EDIT: Getting a ton of great responses thanks everyone <3 Once this is up for 24 hours or so I’ll make another edit summarizing everyone’s recs for future reference. Keep ‘em coming!
TL;DR Have any recs for non-Apple phones/laptops that have lifespans of at least 5+ years?
Wanted to get everyone’s opinion on want brands/products have worked for them. I’m lightly techy and not afraid to put some effort in, but also don’t want to build everything from scratch. I think Apple’s products are often anti-consumer, anti-privacy, anti-yadda yadda yadda.
At the same time, with both phones and laptops, I’ve found my Apple products to have double or even triple the lifespan of any other brand. I did my research and bought a $1000+ HP laptop with Ryzen7 a little over two years ago, and due to a flaw in the hinge which is now subject to a class action lawsuit, the screen has cracked and it’s mostly unusable. Other purchase haven’t failed quite that dramatically but don’t tend to last as long. On the other hand, my or my partner’s old Macbooks and iPhones are easily seeing 5+ years of use in addition to software updates.
So let me know what’s worked for you!
Thinkbook t14
I mean, if we’re going by anecdotes, on average, most gear will last 5 years more often than not. I still have my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 that’s still working, just that it’s sorely obsolete on the software side. Another even more extreme example: I also have a Samsung i600 that’s also still working, and only recently has the battery started showing signs of bloating. That’s a 15+ year-old phone!
The several thousand laptops the charity I worked for (and still volunteer for sometimes) give out yearly also indicate that plenty of laptops will make it past the 5 year mark. Until last year we were still giving out 6th gen Intel laptops.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Whack LineageOS on that puppy!
For phones, new pixel with grapheneos.
The new pixel phones have 5 year support windows now.
Thanks, Pixel+GrapheneOS has been the most tempting iOS alternative for me so far.
Thanks, I’ll adjust my claim to 5 years. I must have misremembered re the longevity of security updates.
Linux phones should allow for much higher longetivity than Android or iOS devices as Linux phone OSes update more like desktop OSes than mobile, in that the device-specific parts are relatively small instead of having the entire OS image be custom made for a specific device. As long as your device has mainline Linux support it will continue to receive updates pretty much forever, or until Linux drops the architecture (unlikely any time soon for ARM, especially ARM64).
People praise Apple for 6 years of updates but my 2010 desktop build runs Windows 10 flawlessly still and will run fine with updates until 2025. Windows 11 arbitrarily ends support officially, but it would still work fine. Linux works flawlessly too and will continue to do so. 6 years is shit, but the entire mobile industry is even shittier on average so 6 years ends up looking decent.
Smartphone: I’ve just said goodbye to my Honor phone after 5/6 years of service (can’t remember how many precisely). Incredible lifespan for its price.
However repairability could be great. I’ve changed its battery once and screen a couple times, by the end of it the frame was about to break from all the times I had opened it.
Side note, I have such mixed feelings on HP. I have only anecdotal things to say, so please keep that in mind!
I bought a budget HP Pavilion back in 2020, for a similar reason to you, because of the Ryzen setup. It sees use 4-5 times a week. And I have to say… I love it.
The build quality is, in my opinion, outstanding for a budget ($600) laptop. Its metal, solid, with almost no noticable keyboard flex. It feels so much better than both Dells my wife and I use for work. And the keyboard is actually my favorite of all the boards in my house.
My family has always had new tech coming in and out of the house and one of the longest lasting devices we had was an HP 2-In-1.
I don’t support their scummy software practices (shoutout brother printers). But for the most part every piece of HP tech I’ve bought has been average or above. But online they’re somewhat universally panned. Its interesting.
This is just in my limited experience, I work as a tech for an MSP and I’ve generally seen HPs fail more so than other brands (not by a wide margin but I wouldn’t buy a HP).
The other device we see fail more is Microsoft Surfaces, especially the tablets. I love the form factor and what Microsoft goes for with them but I’d never buy one purely on the reliability concerns I have, and (with a couple of exceptions) terrible repairability.
