It's all over the place. In the middle of the article they suddenly talk about how software updates, modularity and repairability is important so that old devices can be made to keep up with contemporary demands, blaming the fact that this is an issue on big tech.

Then again, other parts are completely nuts.

Hold on, you can simply tack on 10-50 dollars to your cell plan and get a “free” upgrade every year instead!

I'd argue it's actually more the fault of the politicians than the CEOs, because the politicians cut taxes for the rich and set the rules of the game for companies to operate in; companies merely take opportunity of the exploits presented to them.

I'd also say that companies have a so called "fiduciary duty" to maximize shareholder values, as typically understood by economy classes. the way to change that behavior is to change the rules to which the companies have to keep. that means, instead of exploiting workers, they should pay taxes and benefit the community that way.

The oldest millennials are in their 40s. They've moved on to talking shit about zoomers. It's kind of weird seeing everything repeat itself like that as I get older.

I like the analogy with a surgeon or a firefighter.

Of course, the surgeon has to be available in case somebody needs an operation. But the best that can happen to society at large is that the surgeon is never needed because nobody's sick.

Same with firefighters. Of course they have to be there to fight fires, but it's better if houses don't start to burn down in the first place!

Another example of "the economy" meaning the ultra wealthy's bank accounts.

Whoa, whoa, whoa ... expecting utility out of a product? That's socialism!

I am typing this on a 5 year old Android phone. It has 128GB of memory and 8GB of RAM, very decent cameras, a beautiful OLED screen and a processor that is more than fast enough for everything I do with it. And even now the battery still lasts two days with normal use. It cost me about €300 at the time.

Unfortunately the Android version is getting so far behind that some apps are starting to get a few issues, so I have been checking out some black Friday deals for new phones, but they look very disappointing.

In the current market it seems like I'd have to pay about €500 to effectively just get a side-grade. All €300 offerings look like just a straight up downgrade in any way apart from the more recent android version.

So I think I'll hold on to this one a while longer. Hardware-wise it's still in perfect condition, and if software support really becomes an issue then perhaps I'll try out a custom ROM.

Also if you keep it for longer, the performance boost from a new one is noticeable. If you replace every 2 years, you get an imperceptible change and have to waste more money for it lol

Fr, my phone was over 3x as old when I traded it in, and it wasn’t even broken. I just knew I had to replace it in the next 4 years and didn’t want to get hit with tariffs.

2 years is a good start for people who trade in annually, though. Gotta start somewhere!

I'm on a 5 year old iPhone SE I've owned for 4 🫡

yeah...his previous article just before this one was "Americans are heating their homes with bitcoin this winter"

you're a couple years late to that hype cycle, Kevin.

Kevin, if thats even a real person at this point in media, is just pushing stories and discourse aligned with corporate speak. Let's consider it less stupid and more complicit, which I argue, is even worse.

I dislike having the comma of direct address thrown at me. At least close the aside!

The person is writing from a business prospective. If people are replacing their phones less often, it means that fewer phones are being purchased each year. If your company makes phones, that means adjusting to a shrinking market no matter what your company does.

Don't forget aggressive rent-seeking behavior.

“Companies aren’t innovating anymore and it’s costing the economy”

companies aren't innovating anymore because physical limits have been reached. Moore's law holds no longer true. Transistors can't be packed more tightly into space anymore while also making the computer chip cheaper at the same time.

From greed to enshitification. If you look at it with a different view, everyone is poorer because they are greedy, they've ruined everyone's lives but must make numbers go up...

This is the leading concept behind Capitalism. It's a self-devouring system. Every. Single. Time.

Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.

The best way to grow the economy is to develop spaceflight. If you fly to mars, there's millions of acres of free real estate waiting for you. Time to construct and grow the market.

There's no more meaningful growth on Earth possible, because the physical limits have been reached. This effect has been predicted as far back as in 1970 with the report: The Limits To Growth. We're finally seeing the effects of that now.

Either I've had weirdly good luck with Samsung, or I'm exceptionally gentle on phones. I expect 6 years minimum out of my Notes, and so far that's held up.

I bought an older Samsung and only use it for doom scrolling, 2FA, and podcasts. Its fine stripped down to nothingness. My next purchase, once the cracks from me dropping it spread, will be an older Pixel so I can run GraphineOS. I'm hopeful that like my Linux experience, it'll extend the devices life given my use case. Like buying old laptops and kicking windows to the curb in favor of Linux buys you tons of time and product life.

any recommendations for long-lasting phones?

for desktop computers it used to be acer (laptop) for me. i bought one in 2012 and it lasted close to 10 years, which i consider really long. even then, i didn't buy a new one because of hardware defects, but because the hardware specs were long out of date. i bought a new acer (laptop) in 2021 and it enshittified heavily, lasting only 18 months before i had to buy a new computer.

then i bought a thinkpad (laptop) and have been happy with it ever since. it's been running for at least 2-3 years by now and shows no signs of aging at all, even though it's already second-hand. great device.

My wife finally upgraded after 5 years, and I'm on year 4 of my Pixel 6 and its still going strong, will probably go another 1-2 years with it.

Most likely fucked you?

To be fair, current laptops don’t handle Outlook and Word very well.

It’s probably not the hardware that is the issue.

It genuinely floors me that few medium and large-sized companies don’t use Linux for desktops. You can customize gnome or KDE to work very similarly to windows from a UI/UX perspective, especially with the number of web based apps companies rely on. Windows and Office might start sucking less if they had real competition.