GP's point isn't about flagship phones, but about the average price over the general ecosystem.
Of course, they may be wrong, since they didn't cite anything. But I would clearly be surprised to learn that the average Android phone sold isn't cheaper than the average iPhone sold.
Shouldn't surprise anyone really, but iPhones are more expensive. Let's also consider the fact they have <14% [1] market share of smartphones yet are the most profitable and valuable company on Earth (excluding the one that's the extension of a monarchy/state) because of that product, which I think paints the picture.
The article wasn't clear, but the survey was done of 2,000 customers (1,000 each OS) done by a US company (I believe a startup) designed to connect it's customers with discounts at US stores. While it's possible (it's an app/website) that non-US users exist, it seems unlikely anyone would sign up if they were outside the US.
Fair, Facebook's ARPU per region is a good illustration of how much more valuable that market is compared to everywhere else. FWIW I recall seeing an even higher figure for US teens.
> I would clearly be surprised to learn that the average Android phone sold isn't cheaper than the average iPhone sold.
I really would. In the US (where this survey is based) every two years you can get a free iPhone for switching carriers. Usually it's a year or so behind the curve. Carriers offer discounts on Android phones that lead to some being free as well, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me if a huge percentage of iPhones were subsidized by carriers to get business and were free to end users.
In France, there are plans that give you discounted iPhones (never seen current or previous generations ones for free). Some cheaper Androids can be free.
But these plans are much more expensive than equivalent plans with no phone. My aging iPhone is more or less due for a replacement, so I've been looking into those. Basically, you have to take on these plans for two years. And by the end of the two years, if you sum the difference between the plans, you usually end up paying more than if you bought the iPhone on your own.
No one is saying that iphones are the most expensive flagships. A difference in maximum isn't the same as a difference in average.
Apple doesn't make a product that costs less than $430 (the SE). If you need a cheaper phone, you have to go Android. For lots of people, $400 is a lot of money (especially if you're also buying phones for your kids, who are likely to break whatever you buy them). In lots of families it's iphone for the grownups, android for the kids. And that's just within the US.
On a global scale, if you're selling phones outside of the US and European markets, some part of your product lineup has to be in the sub $200 range (in addition to the flagships you sell everywhere). For example, in India, Xiaomi sells the Redmi 9A for Rs 8,000 (about $100). They're competing with Samsung phones we don't see in the US, like the Galaxy M series, which are in the same price category. Those phones exist because (a) people need cell phones (especially in places where a phone might be your primary access to the internet) and (b) Apple is choosing not to go after those customers.
Even though Samsung makes a more expensive flagship, the average income of Android users will always be lower because (a) there are more poor people world-wide than rich people, and (b) Apple isn't making phones for poor people, while Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, etc. are. Apple's strategy is totally working for them (selling a luxury product at luxury prices works well) but it also means that most poor people (which is most people) won't ever have one, so the average income of an iOS user will always be higher (along with the other things that go along with a higher income, like higher spending).
> On a global scale, if you're selling phones outside of the US and European markets,
We're not talking about a global scale. We're talking about a US-based survey about US-based people.
> Apple doesn't make a product that costs less than $430 (the SE).
> $400 is a lot of money
Except every two years you can switch carriers and pay $0 out of pocket. Heck, if switch today you get a base iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 they don't even raise your contract vs BYOD. And if you want to pay for a more advanced iPhone (say, upgrade to the Max Pro for an additional $400), they finance that over 2 years.
> In lots of families it's iphone for the grownups, android for the kids.
That argues against what you're saying. Unless you think that kids as independent economic actors need to be accounted for separately than their parents, in a lot of families the people using Androids are children of parents rich enough to afford iPhones.
Which carriers are providing iPhones for free? How do those contracts compare to other carriers who don’t provide an iPhone for free every two years?
I know here in Australia the cheapest plans are prepaid SIM-only and the “free phone” contracts are the most expensive (because thousand dollar phones don’t grow on trees). We still have limited data plans in the lower price brackets.