I would have agreed until the hinge broke through my HP Envy x360 screen :-(
Not much of a warning before it happened either, I would look into your model to see if that’s a recurring issue. Apparently you can loosen the tension in the screw on the hinge ahead of time to help avoid it eventually snapping. Good luck either way!
ThinkPads are considered the Windows/Linux equivalent of Apple laptops in business settings.
And owned by Lenovo. Who in the past loaded unremovable bloatware reinstallers into their BIOS so that fresh installs always reloaded their shit.
If you want a Linux laptop, System76 is your best bet.
Or Tuxedo for people, who live in Europe.
Superfish. Never forget. Literally BIOS-level malware, and people still buy things from Lenovo.
I mean, they only put that on consumer grade devices. lol
So? Why would you trust a company to not put it on ThinkPads as well if they think they could get away with it?
I love my x1 from lenovo. No bloat at all and excellent customer service. I broke a USB port and they sent a guy to my house to fix it.
xiaomi. super cheap and top notch specs. have multiple phones and laptops. even without case the phones are almost unbreakable
Can confirm, accidentally threw my Poco down the concrete staircase (and ~1.5m drop) outside my flat and it somehow didn’t even scratch the screen!
Can confirm, I bought a Poco phone F1 and I still use it to this day. Bought it in 2018
I would not trust apple products. Self cracking display on laptop? Updates that slow down devices on purpose? no, thanks
Never had any issues on any of my macbooks and I’ve had them for over 5 years each. My 2012 mbp still runs as good as the day I got it!
I can’t say the same about my 2012 mbp, it’s been basically useless for like 5 years now.
I was referring mainly to newer models, the older line around 2012 was really good.
Didn’t Apple get hit with a class action lawsuit over their 2011 Macbook Pros frying themselves?
You are right, I didn’t know about this.
Fair enough, you’re right they were great. Tbf everything up until the 2015 models were solid, as they were somewhat upgradable. Though, I’ve got a new M1 MAX and it’s easily the best laptop I’ve ever owned!
Performance wise, sure… but I also believe that’s the model that, if you’re lucky, will fry itself to 100% uselessness, and make your data completely unrecoverable.
If you must use a MacBook, keep backups, and keep AppleCare on it. Just consider it your apple device subscription.
My key caps have been falling off my work provided M1 Air. Thankfully, the keyboard is so crap I can barely tell the difference.
Ended up repurposing an old XPS 13 that I found in a supply closet as my dev box.
Wayland+Sway == Infinitely better experience
Okay i’m not sure how much + is in your 1000$ and obviously there’s a manufacturing defect at olay here. But man a MacBook is 2000$+ I have heard this argument too often unfortunately:
I tried Android once and it was horrible so i just went back to iPhone©™ and now everything is great again.
Context: they bought a 300$ Samsung phone and expected it to perform the same as their previous 800$ iPhone…
And this just sounds too similar. “I previously had a 2000$+ device, now I bought a 1000$+ one and it doesn’t perform the same.” Except for the part where it’s also a shitty brand and the device had a manufacturing defect.
I’m no apple shill, but every Samsung I’ve had felt great for a few months. And rapidly started to run like absolute shit. Then I swore off them for a couple of years, and came back when everyone was like “this one’s different, it’s not like the ones before” and then I had the same issue. So I got a Pixel, and that was so much better software wise. But that pixel 2 had a design defect that saw lots of devices having GPS problems and that was annoying as hell when I was trying to do Uber.
My past 2 phones have been iPhones. Not perfect, I miss lots of the customization and developer level control over stuff… but my phone works, reliably. I was pissed about throttlegate , I had one of those phones affected, but the phone was like 4/5 years old… and I decided that my experience with other phones was worse, and got another iPhone.
I’m feeling the need to upgrade again, and while I can’t endorse a lot of the anti-consumer shit apple does… I need a reliable phone. So, hopefully there’s another option out there for me.
Just unlock the damn bootloader and install a custom ROM.
