.264.

I don’t want to believe it but wouldn’t surprise me. I pick up my old iPhone 7 and it feels so slick and fast, it 13 mini on iOS 26 is fast in some places but infuriatingly laggy in others. Battery health 90%. What frustrates me is that the CPUs are so powerful but somehow 5 years down the line are slow in basic UI navigation.

> by the time batteries wear out, most people are going to want a new a phone Yeah, no. I'm on my 4th battery on my iPhone 7. It is perfect and thinner than the "thinnest ever" iPhone Air because the camera bump is absolutely minimal. I don't use Siri, don't want ai, use a real camera for photos. I'm mad about being forced to "upgrade" because it has recently been cut off from a lot of apps (incl. banking) that demand a newer iOS version.

Other than a few people who absolutely must have the latest phone, I only see two reason why people replace their phone: 1) Battery is no good. 2) Operating system has stopped getting updates and they can no longer run that one or two apps they really need. Replaceable battery and 10 years of OS updates and a large percentage of people would stop upgrading their phones. There hasn't been much innovation in phones in the past 10 years. If the battery hadn't died and the OS was still updated there would be zero reason for me to not be using my iPhone 7.