As far as kids having iPhones vs androids, who is paying for those phones? Is it the parents? Do you think there might be some correlation between disposable income and the decision to get cheap androids versus expensive iPhones for the kids?
IIRC, the highest end hotels were some of the first commercial entities to install Apple Pay terminals when it was released. It took years for normal, regular stores that serve the general public to add that feature.
I'm not sure that's correct. EU and Australia have been using contactless terminals before Apple Pay. Still, most hotels I go to want the actual card number (usually taken at checkin) that they put on hold. Payment can either be charged to that card number on file at check out or you can present another card.
I recently saw someone denied check in when they only had their phone at the Shangri La in Sydney a year or so ago.
Thinking back, the only time I've used contactless to pay for a hotel was at the Six Senses in Fiji. Four Seasons & Ritz Reserve usually still do the whole folio presentation thing at check out. Most of the standard corporate hotels (Hyatt, IHG, Marriott) I've been to have let you check out in their app to the card on file.
I know Apple worked with various high end hotels to deploy their phone/watch as a key offering. Going to be a long time before that’s in Holiday Inn or La Quinta.
> I'm not sure that's correct. EU and Australia have been using contactless terminals before Apple Pay.
That’s not what I was talking about. I was referring to Apple Pay early adopters per the context of the hotel comment I was replying to up above, not to the ubiquity of contactless terminals, which predates Apple Pay by quite a long time, as you correctly observe.
I am the developer of HACK, a hacker news client for iOS, android and MacOS.
Anecdotal experience but I have always made significantly more money on iOS than android. My app doesn’t have any subscription or anything like that. It’s a one time one purchase which unlocks push notifications for when someone replies on HN, theme colours and fonts.
Both iOS and android apps are very similar in functionality but iOS just seems easier to get downloads and also users seem a lot more willing in buying the in app purchase.
Ever since I started using iPhone I did land a few new high paying jobs and am starting to spend more money (lifestyle creep). I’m never going back to android now that I’m accustomed to this new life.
The editorial details exactly how societal class-ism starts.
This study is ridiculous. I have an old android because they took SD card support and headphone jacks out. I also spent money on a fairly expensive car, and have no aversion to buying tech that isn't disposable. just like many others. What puts me off apple devices most is probably this brand of elitism based on class and racial undertones. They are devices, not personality attributes by which people should be measured.
> Ever since I started using iPhone I did land a few new high paying jobs and am starting to spend more money (lifestyle creep). I’m never going back to android now that I’m accustomed to this new life.
duh. it's more expensive to begin with. Let's adjust the data for price of the phone. then u may see that galaxy top of the range users are of similiar income
This is well known. There is a paper from the FDIC that points out that if you make lending decisions based on platform (iPhone vs android or macOS vs windows) you are likely discriminating because iPhone and macOS skew older, richer, and whiter. It is one of the things that makes letting ML have access to big random data sets for lending and finance so dangerous.
Assuming your question is not rhetorical: because it probably does not predict what you think it does.
People with higher incomes probably buy more expensive phones. You already have their income on a loan application, so you don't need a blackbox NN model to confirm it.
Throwing in a bunch of corrolated features into a model won't help improve accuracy.
But if you throw in a bunch of weak features that together sum to a predictor of race (or other protected attributes), then aside from being grossly unethical, may well be illegal.
If race and _____ are correlated, won't any predictor of _______ also be a predictor of race? That logic could be used to even ban using income as a predictor.
Everything is corrolated [1]. So putting that aside, context matters.
Contextually there is no reason to suspect that a phone operating system has anything to do with anyone's ability to repay a loan, anymore than the color of their car or their eye color.
Income and existing debt does, obviously.
What you don't want, and what is not legal, is denying a loan because of nonsense predictors that happen to be very strongly corrolated to race and very weakly corrolated to the ability to repay a loan.