Samsungs (at least the ones I had) don’t have unlockable bootloaders. And the pixel, well custom Roms don’t fix hardware issues.
Samsungs have unlockable bootloaders, hell, I’m typing this from a SM-P610 running LineageOS 20.
Idk all the particulars, I just know my S7 is still not bootloader unlockable, and pretty sure previous galaxy phones weren’t either. That was my last Samsung. Not sure if this was a US thing, a T-Mobile/Sprint think (who I had back then), or a Samsung thing. But HTC and Pixel phones seemed to always be unlockable.
Older devices are harder to bootloader unlock, but nowadays they make it easier. My Verizon Note 3’s unlocked too. The carrier usually makes it harder.
Honestly I had a OnePlus 6T for 4 years and after that started feeling slightly slow and i need it for testing at work, I now have a Pixel 7. Both the 6T and the pixel are great phones. My only regret is my own fault, i want to have a telephoto camera but thought that it’s not worth buying the pixel 7 pro for… There’s many good options out there. But i admit they are harder to find. It’s not “buy iPhone” and be done with it.
But honestly every Apple device i’ve used in the past made me dislike Apples software more and more. It’s fine as long as you aren’t used to anything else and aren’t a Poweruser i guess. But there’s just so many weird decisions in the software. And it’s all locked down to hell.
I’ll have to look into the latest androids, but I’m sure the only one that’s really a contender will be the latest Pixel. I love the option to use Graphene OS also.
Business devices from HP (Eliebook). Having mine since 2018, runs like a charm
Dude did you get the HP Envy x360 too? My hinge failed a year in, I got the panel replaced, a year later the hinge fails again. My screen hasn’t cracked but I can’t close the laptop anymore… Gonna get a Thinkpad L14 and hope it holds up a bit better, since Thinkpads are known for decent build quality.
YES, it was super disappointing because otherwise it was a solid laptop. Cracked the corner of my screen and is basically non-portable now. Currently have it hooked up to an external monitor and keyboard just to make it until I can get a new laptop.
Read up on it and apparently it’s been a huge issue in HP’s build quality since at least 2017. There’s a class action lawsuit you can sign up for and hopefully be compensated in some way.
Mine works perfectly otherwise too, thinking of giving it to my grandma so she can use it at home. Huge shame…
I knew about the class action lawsuit but I live outside of the US :C
Good luck getting a new laptop, hope it lasts!
Aw super sweet of you to think of your grandma.
Thank you! HP Envy x360 design flaw solidarity, friend ✊
Man HP just doesn’t know how to make hinges anymore - I’ve had the hinge on two different consumer-grade HP laptops crap out within a few months/years over the past decade!
Apple products are without critique for sure. But if they last 2 or 3 times as long, are they all that anti-consumer? Compared to Windows, are they all that anti-privacy? I suggest you take another look, without your preconceived notions of Apple products.
Yeah saying Apple is anti-privacy is like… what? Compared to who? Apple is consistently fighting against meta and google (and governments) in favour of user privacy
Is it far fetched to say that they fight against Meta and Google because they want to be the only ones who have your data?
A bit. You can download your data from them, it’s not much.
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Even if they didn’t sell any data, that doesn’t mean they don’t collect a bunch.
You can tell me all you want, but personal data being so incredibly valuable paired with the fact that Apple was the first trillion dollar company…
Their overpriced hardware doesn’t play the only role here.
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What about saying that their entire business model is exploiting stockholm syndrome?
They also only fight for privacy as a marketing differentiator from Google in the US. Their privacy stance varies from country to country.
If Apple had the same capability to harvest and mine user data as Google, there’s no doubt in my mind they would already be doing so. Their inability to produce a viable cloud service and major security and update issues with iCloud imply it’s a lack of ability and not any pro-user/privacy-oriented sentiment in the company.
I think Apple is better out of the box than most other companies in terms of privacy, which comes from a lot more of their profit coming from hardware rather than data harvesting (ie Meta, Google). Although the EFF has said that’s more an indictment of other tech companies than saying Apple is particularly good.
