Longevity of Samsung phones

[BrianDH]

Hello everyone. I've been hearing quite a lot here and there about Samsung phones not being very durable. Mainly it seems to be about any Samsung phone except the S and Note lines.

I tried doing a bit of research about it but I haven't found anything convincing besides random comments of people saying such things.

 

What do you think? Do you have or had budget or mid-range Samsung phones that lasted you a long time? Or that broke/slowed down after a not so long time?

I'm currently thinking of buying one of the new A series but I'm still not fully sure because of this "reputation" Samsung seems to have.

 

I'd love to hear from people who use or used those phones.

 

Thank you for reading

[emosun]

mine is 6 years old and works fine , course its better than the newer ones so your millage may vary 

[BrianDH]

2 minutes ago, emosun said:

mine is 6 years old and works fine , course its better than the newer ones so your millage may vary 

Which one is it? That's a very long time for a phone these days

[emosun]

Just now, BrianDH said:

Which one is it? That's a very long time for a phone these days

it kinda doesn't matter as you wont be buying one new these days. lol . you'll be stuck with the new phone which i havent heard to many good things about

[Zando_]

I had an S6, gave it to a friend a while ago and I'm pretty sure it's still kicking. It's slow af but it still works. I've got a few iPhones back the the 4 (from 2011, 8 years ago) that are still kicking. Phones are more durable than people give them credit for, if you aren't bouncing them off the pavement for lols they last quite a while. 

[BrianDH]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

I had an S6, gave it to a friend a while ago and I'm pretty sure it's still kicking. It's slow af but it still works. I've got a few iPhones back the the 4 (from 2011, 8 years ago) that are still kicking. Phones are more durable than people give them credit for, if you aren't bouncing them off the pavement for lols they last quite a while. 

The slow downs are my biggest worries. I'm very careful with stuff so I'm not very worried about dropping it or things like that (even though we can all have accidents). I'm more concerned about the phone slowing down after 1 year or so, which it seems to be the problem of many people. All I want really is a phone that can last me 3 years when it comes to decent performance; I'm not even a heavy user either...

[Zando_]

7 minutes ago, BrianDH said:

The slow downs are my biggest worries. I'm very careful with stuff so I'm not very worried about dropping it or things like that (even though we can all have accidents). I'm more concerned about the phone slowing down after 1 year or so, which it seems to be the problem of many people. All I want really is a phone that can last me 3 years when it comes to decent performance; I'm not even a heavy user either...

iPhones tend to last a good while performance wise, even my 6 Plus is still usable and it finally got dropped from iOS support (tis from 2014, supports iOS up to 12, only 6S and newer do iOS 13). Recent iOS updates have actually improved performance on older devices because they're optimized better, vs back with iOS 9 on the 4S and iOS 7 on the 4, that makes both those devices crawl (4S is slightly more usable than the 4 though). 

I can't speak too much for android because my only experience has been with an S6 that was quite slow, noticeably slower than my 6 Plus later in its life. New devices boast a lot more performance though, and if you pick the right ones, you can run custom ROMs once the OEM stops supporting them with OS and security updates, or if they just don't send them out fast enough for you (heck, some of them straight up skip security updates or don't provide new OS versions till way later than the good ones). 

Basically with Apple you're at the mercy of what they choose to do with the OS, thankfully thus far they've slowly improved performance on older devices, and have a track record of supporting devices for 3-5 years or sometimes more (My mid-2012 MacBook Pro runs macOS Catalina which came out this year, that's 7 years of OS support so far). 

With Androids, provided you pick the right one you can root them and find a custom ROM and pretty much do whatever you want with it, regardless of whether the OEM does a good job of updating them or not. IDK how performance scales on older devices though, even with custom ROMs and tweaks, my S6 sadly had no ROMs available due to the version it was, so I was never able to mess with that. 

