Iphone4 Dead After 3 years

[98elise]

Jon1967x said:

Grumpy old git said:

Jon1967x said:

What's the relevance of the price? Why would it be acceptable for a £200 Samsung to fail quicker and should a diamond encrusted iphone costing several k last longer?

There's also a lot of assumption on here that retailers are doing things because it's the law and not out of goodwill, customer retention or because it's cheaper than defending in court. How many cases of 3 year old iPhones failing have been tested in court? You could look at how quickly hmrc allows you to write off electrical items to see a (reasonable) view of life span.

The relevance of the price is that Apple in particular sell themselves as a premium brand. It's entirely reasonable to expect something that costs 3 times as much to be of a higher quality than the cheaper alternative, you'd expect higher quality components to be used as that's exactly what Apple sell themselves on quality and design.

I don't think I'd expect much of a phone after 3 years but I've had success getting things replaced or repaired for free out of warranty. Whether that's retailers misunderstanding the SOGA, goodwill, or something else doesn't really matter to me.

A premium brand would lead to assume better customer service and maybe more goodwill I'm not convinced it changes how long you can reasonably expect it to last. A phone is a phone whoever makes it, there's nothing in apples promotion that says it's more reliable than the next make.

I agree. With apple products you are paying extra for the brand, not the quality of the componets. The components essentially the same, with the same reliability. What you can hope is that the returns and repairs policy of a premium brand is better than that of an average brand.

[uuf361]

I have a 4.5 year old iPhone 4 - it still works, the battery doesn't last as long as it once did (but I partly put that down to more power hungry apps of late).........it's not scratched, and has only ever had a bumper on for protection.....

It will get changed for a 6 soon as it's nearly full up and I'm still running iOS 6.

[JustinP1]

98elise said:

With apple products you are paying extra for the brand, not the quality of the componets. The components essentially the same, with the same reliability.

I'm typing an a Macbook Pro which has an outer and chassis laser milled from a single solid piece of aluminium. The Retina display is made specifically for the Macbook Pro.


The R&D alone for those type of things make up a fair chunk of the cost, including setting up the laser machining to make the laptop bodies. Then, when I plug it in, it does just work as it should, and it backs up itself to another Apple device automatically for security.

The quality and components are significantly better, and you get what you pay for. I'm not paying for a brand, I'm paying for something which is functionally different, and ends up costing me (and my business) less in the long run.

[SistersofPercy]

JustinP1 said:

I'm typing an a Macbook Pro which has an outer and chassis laser milled from a single solid piece of aluminium. The Retina display is made specifically for the Macbook Pro.


The R&D alone for those type of things make up a fair chunk of the cost, including setting up the laser machining to make the laptop bodies. Then, when I plug it in, it does just work as it should, and it backs up itself to another Apple device automatically for security.

The quality and components are significantly better, and you get what you pay for. I'm not paying for a brand, I'm paying for something which is functionally different, and ends up costing me (and my business) less in the long run.

This really.
My MBP has been running faultlessly for 5 years. It's never had a virus, never needed reinstalls etc. In the time I've owned it my other half has gone through 2 laptops, an Acer and a Toshiba. Cheaper end ones admittedly at around the £400 mark but whilst he's been playing around on those my Mac just keeps going.
I had an original white macbook some years ago and gave it to sons girlfriend. Thats still going strong at 8 years old.

I'm not a fan of their phones however. I did buy iPhone right up to 4s and then moved over to android.

[Kateg28]

uuf361 said:

I have a 4.5 year old iPhone 4 - it still works, the battery doesn't last as long as it once did (but I partly put that down to more power hungry apps of late).........it's not scratched, and has only ever had a bumper on for protection.....

It will get changed for a 6 soon as it's nearly full up and I'm still running iOS 6.

Can we play top trumps? I have a 5.5 year old 3GS also running iOS6. It simply won't die so I can't upgrade (it feels wrong to put it out to retirement when everything works fine).

[soad]

DJFish said:

If iProducts lasted more than a couple of years, how would they get you to buy the latest version?

Because new is better.

[Jon1967x]

SistersofPercy said:

JustinP1 said:

I'm typing an a Macbook Pro which has an outer and chassis laser milled from a single solid piece of aluminium. The Retina display is made specifically for the Macbook Pro.


The R&D alone for those type of things make up a fair chunk of the cost, including setting up the laser machining to make the laptop bodies. Then, when I plug it in, it does just work as it should, and it backs up itself to another Apple device automatically for security.

The quality and components are significantly better, and you get what you pay for. I'm not paying for a brand, I'm paying for something which is functionally different, and ends up costing me (and my business) less in the long run.

This really.
My MBP has been running faultlessly for 5 years. It's never had a virus, never needed reinstalls etc. In the time I've owned it my other half has gone through 2 laptops, an Acer and a Toshiba. Cheaper end ones admittedly at around the £400 mark but whilst he's been playing around on those my Mac just keeps going.
I had an original white macbook some years ago and gave it to sons girlfriend. Thats still going strong at 8 years old.

I'm not a fan of their phones however. I did buy iPhone right up to 4s and then moved over to android.

