KPH tech blog

Today, January 9, 2017, marks the ten year anniversary since Steve Jobs revealed Apple’s new revolutionary device: the iPhone. Yep, that’s right: on January 9, 2007, the iPhone became a thing. That’s ten years ago, and I still remember the day I watched my TV as people queued up for miles to get their hands on one, while news reporters remained puzzled as to why they were queuing.

In the technology world, even one year is considered a long time, a point that Microsoft made very clear when they ditched the traditional desktop Operating System layout from Windows 7, Vista and XP, for an entirely new but disastrous approach on Windows 8.

There are many smartphones out there that are now considered old, both because of their age and the vast improvements in technology since their launch. They still work as they did when they were released, but have since been bettered by newer, flashier, speedier devices. And, compared to these newer phones, the older ones will generally be cheaper.

This got me thinking: is it possible to own an older device, and still get a fantastic smartphone experience comparable to that of a new flagship smartphone released in 2016-17? This would be an important consideration in the search for my next phone, and so, to answer this question, I thought of a few topics of discussion, including the initial price, app support, OS updates and system loading times.

Price and Availability

For many people on a budget, getting a second-hand phone is the only way to own a smartphone. In your local CEX or CashConverters, for example, you’ll find a range of older phones that people have sold, and which they are now selling for very reasonable prices.

Just recently, CEX were offering a 32GB iPhone 4S (released in October 2011) for just £90, with an 8GB model available at £75. That leaves you with enough breathing room to spend a few extra quid on a SIM-only contract. The latest iPhone 7, however, comes in at a whopping £599 for the 32GB model (colour: black). That’s a difference of £500 between the iPhone 4S and iPhone 7 – the same money you could’ve spent on an all-in monthly contract with unlimited data, calls and texts with the 4S.

Updates & Tech Support

This is a huge issue when it comes to older phones. The older the device, the less tech support you will have. That’s also true of updates to the Operating System – basically, avoid older devices if new features is top of your list.

Most phones have a lifecycle of just two years, meaning that they’ll have OS updates and security patches for 2 years from launch. For the recently released iPhone 7, that could mean a product lifecycle expiry date of September 2018, unless Apple were to support it with further OS updates beyond this date like they have done before.

The iPhone 4S that I saw at CEX, for example, is upgradable but also limited to iOS 9.3.5, as are the iPhone 5, 5S and 5C. The older iPhone 4, however, is limited to iOS 7.1.2, with the 3GS (released in June 2009) is limited to iOS 6.1.6. That means potential security flaws remain unpatched, but if you’re on a budget with no breathing room, you may have little choice in the matter.

App Versions, and Minimum Required Operating Systems

While we’re on the subject of tech support and updates, we rely heavily on app updates to receive the latest and greatest features, but many apps aren’t supported for older devices. At least, that’s what the app stores will have you believe.

Many an app will list a minimum-required OS version in order to install it on your phone. Take Feedly, the RSS reader as an example: Version 36.0.0 on the Apple App Store requires “iOS 7.0 or later,” while Version 34.0.0 Google Play Store requires Android “4.1 and up.” This means you’ll run into problems when trying to download and install Feedly on an iPhone running iOS 6 or below, such as the iPhone 3GS, or on an Android phone running Android 2.2, such as the HTC Wildfire (a device I also own).

Although app support has generally been okay for older Android phones in my experience, it hasn’t for older iPhones. But, there is a solution – technically speaking, it’s still possible to download the app for an older iPhone running iOS 6 or below. I certainly used this trick on my old 4th Gen iPod Touch, which was limited to iOS 6, when I had to perform a factory reset – iOS 7 had been released, and all of Apple’s default apps had also been updated, meaning many of them including iBooks no longer worked, or simply couldn’t be downloaded to my iPod Touch, even though they’d worked before the factory reset.

Basically, you buy or download the app through iTunes on your computer, and then try to download the app via the ‘Purchased’ list from inside the iTunes or App Store apps on your phone. You should see a prompt to check if an earlier version of the app is available – if there is, it will download this version to your phone.

It should be also noted that this trick doesn’t always work and relies on the app’s age: if it’s a fairly new app released for iOS 9 or iOS 10, this won’t work, but if the app in question has been around for a while since the days of iOS 6, such as Facebook or Twitter, it might work. However, if there were any bugs or glitches with this app that were fixed in a later version, these will remain unfixed or unpatched. It means this isn’t a great solution if you do have an older device, but it’s certainly a workaround for a phone that was once possibly considered a flagship, such as the iPhone 4S.

OS support is important, especially as companies wipe support for older devices in order to move forward with their product or service. WhatsApp, for example, announced in a blog that it would end support for older devices by the end of 2016 – specifically, the iPhone 3GS and iOS 6, Windows Phone 7, and devices running Android versions 2.1 and 2.2. The reason cited in the International Business Times was a “lack of functionality to support the upcoming features.”

Potentially, this could be disastrous for those people who use WhatsApp regularly. Although I’m not one of those users, I have used WhatsApp in the past and may use it again as a journalist, so an announcement of this sort is very concerning. It also casts a shadow over older phones – if I want the smartphone experience to be as good as it can be, times have changed and technology has moved on, and I need to try to keep up with the movement.

To take a statement that WhatsApp put at the end of that blog, and apply it to the mobile industry in general, maybe it’s best to upgrade to a newer phone to continue using all of the services and apps we’ve come to love and rely on. My own experiences with my HTC Desire Eye, released in October 2014, is certainly proof of that.

Loading times (boot/power on/apps)

An issue with older phones is the loading times, of both the phone during the initial startup or boot, and how long it takes to load apps.