where I want to at least keep tabs on the iPhone Experience™ and check it out every now and then (and also some apps are simply Better on iPhone, if only because the devs are dipshits) even if I have no real desire to use an iPhone as my actual daily phone. For this purpose I've had a 128GB iPhone 6S sitting in my bedside drawer for a few years. I got it on Swappa for I don't remember how much, and it's worked reliably well - one can tell it's been opened up, there's dust in the camera lens and the volume buttons are uneven, but none of that matters for a non-daily-driver device.
Well, the 6S just recently passed beyond support, which, hey, if you're going to give Apple credit for anything, they supported the 6S range for six years! It launched in 2015 with iOS 9 and Apple updated it all the way to iOS 15! SIX MAJOR VERSION UPGRADES? No Android manufacturer has come close. My 6S is also showing its age in other ways. It takes a few minutes after booting up to become usable. If you're updating apps in the background, all other tasks slow to a crawl. Some actions inexplicably take seconds to register. The battery is just about *gone, it'll go from 100% to 90% in 5 minutes, from 90% to 60% in 10, and then hover around 30% for like an hour. It couldn't leave the house if it wanted to, it wouldn't last half a day.
Which all adds up to why the brainworms are telling me to spend $2,000 on one of the new iPhone 15 models when they launch. You can put it on a credit card and pay it off in a couple months, the brainworms tell me. Besides, you know it'll get updates for like 5 years minimum. It's totally a worthwhile expense for a phone you'll keep in a drawer for most of its life. It could also be an Emergency Backup Phone if your main one breaks!
I slam my head repeatedly against a brick wall but I cannot silence the voices. My hand trembles over the Checkout button. You can even buy the fast charger and the USB-C to 3.5mm dongle. You can use it as a really nice camcorder, it shoots in ProRes, and with the USB 3 transfer speeds it won't be abysmal to copy the files off. You could even record directly to external storage.
I still my hand and take deep breaths. I can control the unreasonable urges. But for how much longer?
At least until after I first spend $2,000 on a Pixel 8 Pro when those launch, I need a new daily driver phone, my LG G7 is loooooong in the tooth.