How many years can Apple's iPhone last? A detailed analysis from three dimensions

Generally speaking, how long is the usage cycle from buying a new machine to finally discarding it?

Speaking of this issue, many digital enthusiasts who pay attention to our technological aesthetics may "replace their phones every year" or "update every other generation." Of course, there are also many friends who buy a new phone and use it until it freezes or breaks down.

Some friends will also give their obsolete mobile phones to their relatives and friends to use.

So have you ever thought about how long the normal use cycle of a mobile phone is? Today we will take a look at how long the life cycle of an iPhone is.

First, to understand the life cycle of a smartphone, we can look at the number of times the major system version of this model has been updated.

After all, the models that can get the latest system push prove that Apple has not abandoned them. From this table, we can see that every iPhone model above iPhone 4 can get more than four major iOS updates.

Judging from the official system updates for iPhone models, each iPhone has a life cycle of about five years.

Of course, getting an update does not mean that the user experience of the old model is perfect. Even if the old model can update the system, the experience will be different from the latest model due to the difference in configuration.

There used to be a saying that “after a new phone is released, the old phone suddenly becomes slow.”

Some people also said that the new system update "fixed the bug of the old models running too fast". In response to such problems, Apple officials also responded at the time. Apple admitted that it would indeed slow down old iPhones, but the purpose of doing so was to avoid unexpected shutdowns and to extend the life of the iPhone.

Of course, many friends say that they can use it all the time without upgrading the system, and it won't lag. But let's take the current mainstream software as an example. WeChat requires iOS 9.0 or above to use, and Suning.com requires iOS 8.0 or above.

In other words, the current mainstream software also supports iOS 9-iOS 13 systems, with a total of five major versions.

If we talk about the support of the new system version, iPhone 6 and below models from 5 years ago can no longer be updated to the latest iOS 13 system, so you can consider upgrading.

Of course, everyone has a different definition of whether the system is smooth or not. Some people think that it is smooth as long as they can make and receive calls and check WeChat. Some people will go crazy if the phone takes a little longer to load.

After looking at these, we can basically conclude that the service life of an iPhone is roughly around 5 years, and a replacement cycle of 3-4 years is a relatively ideal state.

In addition to whether the system is smooth, the memory capacity of the mobile phone also determines the service life of the phone.

Previously, an app was only a few MB in size, but now that smartphones are common, an app is about 20 to 30 MB in size. However, apps like QQ and WeChat will become larger and larger as they are used for longer and contain more data.

Nowadays, any software is tens or even hundreds of MB in size. In the past, mobile phones with 16G memory could not install more than two software programs before prompting that the memory was full, so mobile phones with small memory are gradually being eliminated.