I do think the lack of customization in macOS makes it more difficult to harden your security settings. PrivacyGuides lists their concerns along with their recommended configuration here.
Ah, ok interesting take on that. I see your point
At a quick glace …
Most of the recommendations apply to all the major OS e.g. turn off Bluetooth, do not share location, keep admin account but use standard account for daily use, keep firewall on, etc.
A lot of privacy thing can also be opt-out.
OSCP, SIP and multi layer security hardening are where users could not customize.
in summary, Linux > macOS > Windows.
For sure, I think that’s a good rule of thumb and lines up pretty well with “how much this OS relies on your data to make a buck.”
I was reading there too that most of the privacy and security concerns in macOS are in iCloud, but with Advanced Tracking Protection you can make that E2EE now, or just go with an alternative cloud service.
I am leaning towards a new MacBook for the reasons you stated among others. I came here to get some new perspectives, and to explore other options I might not be aware of yet.
I think the problem is there is no grey area in opinions on Apple. Either they are perfect and pro-privacy and all good (not true), or they are anti-consumer, anti-privacy, anti-user pro-capitalist (again, mostly not true.) Truth is somewhere in between, and judging the product without one of those preconceived notions above is helpful.
For me, I could never use a laptop by another maker because the trackpad on non-Apple devices are (in my experience) absolute garbage.
Trackpads have come a long way on windows laptops, one major thing to lookout for is “precision trackpad”, Microsoft has this new standard which actually brings their trackpads into the realm of apple. Though specific implementations can still vary a bit.
Great to know, however I don’t ever see myself buying a Windows laptop. A superbly built laptop (and trackpad) running Linux is the grail.
I’m about to give some good and bad:
Apple is horrid for repair, and has some serious shortcomings in design. Their newest laptops now have a not insignificant chance to self-destruct in a completely unrecoverable way.
But the performance is great, battery life is sublime, sleek and rigid case design. Plus the ecosystem perks of you own multiple apple devices.
But because of the design issues, you MUST put significant thought into which upgrades you buy bc you’ll never be able to change the configuration of your laptop. Make sure to have a solid backup strategy. And factor apple care plus into your pricing, bc it’s necessary with these devices. Only apple can fix 95% of problems with your laptop, and without apple are plus their repair pricing is insane. Even with apple care you may have to struggle significantly with them to get certain things covered. It’s just part of the game if you want to buy one of their devices.
The only laptop i would recommend over a MacBook are frameworks, but I have no idea how durable they are. Just that they will last as long as replacement parts would be available.
Do they last longer? I have an IPhone 3 somewhere that just decided to stop working, yet my HTC with Android 1.2 still works fine.
Most of what’s held me back from Apple products has been their planned obsolescence, where the OS was no longer supported, which I’ve never had with a PC. I’ve had my cheap second hand laptop for 7 years now and that still works fine with the latest software
“Planned obsolescence”? Like where the iPhone 7 and on have received 6 to 7 years of software updates?
I can’t use the iPhone 3 I have in a drawer, even though there’s nothing wrong with it. Meanwhile my HTC that runs Android 1.2 still works with Google maps just fine.
I was also pissed off when all the OSX software dropped support for single-core Intel processors which rendered some very expensive 2 year old machines at work useless for anything Mac-specific.
For context, my Dad is still using a PC I built out of parts recovered from a skip in 2008, and it works just fine.
Well there was no such thing as the “iPhone 3”. There was the iPhone 3G or the iPhone 3GS, but no “iPhone 3”.
And this doesn’t prove anything lol an iPhone 3G can still connect to a 3G network and make calls and browse the internet.
Yes, it’s a 3G. In black if minutiae matter to you.
It doesn’t have maps, and most websites are unsupported even though it’s far newer than the old Android phone.
So you’re angry that a Google service doesn’t have longevity on an Apple product?
