Apple iPhone 7 Plus

Might be luck of the draw, but my experience with Android has been similar to OP. Each of my (at the time top of the line) Samsung phones stopped working due to various reasons after a time period ranging from just under an year, to a couple of years. In comparison, my secondhand iPhone 3G worked for several years—until I left it in a plane by mistake. My iPhone 7plus I used for ~7 years; in fact I still use it, along with my new iPhone 13.

This started with my LG g3. That was a flagship when I got it. My HTC M8 also died. I had a galaxy s3, s4, s6, and a note. The note 8 was the only one that survived longer than a year. Meanwhile, my iPhone 7+ was in service for 6 years. I owned it until I upgraded to an XS, and a family member used it up until last year. I used the XS until I got a free upgrade to the 13.

iPhone 7 Plus, iCloud for backing up photos, a pair of AirPods Pros, Spotify, and that's about it. It all works wonderfully well. At some point, I might upgrade to iPhone 13 or 14 (whichever one they just announced), though I don't really need to. For e-mail, I just use the default Mail app. The battery life on this thing, after ~4 years, is surprisingly great. The Settings app has a menu that tells me my battery holds up to ~89% charge. Good enough I think. What I really like about the AirPods is I can really easily switch between my MacBook and my iPhone. And the one time I misplaced them (leaving them in the office), I was able to quickly figure out where they were using the Find my app.

I was on a 7+ since they came out, and it was the first iPhone I held onto for 3 years. I love my 11 Pro. I never wanted to get a phone as big as the Plus, but I wanted the bokeh since I take a lot of photos of my kids. I'm glad to have a non-plus-size phone. I didn't get the X or XS because I was holding out hope for a notchless phone. This year I moved up because it seemed like the total package justified the move. The 11 Pro's camera is so much better. The edge detection in Portrait Mode is better on the 11 Pro (I think it's the hardware, not just iOS 13). Night Mode is unbelievable. Video has improved also (I think this was mostly due to XS upgrades, but there are other 11 Pro benefits that I mostly won't use, like simultaneously capturing video from multiple cameras). I haven't done the .2 update yet, but the deep fusion stuff is pretty cool from what I'm seeing others post online. I think folks like Brian X. Chen (NYT), who say this is an optional upgrade if your iPhone is less than 5 years old have it wrong. I can definitely see skipping this if you're on an XS or X. But 8 or older? It's a very noticeable upgrade. And if you're not on a Plus (i.e., capable of Portrait Mode), it's a huge upgrade if you use your camera much. And that's before getting to all the other features like wireless charging and the UWB chip for enhanced tracking. Oh, and the battery is noticeably better than my 7+, which had great battery life (and was warranty-swapped by Apple a year or two ago,

(I work in cell phone repair part time) Checkout the "lower end" iPhones like the 7/8 (wait for apple to release their new stuff in the fall first so it's price drops). They really aren't that slow compared to the new phones, the improvements in phones have REALLY slowed down. I'm the kind of person who has a i7 8700k, 1080ti, 32GB gaming machine, but I've been using my iPhone 7 Plus for two years, and I have nothing to complain about performance wise. And the iPhone 7 is only 450$ new from Apple. A screen repair from a 3rd party will be less then 100$. The iPhone 7/8's are also really easy to repair by yourself (can't speak for the higher ones) - the exact screen our store uses for iphone 7 repairs costs less than 25$. Battery is only 12$. I understand that the "average joe" likely shouldn't attempt to repair it, but I figure the typical HN audience wouldn't have much issues - just be slow and follow ifixit. They're very affordable/easy to repair, and are solid phones, and they'll be getting updates for at least a few more years.

> I'm not sure what to upgrade to when this iPhone 7 Plus, which by the way cost a fortune, breaks. I'm also still getting by with my 7 Plus, and my hope is that next year we'll see a model sans notch that I can upgrade to. I can't imagine that Apple would have gone down this path without some plan about how to eliminate the notch in a reasonable (2-3 yr) timeframe. OTOH, we still have a camera bump, and I thought that was very un-Apple also! Lastly, I'd point out that the 7 Plus was expensive, but it's also a high-performance/high-quality device with a longer useful life than most non-Apple phones. I've had my for 2 years already, and plan to keep it for 3. I assume I'll sell it for around $275 next year, which means the monthly cost of the device is around $17. Not bad, considering I bought it when it was the latest-and-greatest!

I'm still on iPhone 7+… It gets a new battery every 2-3 years and works great. I love how it has a big screen but feels much smaller and thinner in my pocket than any modern iPhone. I was really looking forward to this new "SE4", but the 7.5W charging and lack of magsafe is a deal breaker for a phone that in my country costs ~900 usd.

> Same thing with my phones. I went from an iphone 4, to a 5, to a 6 to an 11. And there I have stayed. There are a few features that would be nice to have, but not enough for me to fork over the cash. And my old one still does everything fine. My iPhone 7 (Plus? whatever the called the big one) still seems a totally serviceable phone from my limited use, although substantially slower than my 12. It's not been supported for some years now, but I still boot it occasionally and it's far from useless and probably more performant than a low/mid tier Android phone from 3-4 years ago.

A few years ago I cracked my iPhone7+ screen in several places (dangerous to use any swipe features) but I wanted to wait the few months until the next iPhone revision so I just put a screen protector on it and honestly, it was quite usable. I even skipped the next refresh because you could hardly tell it was cracked with the screen protector and using the phone through that - it felt almost new.

I had my 2013 Nexus 5 until it died, even after that one software update killed performance with no change in features. I wanted to buy a Pixel XL. They weren't available. I live and work near mountain view. They were sold out even if you sign up for Google Fi (a trick a Googler friend suggested). I'm already on Google Voice so Fi would be awesome. Could not get them for weeks. I got tired of waiting and bought an iPhone 7 Plus. I love it. I dislike the closed software interface but don't want Samsung bloat so I saw it as the best other option. The hardware is great and I found out a lot of my friends are on iMessage. iCloud doesn't try to do creepy things. I like the fingerprint scanner. I would have loved to try the Pixel.