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!
I’ve had good luck with Dell,I recently was using a old Dell Inspiron again to access my VM from. Stuck a SSD in it and upgraded the ram and it works surprisingly great, I think it’s from like 2015 but the i5 in it still runs super quick.
For phones I’m really liking my Samsung, I upgraded to a s22 from my pixel 3 last year and having Samsung Dex is pretty awesome, I used to build up a little PC to use on my breaks at work but now I just spin up dex on a spare monitor and can parsec into my VM and do anything I’d want without carrying a laptop
For phones 5+ years of updates is good compared to the alternatives, and is why I have one. For a computer, on the other hand, it’s just not very impressive. Perhaps FairPhones come close (don’t know how long their software is supported but their selling point is longevity), but their specs aren’t that impressive. On the flip side you get something repairable.
MacBooks are often built better with higher quality materials than many other laptops, but it is essentially a computer. Most computers that have high enough specs will always run the latest version of most Linux distributions or Windows barring any need for weird drivers from the past century. Feels a little iffy to have a perfectly good computer that won’t update software anymore just because. Up until recently you could just install some Linux OS on your old MacBooks when it went out of support but honestly I don’t know whether you can still do that after they started making non-x86 stuff.
With all that said, haven’t seen many laptops physically outlive MacBooks’ updates. With the exception of some ThinkPads and possibly some XPS models. Plastic laptops with plastic hinges tend to struggle keeping up, especially if the display is on the larger side. A large gaming laptop living the life of a typical MacBook, going to cafes and university in a backpack every day is probably gonna have more stress on hinges etc.
As for HP I have only heard bad stuff about them for the last 10 years or so. Don’t think I’ll buy stuff from them due to their evil printers that won’t scan without ink etc.
Not many specific recommendations here but just some observations I have made. Hope it’s helpful.
I agree on HP printer subscription ink, that is an outright scam. But I have had an HP 2017 Zbook for daily use and travel and 0 issues.
honestly I don’t know whether you can still do that after they started making non-x86 stuff
Asahi Linux isn’t far off and I’m guessing it will be ready for prime time before anything Apple Silicon loses support.
Dell Precision line for computers. They are not light. They are not slim. They are not fashionable. They can probably stop a bullet. Dell is still actively still selling (refurb’d) units from ~6 Intel generations ago. The desktop workstations are similarly bulletproof.
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.
thinkpad T series laptop
I buy a lot of my laptops from Dell Outlet. Extremely good for the price and I haven’t had a single one die on me yet - and the first was bought 13 years ago!
My work machines get cycled out after 3 years, but I’ve had good results with Lenovo and Dell.
Any laptop designed for enterprise like Lenovo Thinkpad or hp elitebook/ProBook
Your laptop was an HP pavilion, right? Those are designed to barely last the warranty period. Their engineers on this product line have a long experience of carefully choosing plastics that will degrade within 24 months
IMHO MacBooks are super overrated. OS support is not as long as normal computers (5 years instead of “indefinite”) and they still have hardware flaws to hinges and keyboard
IMHO MacBooks are super overrated. OS support is not as long as normal computers (5 years instead of “indefinite”) and they still have hardware flaws to hinges and keyboard
And batteries. Swollen batteries in MacBooks were very common at my work. I have never seen it in any other laptop but Desktop Support would just react to it with ‘o, another one’.
I don’t currently use macOS, but macOS support is typically about 7 years, sometimes up to 10. Apple supports the 3 latest versions of its operating system.
Mainstream Windows support seems to be about 1-3 years.
What are you talking about? You can take a Pentium 4 from twenty years ago and install latest windows 10. Microsoft releases a new version every 6 to 12 months but the computer updates automatically. Of course it makes no sense for them to continue supporting an old version that anyway everyone can update from without issues
And once apple decided the os is not compatible, your computer is on death row. Latest apps won’t run. Ok, can get security updates, but you needed to run latest final cut pro x? Bad luck, insert credit card and purchase new Mac
So I’ve only somewhat recently got into the Apple ecosystem, but I can tell you that once a macOS version loses support it’s technically on death row but nowhere near as dramatic as you mention.
I recently daily drove a Mac running macOS Catalina (2019) and I was surprised that it still ran everything I needed for my IT degree (Zoom, Office 365 suite, VSCode, Signal, Tailscale, etc.) and the only real issue I noticed was Apple’s Xcode not being compatible.
I also own a Mac mini 2012 with i5/8GB, and while I don’t use it often, my parents daily drive that as a smart TV and web browsing machine with no real issues at all. The last official version of macOS on it was Catalina, but I used community patches to push it up to Monterey (2021) and it’s totally fine.
I think when you own and actually use a Mac, you will find in its own way, that they do last longer than Windows equivalents. I have a 2012 Latitude with i5/8GB and yes I could run the latest Win10 natively (but not Win11 without hacks) but I don’t think it exactly cuts the mustard anymore, and I think most people who would use it would generally agree. Given its age I would just Linux it up if I wanted to daily drive it.
You, in fact, cannot install Windows 10 on a Pentium 4.
Ok then an athlon64 from the year 2003
HP’s consumer side definitely declined rapidly in quality over the last 10-15 years - had an HP that needed repairs after a few months back in '14 whereas I’ve got a Pavilion from '04 or so that’s still going!
it varies , I had 2015 zbook, HP repaired it under warranty about 4 times for ongoing undiagnosable video failures. (At end it had new display and display cable, new GPU, new mobo and new keyboard, since they could not locate what was triggering display problem) However 2017 Zbook still chugging alomg with 0 issues.
Business devices from HP (Eliebook). Having mine since 2018, runs like a charm
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.
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.
I mean, a single year upgradable parts is already better than 99% of the market, thats not a hard bar to pass.
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.
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.
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.
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!