If color of car, or operating system, is a strong predictor then the model is probably being overtrained on the training data and probably wouldn't generalise well in the real world.
I don't know, I think that people with red cars and people with white cars might have different loan repayment behaviors and I think the model should be allowed to try to figure out.
A question I’ve never been able to find the answer to: which is more durable and lasts longer? Anecdotally, everyone I know who runs Android replaces their phone far more often than those who own iPhone. But there’s so many different variables, it’s hard to know if they are replacing it because the phone is less durable or because iPhone owners replace it less for other reasons.
it depends heavily, I carry both on a daily basis (the iPhone is the oncall/work-pays)
If you are not on the Pixel line, you're probably barely getting support measured in months. I absolutely despise most third party Android vendors. Samsung is one of the worst offenders for obnoxious unremovable bloatware, spam, etc. Rebadged AOSP browser vulnerable to everything. I don't think I've had LG phones supported for even one month after buying them. The Chinese phones are also wildly variable, like xiaomi not allowing bootloader unlocks without you signing up for their forum and begging them in a thread for months and it's entirely subjective.
I've had iPhone SE (1st gen) used for years, still running currently latest stable iOS and supported up to now.
> I absolutely despise most third party Android vendors.
Years ago I got a Samsung Galaxy 8 which came preloaded with CNN and Facebook. After uninstalling those apps, I poked around with adb and found services still running for CNN and Facebook. Made me also despise non-Pixel devices.
For a long while my daily driver was a Pixel 4 (probably my favorite phone hardware of all time) running GrapheneOS and then eventually CalyxOS. If I were to ever switch back to Android I would 100% go back to Pixel running CalyxOS. I absolutely loved that setup.
Things that keep me on iOS:
- On-demand VPN. I use Wireguard and it is unnoticeable when it automatically turns on when I leave home. I was able to use Tasker on Android to unreliably replicate this functionality.
- Apple Shortcuts. Android could really benefit from a first-party automation toolset, Tasker is still pretty mediocre compared to Shortcuts from my somewhat recent tinkering.
- Apple is a decent steward of data and I'm encouraged by the continuing privacy features they release (Private Relay is awesome). Despite this, I try to avoid the walled garden as much as possible. Homekit is one area where I've totally invested into but could switch that out with HA if I ever switched back to Android.
Things I miss from Android:
- Sideloading. F-Droid is the best -- I miss sideloading so much and hope that Apple is eventually forced into allowing users to actually sideload (not the temporary 7-day renewal you are forced to do). Because of the ability to sideload you can embrace an open source ecosystem so much more than you can on iOS.
- Custom, debloated roms.
Aside from those drawbacks I am a big fan of both Android and iOS and find very little difference in how useful each OS is to me.
This is pretty accurately my feeling. I trust Apple honestly not much, but more than Google, and I pay Apple for iCloud and know what I'm getting. Paying Google is a huge pain in the ass while Apple just collects every month off my balance - which I can also spend for physical products, which is nice.
I don't have many apps and I tend to curate those that I do have, so in general not much of a heavy user such as full screen mobile gaming.
My most recent experience trying to use Google Play for a purchase was "INSERT US SIM CARD TO CONTINUE" after applying the code. While in US, on a US cell tower (on eSIM). This is after applying the code, so it's been consumed and is now useless and can't be used to buy anything either.
Samsung is still probably my top hated OEM. Everything from a Bixby key you can't disable and marketing you can't opt out of (mandatory push notifications from an un-uninstallable system app that deliver fullscreen image push advertising their new products) to Samsung store taking over random shortcuts and containing nothing but shitware to put it nicely, inability to unlock phones, ludicrously bad security track record, all while trying to sell you a "premium" $1.5k device
Bixby is probably one of the worst things about Samsung devices. I would take Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Clippy from Windows XP, literally any virtual assistant over Bixby. I don't even have negative experiences using Bixby -- but Samsung's UX with Bixby is more irritating than any other virtual assistant I have ever come across -- and I hate all of them.
