Hi Steve, thanks for clarifying.Yes appliances can last for 20 years or longer ( we still have our fridge that is now 30 years old) and we only replaced our CRT television after about 25 years because it became difficult to watch some films where there was a lot of small text on a display that was designed with a 4:3 aspect ratio in mind.The point I'm trying to make it that even if you keep tech running a long time after it stopped being sold, it won't be able to run newer applications that take advantage of improvements/advances in tech performance.A fridge fundamentally needs to keep stuff refrigerated. True, fridges can have plenty more bells and whistles these days, but keeping food refrigerated is still its raison d'etre.I'd suggest that for some people, the phone functionality of smartphones isn't actually the reason they have a smartphone. Sure they occasionally use their smart phone as a phone, but that's a very small proportion of the time they spend using their smartphone.For these people, a 10 year old smartphone won't cut the mustard because they want their tech to be able to run the most up to date programmes/apps.It's unrealistic to suggest that manufacturers shouldn't try to inprove the performance of their products, as they are businesses and if Apple say said they were going to not release their next iPhone for 3 years, you can bet they would lose massive market share to others e.g. Samsung who continue ot release new products. On the other hand, at the weekend a friend of mine was asking me about his phone, which he was happy with, and it was a 10 year old iPhoneSE. He uses it primarily as a phone and to take the occasional photos and he's happy with it.
Andrew Jones ● 3d