Samsung arrived and launched its high end and in a few years, it has been left without updates (we have the best example with the Samsung Galaxy S20). If it is true that a mobile has no updates You have spent hundreds of dollars and has important consequences.
Fortunately In Android, the batteries have already been updated And Samsung itself already offers up to seven years, just like Google. Eye because Google adds years of retroactively updates.
After having a phone in my hands more than a half-life and devoting myself to it professionally, I come from the Kinder Liu team, the president of OnePlus, who compares sandwiches: Is the filling of a sandwich seven years after doing it?
Short response: no. In fact, I think it is another measure of marketing and breastfeeding than to promote users and users … If all it offers is that. I explain: seven years are many years for equipment, even if it is a high range and of course, it is more time that a phone lasts the majority. Liu talks about the user experience, but there is another subject: the deterioration of any device, something inherent in its use.
Seven years of updates yes, please. But the more necessary
Change of phone every two years for my work and my taste for technology, but the same thing does not happen in my environment: I think of my partner and Son Google Pixel 6 Pro who loves the first day, my mother and His little M3, my sister with a real entry range a few years ago. Most of the people I know change mobiles When his death, he has big problems or directly, they lack him.
With the exception of an exception, most of my environment responds to the conclusion of this study by Milanuncios from 2022, that is to say that it belongs to this majority of people in Europe who spent less than 300 dollars. It is not a secret that cheap mobiles are worse than the high range (having the last of the most recent and high equipment has a good part of guilt), but Even having a flagship product, years end up weighing. Let us take as an example the ultra recently launched Samsung Galaxy S25, an all-powerful model with these seven years of promised updates.
Thus, even in this more favorable scenario for sustainability which must have a high range, in seven years, we will clearly have this design which marks a trend and there is probably a new function which can no longer integrate because it is everything simply incompatible, but it is that if you have been using this mobile for seven years There are components that Imperatively They will be broken.
The lightest room is the battery. As an iPhone user in the personal field and that he has not always changed the phone so frequently, I know and lack of space was endemic to Apple devices. In Android, the space should not be a problem, but it shares the evil of the battery wear and it is seasoned by a fast load, a function by which many Android manufacturers are betting strongly.
As a result, it is likely that after three years or at most four years, the battery lasts so little that you have to take the catch everywhere. And the time has just asked the question: Do I have to change the battery or do I buy another? Each person is a world in terms of economic possibilities and needs placed in their terminal. Let's start with the base that the phone always gives way and we are not very demanding.
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If you have spent 200 dollars on the phone and when you wear it to a SAT, they tell you that they are 30 dollars, you can think about it. If you have spent a thousand and cost 100, you think more about it. But If changing the battery is something so easy How to buy a more or less standard component and exchange it without much mystery, additional parts or great technical knowledge, the balance will be clearly tilted towards yes. Here, we will have to thank the EU and its “removable” battery law, which will come into force as soon as possible.
So seven years of updates yes, please. But if this is also done from the waste reduction strategy, better increasing life and ultimately against planned obsolescence. This implies that it should be accompanied by these measures which facilitate the promotion of phones in good conditionEven by advancing towards this law which is not yet in force.
THE modularity Today, it is something anecdotal and exceptional that we have seen in Fairphone or in some Nokia, but as this strategy approaches, this is what will make these seven years of updates a proposal more sensible than a marketing affirmation.
This article was initially published in Xataka Android in February 2024. It was revised and updated again.
Cover | Eva Rodríguez de Luis with Microsoft Copilot
In Xataka Android | This site tells you how many updates receive an Android mobile