Your argument makes no sense. Who even cares if these ancient paperweights work? That’s not “planned obsolescence”, that’s just hardware and software getting old.
Well, I went and looked it up and apparently since the iPhone 4 onwards Apple actually started to get their shit together and started supporting their hardware for more than 3 years … I do find it funny though that an unsupported iPhone can’t connect to the app store at all while even the evil Google’s old apps can still get live data without problems.
No one says the devices are anti consumer, except for some that are intentionally made incompatible with common replacement parts (missing “apple logo”). The walled garden is.
It’s not just a “missing Apple logo” that makes parts not work. If you swap a part from one Apple device to another identical Apple device, it will often not work. For example, the Face ID and Touch ID sensors are paired to the logic board.
They are paired, which sort of makes sense if you want to try and avoid people modifying them to defeat security, but should have a way for the end user to update it if they’re very sure they want to.
They sell the parts these days and will pair them for you. They also sell the tools required for the fix (and also rent them out).
The self-repair scheme is a facade, they charge just as much for you to do it yourself as they would charge to do it for you.
As far as touch/face-id, all you have to do is have the registered fingerprints tied to the sensor. If you switch sensor, then finger/face needs to be re-registered. In fact, I think it already works that way, but with the added unnecessary step of getting daddy cook’s kiss of approval in the new sensor.
I can’t say if the quality is still the same, but I bought a Chromebook when they first came out for $99 and that little buddy has lasted me a decade now. It’s seen me through a deployment, a degree, several moves, and has been through a load of abuse and come out the other side working as spiffy as day one, minus some scuff on the screen. (Unfortunately Google has recently aged it out, but I’ll find a use for it with a virtual machine perhaps).
I imagine most little netbooks are similarly built and can withstand a boatload, although their computing power definitely lacks.
I have an aged out Chromebook running lubuntu just fine. In my case, I had to open the bottom and remove a “write protect” screw, then it installed and it’s still going strong. I had to mess around with the keyboard settings a bit, but otherwise it worked just great!
Don’t buy HP laptops. They’re terrible. Framework is great, and Lenovo and Dell are generally pretty good. Put Linux on it if you care about privacy.
Just wanted to expand a bit on your comment - Dell have a few laptop product lines, and the Latitude line is the business one that should be the most reliable/longest-supported. I’ve had a few Latitude laptops that lasted 3 years each before I changed jobs and left them behind, and was satisfied with them. Worked well with Linux which was a bigger deal back in 2015 than it is now.
Other companies are probably the same - Lenovo thinkpads are good, yoga not so much.
Totally agree about Linux, it’s come a long way in the last 10 years and you can do basically everything there now. Battery life may be affected, I think that’s one of the last areas they need to work on.
It’s a little early to pronounce longevity on Framework. They could be great, the pieces are there for them to be great, but the whole enterprise could fail and leave you with an upgradeable/fixable laptop with no upgrades or parts.
At the very least, if Framework dies, many of the parts are standardized, and the ones that aren’t are mostly open source. The SSD, RAM, WiFi card, and screen connector are all standardized. The expansion cards use USB-C and have an open-source shape; many people have already made third-party expansion cards. The motherboard has an open-source layout, and there are open-source CAD files to make custom enclosures (again, people have already done it). There are general schematics with pinouts on their Github, and they’ve provided exact schematics to repair stores. If they die, you end up with a laptop that is more repairable than almost any other, as well as a community with enough information to keep it alive if they want to.
I’m not knocking Framework at all here (and in fact they may be my next laptop), but repairability and long-lasting don’t quite mean the same thing. Usually when people say “long lasting” they mean something that is durable and reliable. Repairability can contribute to that, of course, but the option of 3D printing my own parts, or open specs on certain parts, doesn’t really make the device last longer without breaking. At best, it gives me some options to remediate it when it fails, and if I’m not capable of making my own parts, then my only option may be to buy parts anyway and deal with downtime.
I mean, a single year upgradable parts is already better than 99% of the market, thats not a hard bar to pass.
