Should I be worried I am using iPhone 5s?

Engr Aamir Khan Niazi

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Apr 2, 2016
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US electronic giant Apple has said the iPhones have a life expectancy of three years and so does the Apple watch while AppleTV devices expire in four years.

In a recent update to its environmental policy, Apple addressed the question of how long an Apple device is expected to remain in use.

According to a report on Forbes.com, iPhone's productive life cycle will be up at the three-year mark, as will the Apple Watch while your OS X -- a series of operating systems developed and marketed by Apple Inc. -- and AppleTV devices will get an extra twelve months to reach the four-year mark.

"To model customer use, we measure the power consumed by a product while it is running in a simulated scenario," Apple was quoted as saying.

"Daily usage patterns are specific to each product and are a mixture of actual and modelled customer-use data. Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices," the company added.

These numbers are in harmony with Apple's strategy of rolling out operating system updates to older devices and the hardware offered to replace older units.

For example, the recently launched iPhone SE, which is designed similar to iPhone 5S, can be upgraded from new iOS 9 to the next three years of iOS updates -- something the iPhone 5S would be unable to do.
 

TripleOne

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I wouldn't be too worried and it's best to not think about it too much. These devices are meant to be used anyways.
 

Branta

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In a recent update to its environmental policy, Apple addressed the question of how long an Apple device is expected to remain in use.
[snip]
"To model customer use, we measure the power consumed by a product while it is running in a simulated scenario...
[snip]
"Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices," the company added.

So what Apple is discussing in the report is environmental policy and total power consumption during first ownership of a device. This has no relevance to the practical service lifetime of the products, and it is deceptive for other sites to imply there is any relationship to ongoing support and availability of software upgrades.

In reality the older phones will continue to work for many years but they are often less capable of supporting later software versions. It is unreasonable to expect a manufacturer to restrict future development and features simply to retain compatibility with a declining pool of legacy hardware.

I suspect Forbes is using this as click bait.
 

Ledsteplin

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The batteries do wear out after 2 or so years, depending on amount of usage. Average use should go 3 years or longer. The home and power buttons sometimes need replacing.