Nice to see that they are actually trying now, looks like only the last two flagship models covered (more or less? Galaxy S22, S22+, S22 Ultra, Galaxy S21, S21+, S21 Ultra, S21 FE). My unpatched experience is around the S10 line. It appears they just skipped to 20s for model #'s right after.
This might actually be part of the reason, interesting. Is this common in the states?
The Samsung line are the only carrier (full purchased, unlocked, not leased though) provided phones I've used. Pixel and iPhone bought from source directly.
Samsung phones get 3+1 updates. Regarding bloatware, there are few un-installable apps, but I am able to change launcher/SMS/assistant app to something much better of my choice. I don't think same can be done in iPhone.
Well the iOS is so efficient in memory management that every new version of OS they release will run reasonably well on the older phone that Apple supports. Generally iPhone gives 4-5 years of support.
After they were caught for slowing down older devices for years [full disclosure of course].
Android has it's issues, but phone prices should be going downward over time, not up. The core components of most competing phones are mostly made in the same factories now.
Adding my anecdote: I bought an iPhone X used in 2019, after being an Android user for a decade. It replaced a Pixel XL that I had for a couple of years (received new as a warranty exchange for a faulty Nexus 6P), but which was already going out of security updates.
I had the battery of my iPhone X replaced at an Apple store a couple of months ago, restoring it to essentially as-new condition. And given Apple's track record of OS updates, I expect it to be supported for some time to come.
That combination of first-party repair options and long OS update support gives iOS the edge over just about every Android manufacturer, IME.
The cheapest android options are borderline a scam.
They cant even run the OS. I switched from Android (Galaxy) to iPhone and now just recently my iPhone.
Unfortunately thanks to god awful 2fa systems, I decided to get a burner phone immediately, and decide on a new daily driver later that week.
Oh my God, this thing is bad. It was a $149 Nokia and the cheapest unlocked phone at the target next door.
I booted up this phone, and the first thing I see, after the splash screen before any interface is presented is a bunch of dialogs about system services ceasing. Then I tried to get a few apps I typically need for the day. Google play is telling me I don't have any space on this brand new phone. Turns out it's a known bug with a solution of "reboot". Ok whatever, but now apps are telling me I don't have a SIM which is pretty odd because the OS says otherwise and the web browser could access the network just fine. This was a reported issue, but with no states causes or fixed, I ended up using a different SIM and it worked. Now, I have most things installed and working, but for a very minimal definition of working. Constant lag when trying to do things as simple as switch between apps and media streams playing long after the app playing it was closed.
Also, this may just be me, but does anyone feel like Android UX has degraded. I never had isues navigating and using old Android. It took me a while to get used to iOS, and I definitely have my qualms, but the new gesture system is killing me. OS gestures and App specific gestures collide, leading to inconsistenties and annoyances.
I also find myself fat fingering buttons and other UI controls more, but that may be because a bigger screen.
That depends on a manufacturer. The dreaded Huawei made a lot of durable cheap phones. There are a few rivals with similar quality, who allow 3rd party OS.
But remember all the iPhones are relatively premium phones (starting about $430).
People argue about the Pixel and the Galaxy and such. That hardware is probably relatively reliable.
But there are also things like the BLU J9L and CellAlure Fashion C. Both are $100 new from BestBuy unlocked. Or the free-on-contract handout phones various carriers have that may be complete crap.
So the Android average may be relatively bad because it’s dragged down by bargain basement junk.
It turns out that when your company doesn't make any products that serve the budget end of the market, the average income of your userbase skews higher than companies that do serve that part of the market. Who knew?
That’s why the highest ranking phone under $500… is an iPhone? It honestly makes the most sense to buy the budget iPhone if you are on a budget. They’re supported much longer than other phones meaning not only are you not paying a whole lot up front, you’re also able to meaningfully use it much longer than competing android phones.
According to some napkin math, those $500 are a bit less than half the monthly federal minimal wage for 40h weeks. In the US, one of the richest countries. So that's not really "budget".
