Those who keep their Flagship(s) for 2+ years, how is it/does it really slow down?

[bembol]

If you know me you're aware that I upgrade aggressively, this year alone my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and my Huawei P20 Pro are my seventh upgrade. Yes, I'm an addict. LOL

Clearly I have the luxury of my flagships performing as if they're new.

Do they really slow down, does battery no longer fully charge, etc? Are these the reasons why people finally upgrade and/or their contracts are just up.

The longest I've kept a phone is probably 7-8 months, I only really saw significant slow down on my Mother's moto X Play but we're talking about years here. LOL

 

[L0n3N1nja]

S7 since launch, it slowed down some but a reset seemed to have fixed it.

Battery I have nearly 1000 recharge cycles, an app claims I only have about 2000mah battery capacity left, and I'd believe it because battery life isn't very good anymore.

 

[Mooncatt]

I have an LG V20 from launch day, and it still runs strong. The battery has deteriorated (as will happen on any phone), but that's about it. Only one game lags enough to be an issue, but that also was a common complaint in the Play reviews and may not be the phone itself. I'm also refusing the Oreo update, just because the phone works fine as is and don't want to risk it.

In general, it's not so much that the phones themself slow down. It's that every update to the apps and the OS generally add in more features that require more power to run smooth. If an app adds a background process, your phone will now have to handle that on top of everything it was already doing. If a game gets improved textures or more adaptive NPC's, that's more demand on the processor and graphics engine. Individually it's usually not a big deal. Cumulatively, you will see a slow down over time.

 

[ManiacJoe]

I certainly would not call myself a power user, but I have never had any of those problems.
LG G4 lasted 2.4 years.
LG V30 since Oct 2017.

 

[SactoKingsFan]

The last phone I used for 2+ years was the Nexus 6. Still performed like it was new and the battery was in great condition. I generally take good care of the battery on all my phones and have never had any issues with battery degradation. Plan on keeping the Pixel 2 at least until winter 2019 which will be 2 years. My backup phone (OnePlus 3T) still runs like new and gets very good battery life.

 

[bembol]

I'm asking because I wanna focus my attention, my money in Philippines new year and in the future.

I guess performing a Factory Reset will help but how does the battery hold up?

 

[Mooncatt]

I guess performing a Factory Reset will help but how does the battery hold up?

That all depends on your usage. If you keep it within the 40-80% guidelines, it'll generally last a long time. If you charge it overnight (meaning it stays at 100% for long periods of time), or drain it completely before charging again, it's possible to kill a battery in a matter of months. This article gives a lot of info on battery care.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

That is of course all based on averages. The initial quality of the battery makes a difference, and of course there's the rare chance a defect that kills it early despite using best practices.

 

[Tsepz_GP]

One issue with keeping a device that long is if it doesn't have sufficient RAM it will start to drop apps while multitasking, but I am confident my Galaxy Note8 will be fine with its 6GB RAM until next year when the Note10/X? Arrives in time for me to upgrade

 

[anon(5719825)]

I have several, all of them Samsung except for the Nexus 4, so here they are:

Nexus 4: Bad battery life plain and simple. Used it a year and then gladly bought the Note 4/Note Edge. I still have it and charge it up once in a while and then put it away.

Note 4/Note Edge T-Mobile: Both these phones have a little lag but they are still just as fast as they were on launch and I could easily continue using these phones today. They still work great with the original batteries.

Note 5 T-Mobile: This phone has always been a bad phone for me. The battery has been the biggest problem and I could never get the phone to last more then 8 hrs on the stock ROM even with a fresh install and ZERO usage, the battery would still give me 8 hrs standby and then die. Rooting the phone was the only thing that enabled me to get any useful usage out of it. Rooted, I could still only get about 2 hrs screen time with about 16 hrs standby

S7 Edge T-Mobile - This phone has so much lag, especially after the phone sits for a few hours and then unlocking it and trying to do something on it.
S7 Edge US unlocked - Same as above

Note 8 T-Mobile - This phone is still running just as smooth as the day I bought it. I believe it's because of the 6GB ram and the excellent processor.