[BrianDH]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

iPhones tend to last a good while performance wise, even my 6 Plus is still usable and it finally got dropped from iOS support (tis from 2014, supports iOS up to 12, only 6S and newer do iOS 13). Recent iOS updates have actually improved performance on older devices because they're optimized better, vs back with iOS 9 on the 4S and iOS 7 on the 4, that makes both those devices crawl (4S is slightly more usable than the 4 though). 

I can't speak too much for android because my only experience has been with an S6 that was quite slow, noticeably slower than my 6 Plus later in its life. New devices boast a lot more performance though, and if you pick the right ones, you can run custom ROMs once the OEM stops supporting them with OS and security updates, or if they just don't send them out fast enough for you (heck, some of them straight up skip security updates or don't provide new OS versions till way later than the good ones). 

Basically with Apple you're at the mercy of what they choose to do with the OS, thankfully thus far they've slowly improved performance on older devices, and have a track record of supporting devices for 3-5 years or sometimes more (My mid-2012 MacBook Pro runs macOS Catalina which came out this year, that's 7 years of OS support so far). 

With Androids, provided you pick the right one you can root them and find a custom ROM and pretty much do whatever you want with it, regardless of whether the OEM does a good job of updating them or not. IDK how performance scales on older devices though, even with custom ROMs and tweaks, my S6 sadly had no ROMs available due to the version it was, so I was never able to mess with that. 

Are OS updates that crucial to keep the performance of the phone up?

Ideally, I'd want to avoid having to resort to rooting since I'm not that savvy (even though I could learn I guess). I just want something that works without having to do too much tweaking.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, BrianDH said:

Are OS updates that crucial to keep the performance of the phone up?

Ideally, I'd want to avoid having to resort to rooting since I'm not that savvy (even though I could learn I guess). I just want something that works without having to do too much tweaking.

OS updates patch security flaws, add new features, are compatible with more apps (IDK about Android, but Apple's own apps only ever support the current OS, and most app makers do too, at best they support back to iOS 11 or 12), and can sometimes boost performance if they have optimizations for older devices. 

You'd need an Android boi to tell you how using stock droid on various devices goes for the long term. I weighed Android vs iOS when I got my current phone (iPhone X), picked iOS because I liked some little details better, and in my experience with Apple they just work out of the box and keep working for a good while (new macs have been having issues though, but I still run an older one so I've avoided those problems). 

[Brooksie359]

I have a Samsung j7 that is still alive and well after 2.5 years. Got it for 260 after my s7 fell into a river never to be found again. The phone is slower than it was when I first got it but it still is fairly fast and it doesn't bother me at all. I can still browse the web just fine and use it for texting and calls. I dont watch videos on my phone often so i can't comment on how well it does in that respect. I orginally was planning on using the j7 for a short period of time before getting a better one but then I realized that modern budget smart phones are more than fast enough for my needs and getting a 800 dollar phone just to surf the web use GPS and make calls and text was a waste. 

[BrianDH]

I do expect my phone to get slower over time as apps get heavier, consume more RAM and all that. That's something I have to accept. The issue would be if the phone, for some reason, would get "slower than normal" with normal being that apps get heavier and more resource hungry as I said before.

My sister has a J5 and recently it glitched out and the top of the screen where you have the notifications got duplicated, it's very weird. She tried rebooting and some other things but nothing seems to fix it.

My mum has a J3 and the screen died while the phone was inside her purse on her way home. Maybe it got smashed by something else in the purse, I don't know...

 

Good to know yours working well even after more than 2 years, @Brooksie359, thanks for sharing!

 

[SnowTech]

Well, heres what i can say:

 

One of my friends has a Galaxy A50s, and my other has a Galaxy S7 Edge.