63 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadOf course, they may be wrong, since they didn't cite anything. But I would clearly be surprised to learn that the average Android phone sold isn't cheaper than the average iPhone sold.
Statista (2012-2018): https://www.statista.com/statistics/309472/global-average-se...
Some peer-reviewed paper (2007-2016): https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-average-selling-pric...
Shouldn't surprise anyone really, but iPhones are more expensive. Let's also consider the fact they have <14% [1] market share of smartphones yet are the most profitable and valuable company on Earth (excluding the one that's the extension of a monarchy/state) because of that product, which I think paints the picture.
1: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272307/market-share-fore...
I couldn’t tell from the article if the survey was US only or not but given they quote incomes in dollars I wouldn’t be surprised.
So 14% may not be relevant here.
I really would. In the US (where this survey is based) every two years you can get a free iPhone for switching carriers. Usually it's a year or so behind the curve. Carriers offer discounts on Android phones that lead to some being free as well, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me if a huge percentage of iPhones were subsidized by carriers to get business and were free to end users.
But these plans are much more expensive than equivalent plans with no phone. My aging iPhone is more or less due for a replacement, so I've been looking into those. Basically, you have to take on these plans for two years. And by the end of the two years, if you sum the difference between the plans, you usually end up paying more than if you bought the iPhone on your own.
Apple doesn't make a product that costs less than $430 (the SE). If you need a cheaper phone, you have to go Android. For lots of people, $400 is a lot of money (especially if you're also buying phones for your kids, who are likely to break whatever you buy them). In lots of families it's iphone for the grownups, android for the kids. And that's just within the US.
On a global scale, if you're selling phones outside of the US and European markets, some part of your product lineup has to be in the sub $200 range (in addition to the flagships you sell everywhere). For example, in India, Xiaomi sells the Redmi 9A for Rs 8,000 (about $100). They're competing with Samsung phones we don't see in the US, like the Galaxy M series, which are in the same price category. Those phones exist because (a) people need cell phones (especially in places where a phone might be your primary access to the internet) and (b) Apple is choosing not to go after those customers.
Even though Samsung makes a more expensive flagship, the average income of Android users will always be lower because (a) there are more poor people world-wide than rich people, and (b) Apple isn't making phones for poor people, while Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, etc. are. Apple's strategy is totally working for them (selling a luxury product at luxury prices works well) but it also means that most poor people (which is most people) won't ever have one, so the average income of an iOS user will always be higher (along with the other things that go along with a higher income, like higher spending).
We're not talking about a global scale. We're talking about a US-based survey about US-based people.
> Apple doesn't make a product that costs less than $430 (the SE). > $400 is a lot of money
Except every two years you can switch carriers and pay $0 out of pocket. Heck, if switch today you get a base iPhone 12 or iPhone 13 they don't even raise your contract vs BYOD. And if you want to pay for a more advanced iPhone (say, upgrade to the Max Pro for an additional $400), they finance that over 2 years.
> In lots of families it's iphone for the grownups, android for the kids.
That argues against what you're saying. Unless you think that kids as independent economic actors need to be accounted for separately than their parents, in a lot of families the people using Androids are children of parents rich enough to afford iPhones.
I know here in Australia the cheapest plans are prepaid SIM-only and the “free phone” contracts are the most expensive (because thousand dollar phones don’t grow on trees). We still have limited data plans in the lower price brackets.
As far as kids having iPhones vs androids, who is paying for those phones? Is it the parents? Do you think there might be some correlation between disposable income and the decision to get cheap androids versus expensive iPhones for the kids?
https://business.time.com/2012/06/26/orbitz-shows-higher-pri...
I recently saw someone denied check in when they only had their phone at the Shangri La in Sydney a year or so ago.
Thinking back, the only time I've used contactless to pay for a hotel was at the Six Senses in Fiji. Four Seasons & Ritz Reserve usually still do the whole folio presentation thing at check out. Most of the standard corporate hotels (Hyatt, IHG, Marriott) I've been to have let you check out in their app to the card on file.
