Do smartphones have a life of 2yrs max?

[Theas18]

Having been part of the original " iOS fucked my phone" angry gang when my 4 was nearly killed by an update ( incredible slow etc, dd kept it for a year after though so it would have been nearly 3) it's alk hapoened again with ios8 and the 4s.

HOWEVER dh who is a late entrant to the smartphone market with a nexus4 . The latest lollipop updates have buggered that too basically ( and it's not just slow, it's not ringing and important things, and the outlook app is buggy etc).

My feeling now is that at 2yrs old the computing power is so outdated we can't expect phones to update any further and handle the software requirements. What do you think?

If so why can't the Giants of technology maintain different levels of iOS for each level of phone eg ios7 for 4s and a bank of iOS compatible apps to keep those phones running . Yes it won't be up to date, but you'll still have a working phone...

Cynical as it sounds it's so we have to buy the latest phone instead of keeping the one we have. It's the same with games consoles, new one comes out and they slowly phase out games for the older version.

I had an iPhone 4 since it came out in 2010 and it is still working fine & coped with all the things I used it for, DH bought me a 6 for a present last week so I've just transferred across.
So nope I think that's not necessarily true.

A tip I picked up for the Nexus 4 ,after it updates to lolipop,factory restore the phone,re-enter all your details,then re-download apps from the Play store,this has worked for some as apps are written differently for lollipop than they were for kit-kat.

I've had my iPhone 4S fore 3years and its fine, upgraded to iOS 8 OK. I hope it lasts for at least another year or two.

You're absolutely right

Sure , they'll limp on for several more years if you're lucky but generally speaking , they like you to upgrade every couple of years