I think consumer law in terms of reasonable life expectancy disregards the perceived manufacturer quality which was the original point - but yes, some of them do seem to go on and on.. iphone 4... got on release day (timing was impeccable as it was the day I was due an upgrade), used since apart from a year using a samsung.. and only put out to grass when I bought a 6 last week.

That said, the windows computer I'm typing this from is now 6 years old and I wish it would die so I could get something different! (ps.. better take a quick backup before it decides to do just that!). I've got TVs that I wish would do the same.

Is it me or does stuff not go wrong like it used to? Phones failing is in part due to the life they lead.

[JustinP1]

Jon1967x said:

I think consumer law in terms of reasonable life expectancy disregards the perceived manufacturer quality which was the original point

It does take into account the price paid as a metric of what should be expected of the product.

[Durzel]

SistersofPercy said:

JustinP1 said:

I'm typing an a Macbook Pro which has an outer and chassis laser milled from a single solid piece of aluminium. The Retina display is made specifically for the Macbook Pro.


The R&D alone for those type of things make up a fair chunk of the cost, including setting up the laser machining to make the laptop bodies. Then, when I plug it in, it does just work as it should, and it backs up itself to another Apple device automatically for security.

The quality and components are significantly better, and you get what you pay for. I'm not paying for a brand, I'm paying for something which is functionally different, and ends up costing me (and my business) less in the long run.

This really.
My MBP has been running faultlessly for 5 years. It's never had a virus, never needed reinstalls etc. In the time I've owned it my other half has gone through 2 laptops, an Acer and a Toshiba. Cheaper end ones admittedly at around the £400 mark but whilst he's been playing around on those my Mac just keeps going.
I had an original white macbook some years ago and gave it to sons girlfriend. Thats still going strong at 8 years old.

I'm not a fan of their phones however. I did buy iPhone right up to 4s and then moved over to android.

I like Macs, I work on a new iMac and have just recently bought a new fully loaded MacBook Pro for personal use.

That said it is wrong to state or even hold to the belief that the components used in them are naturally more resilient than other brands. A lot of components in these things aren't even manufactured by Apple at all, and are shared with other manufacturers. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that they have a failure rate in line with other brands, in fact when I was in the process of selling my 2008 MBP on eBay the number of similar auctions that mentioned "Superdrive no longer working", or that it had been replaced, or whatever was noteworthy.

There is a danger I think in looking at purely the aesthetics of something and deluding oneself that it somehow defies the normal rules of hardware failure rates, hard drives etc that have a finite operating lifetime, etc. Apple kit does look nice, the single piece of milled aluminium and Retina display does exude quality (so does the price tag to be honest) but it's smoke and mirrors really - the innards aren't going to be radically different to a similar spec Dell, etc.

Apple are very good at engendering this feeling of components being somehow special because the whole customer experience - from purchasing, opening the box and using OSX feels elevated from the proles who suffer Windows, etc. You need only look at what they charge for memory upgrades. As I write this I have 32GB of Crucial RAM in my iMac, that would've cost hundreds via Apple, and shock horror it hasn't exploded. Were I to buy into the lie wholesale I would've specced it from new. Nowadays you don't have much of a choice anyway - my MacBook Pro is completely unserviceable by end users, with anything one might want to upgrade soldered in.

So yeah - Apples are nice to use, nice to look at and hold their value well (I got £450 for my 6 year old MBP), but they don't exist on a transcendental plane where components don't fail or are "better" (by what metric) than other non-Apple kit.

[JustinP1]

Durzel said:

Nowadays you don't have much of a choice anyway - my MacBook Pro is completely unserviceable by end users, with anything one might want to upgrade soldered in.

Hmm... That link is instructions of how an end user can replace the SSD....

I know the RAMs fixed though. That's not though bloodymindedness though, that's simply because that's the only way to fit in all those gubbins into that space. If you start having user removable batteries, cased SSDs, and removable RAM slots, you need to have a much larger and certainly thicker case. That's the trade off.

Apart from that though, I agree with what you say. They don't make every component and the standard stuff is other manufacturers. The point being made is that their stuff is generally highly reliable, and where it is not, the fact that the item is sold at a higher price does impact on recourse under the SoGA.

[Durzel]

JustinP1 said:

Hmm... That link is instructions of how an end user can replace the SSD....

I know the RAMs fixed though. That's not though bloodymindedness though, that's simply because that's the only way to fit in all those gubbins into that space. If you start having user removable batteries, cased SSDs, and removable RAM slots, you need to have a much larger and certainly thicker case. That's the trade off.

Apart from that though, I agree with what you say. They don't make every component and the standard stuff is other manufacturers. The point being made is that their stuff is generally highly reliable, and where it is not, the fact that the item is sold at a higher price does impact on recourse under the SoGA.

Good points well made.

I'll concede that you can replace the SSD, though it's a lot harder now than it used to be. To be honest, the guide in question talks about having to be careful not to touch the logic board and I'd have grave concerns about even unscrewing the back (proprietary Pentalobe screws naturally) on something so tightly packed, but that's just me. I don't think I'd ever be comfortable doing it even from a "it'll probably be ok" point of view.