That’s not what I was talking about. I was referring to Apple Pay early adopters per the context of the hotel comment I was replying to up above, not to the ubiquity of contactless terminals, which predates Apple Pay by quite a long time, as you correctly observe.
Anecdotal experience but I have always made significantly more money on iOS than android. My app doesn’t have any subscription or anything like that. It’s a one time one purchase which unlocks push notifications for when someone replies on HN, theme colours and fonts.
Both iOS and android apps are very similar in functionality but iOS just seems easier to get downloads and also users seem a lot more willing in buying the in app purchase.
This study is ridiculous. I have an old android because they took SD card support and headphone jacks out. I also spent money on a fairly expensive car, and have no aversion to buying tech that isn't disposable. just like many others. What puts me off apple devices most is probably this brand of elitism based on class and racial undertones. They are devices, not personality attributes by which people should be measured.
Pretty sure this is a joke.
What does this mean?
> They are devices, not personality attributes by which people should be measured.
Who is measuring people like this? How can “people” even be measured?
1) Will it continue to be legal?
2) Do I care about ethical concerns and does something being legal make it ethical?
Other people who are in a different position from you will be exploring this to determine if #1 should be changed.
You're just perpetuating the prejudice of minorities, even if your coming from a good place.
People with higher incomes probably buy more expensive phones. You already have their income on a loan application, so you don't need a blackbox NN model to confirm it.
Throwing in a bunch of corrolated features into a model won't help improve accuracy.
But if you throw in a bunch of weak features that together sum to a predictor of race (or other protected attributes), then aside from being grossly unethical, may well be illegal.
Contextually there is no reason to suspect that a phone operating system has anything to do with anyone's ability to repay a loan, anymore than the color of their car or their eye color.
Income and existing debt does, obviously.
What you don't want, and what is not legal, is denying a loan because of nonsense predictors that happen to be very strongly corrolated to race and very weakly corrolated to the ability to repay a loan.
If color of car, or operating system, is a strong predictor then the model is probably being overtrained on the training data and probably wouldn't generalise well in the real world.
[1] https://www.gwern.net/Everything
If you are not on the Pixel line, you're probably barely getting support measured in months. I absolutely despise most third party Android vendors. Samsung is one of the worst offenders for obnoxious unremovable bloatware, spam, etc. Rebadged AOSP browser vulnerable to everything. I don't think I've had LG phones supported for even one month after buying them. The Chinese phones are also wildly variable, like xiaomi not allowing bootloader unlocks without you signing up for their forum and begging them in a thread for months and it's entirely subjective.
I've had iPhone SE (1st gen) used for years, still running currently latest stable iOS and supported up to now.
Years ago I got a Samsung Galaxy 8 which came preloaded with CNN and Facebook. After uninstalling those apps, I poked around with adb and found services still running for CNN and Facebook. Made me also despise non-Pixel devices.
For a long while my daily driver was a Pixel 4 (probably my favorite phone hardware of all time) running GrapheneOS and then eventually CalyxOS. If I were to ever switch back to Android I would 100% go back to Pixel running CalyxOS. I absolutely loved that setup.
Things that keep me on iOS:
- On-demand VPN. I use Wireguard and it is unnoticeable when it automatically turns on when I leave home. I was able to use Tasker on Android to unreliably replicate this functionality.
- Apple Shortcuts. Android could really benefit from a first-party automation toolset, Tasker is still pretty mediocre compared to Shortcuts from my somewhat recent tinkering.
- Apple is a decent steward of data and I'm encouraged by the continuing privacy features they release (Private Relay is awesome). Despite this, I try to avoid the walled garden as much as possible. Homekit is one area where I've totally invested into but could switch that out with HA if I ever switched back to Android.