Both of them are working excellent, but again, the Galaxy A50s is pretty new. About the S7 Edge, it is not in the best condition, but i think its more that my friend wont keep dropping it by accident, so from what i know, the only problem with Samsung phones longevity, is that they only give you 2 Years of updates, so that means the A50s's last update will be prepusably Android 11, if the system wont change, because what i have heard is that Google are starting to give you updates using the Play Store from Android 10, but i wouldn't be to confident about that. The S7 Edge on the other hand, wich is a pretty new device, only got through to Android 8.0 (Oreo i'm pretty sure?). But, unlike iOS devices, you can root your device and receive almost unlimited updates. So Software Updates is only a problem if you really need your warranty.

[BrianDH]

On 11/8/2019 at 6:21 PM, SnowTech said:

Well, heres what i can say:

 

One of my friends has a Galaxy A50s, and my other has a Galaxy S7 Edge.

Both of them are working excellent, but again, the Galaxy A50s is pretty new. About the S7 Edge, it is not in the best condition, but i think its more that my friend wont keep dropping it by accident, so from what i know, the only problem with Samsung phones longevity, is that they only give you 2 Years of updates, so that means the A50s's last update will be prepusably Android 11, if the system wont change, because what i have heard is that Google are starting to give you updates using the Play Store from Android 10, but i wouldn't be to confident about that. The S7 Edge on the other hand, wich is a pretty new device, only got through to Android 8.0 (Oreo i'm pretty sure?). But, unlike iOS devices, you can root your device and receive almost unlimited updates. So Software Updates is only a problem if you really need your warranty.

Hey thank you for your reply!

 

To be honest, two OS updates doesn't sound THAT bad since then after it stopped receiving updates you can still use it for a bit longer before the phone starts to become unusable, right?

 

Also, I would probably not care too much about any warranty anymore after I had a phone for more than 3 years.

I'm planning on rooting my existing phone once I get a new one soon and see how complicated or easy that is and how much of a difference it can make and then use that to decide whether I'll root my current daily driver or not.

[SnowTech]

5 hours ago, BrianDH said:

To be honest, two OS updates doesn't sound THAT bad since then after it stopped receiving updates you can still use it for a bit longer before the phone starts to become unusable, right?

 

Ya, and that means 2 Years of updates, wich means only 1 Year without a update (If you are a normal person wich switches a phone every 3 Years or so...) and the phone should stay usable for like 3-4 Years after the update, even do you wont have access to the new features & probably most new applications, the phone should be usable.

5 hours ago, BrianDH said:

Also, I would probably not care too much about any warranty anymore after I had a phone for more than 3 years.

I'm planning on rooting my existing phone once I get a new one soon and see how complicated or easy that is and how much of a difference it can make and then use that to decide whether I'll root my current daily driver or not

Rooting is mediumly complicated from what i know (Even do i don't root my devices because after that 2 Years i mostly replace the device, and nothing else is really important for me so much for me to root), the root gives you almost unlimited supply of updates, so yea.. Software Longevity, even people say that Apple is better in that, is great (Because you cant root iDevices)

[Mr. Brokeman]

I just can't kill my 2017 Samsung J7 Perx. 5 years later, it's still fast and reliable. I've come to appreciate the standard 16:9 form factor as well. The the only thing I've done to it is replace the battery... and factory reset it 3 times haha.

[Commodus]

10 hours ago, Mr. Brokeman said:

I just can't kill my 2017 Samsung J7 Perx. 5 years later, it's still fast and reliable. I've come to appreciate the standard 16:9 form factor as well. The the only thing I've done to it is replace the battery... and factory reset it 3 times haha.

A 2.5-year necro thread! Still, probably relevant, and glad to hear your phone is holding up well... although I suspect the factory resets and a fresh battery helped!

 

The timing is also appropriate, as Samsung has come a long way even from late 2019. It used to be that Samsung abandoned phones as quickly as possible and made you wait several months to get the latest Android release. Now, it's promising OS updates for longer than Google (for virtually all its recent phones, no less) and usually starts updating phones within three months of the initial Android version launch. Given the quirks that seem to plague Pixel phones for their first few months, I'd almost rather get an S22 than a Pixel 6 if I were in the market.