Things I miss from Android:
- Sideloading. F-Droid is the best -- I miss sideloading so much and hope that Apple is eventually forced into allowing users to actually sideload (not the temporary 7-day renewal you are forced to do). Because of the ability to sideload you can embrace an open source ecosystem so much more than you can on iOS.
- Custom, debloated roms.
Aside from those drawbacks I am a big fan of both Android and iOS and find very little difference in how useful each OS is to me.
EDIT: fixed formatting and minor typo
I don't have many apps and I tend to curate those that I do have, so in general not much of a heavy user such as full screen mobile gaming.
My most recent experience trying to use Google Play for a purchase was "INSERT US SIM CARD TO CONTINUE" after applying the code. While in US, on a US cell tower (on eSIM). This is after applying the code, so it's been consumed and is now useless and can't be used to buy anything either.
Samsung is still probably my top hated OEM. Everything from a Bixby key you can't disable and marketing you can't opt out of (mandatory push notifications from an un-uninstallable system app that deliver fullscreen image push advertising their new products) to Samsung store taking over random shortcuts and containing nothing but shitware to put it nicely, inability to unlock phones, ludicrously bad security track record, all while trying to sell you a "premium" $1.5k device
Bixby is probably one of the worst things about Samsung devices. I would take Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, Clippy from Windows XP, literally any virtual assistant over Bixby. I don't even have negative experiences using Bixby -- but Samsung's UX with Bixby is more irritating than any other virtual assistant I have ever come across -- and I hate all of them.
The Samsung line are the only carrier (full purchased, unlocked, not leased though) provided phones I've used. Pixel and iPhone bought from source directly.
So you need to replace iPhone's less often.
Android has it's issues, but phone prices should be going downward over time, not up. The core components of most competing phones are mostly made in the same factories now.
I had the battery of my iPhone X replaced at an Apple store a couple of months ago, restoring it to essentially as-new condition. And given Apple's track record of OS updates, I expect it to be supported for some time to come.
That combination of first-party repair options and long OS update support gives iOS the edge over just about every Android manufacturer, IME.
They cant even run the OS. I switched from Android (Galaxy) to iPhone and now just recently my iPhone.
Unfortunately thanks to god awful 2fa systems, I decided to get a burner phone immediately, and decide on a new daily driver later that week.
Oh my God, this thing is bad. It was a $149 Nokia and the cheapest unlocked phone at the target next door.
I booted up this phone, and the first thing I see, after the splash screen before any interface is presented is a bunch of dialogs about system services ceasing. Then I tried to get a few apps I typically need for the day. Google play is telling me I don't have any space on this brand new phone. Turns out it's a known bug with a solution of "reboot". Ok whatever, but now apps are telling me I don't have a SIM which is pretty odd because the OS says otherwise and the web browser could access the network just fine. This was a reported issue, but with no states causes or fixed, I ended up using a different SIM and it worked. Now, I have most things installed and working, but for a very minimal definition of working. Constant lag when trying to do things as simple as switch between apps and media streams playing long after the app playing it was closed.
Also, this may just be me, but does anyone feel like Android UX has degraded. I never had isues navigating and using old Android. It took me a while to get used to iOS, and I definitely have my qualms, but the new gesture system is killing me. OS gestures and App specific gestures collide, leading to inconsistenties and annoyances. I also find myself fat fingering buttons and other UI controls more, but that may be because a bigger screen.
But remember all the iPhones are relatively premium phones (starting about $430).
People argue about the Pixel and the Galaxy and such. That hardware is probably relatively reliable.
But there are also things like the BLU J9L and CellAlure Fashion C. Both are $100 new from BestBuy unlocked. Or the free-on-contract handout phones various carriers have that may be complete crap.
So the Android average may be relatively bad because it’s dragged down by bargain basement junk.
It sort of makes sense (especially given the crazy high average new car price) but I was still surprised it was that one-sided.
*Just one source but still: https://www.theverge.com/21420196/best-budget-smartphone-che...
Lots more Android phones out there than IPhones.