>I never heard of someone who bought a new phone _solely_ for a new battery
I did.
I had a Samsung Galaxy s10e, and I have an s23 now, which I got on its launch. The only reason I got a new phone is because they don't have legit batteries to replace my shitty s10e battery in my country of residence (very shitty European country). No Samsung support, no iFixIt (they don't ship here), nothing. Just shady shops selling shady batteries.
I preferred the smaller size of the s10e, and software-wise it did everything I needed it to do. Plus I didn't have to rely on Bluetooth earbuds when I need(ed) to wear some earbuds.
Oh, and the battery has gotten noticeably worse in the past year and a half, and the _only_ reason why I will buy a new phone in a year, year and a half is that I know for a fact the battery life will become (even more) unbearable, and there aren't any official/legit channels through which I could replace the battery.
I know I'm talking about Samsung, but the same would apply to Apple here, and any other brand.
If this wasn't an issue for me, I could see myself using the same phone for 5-6 years, probably even longer if set up lineageOS on it -- but after +5 years I imagine I would like to use some new phone with its "new" features... which I will likely never really use in the first place
One problem with extending life of your phone with lineageOS is trouble using banking apps on a rooted device. If you are lucky you could get it working with Magisk/Shamiko or similar but sometimes there will be some stubborn apps
> If you are lucky you could get it working with Magisk/Shamiko
It's a lot more nowadays. Magisk, lsposed, play integrity fork, shamiko, trickystore, custom keybox.xml, zygisk next... and with news of google now forcing certain apps (eg. chatgpt) to be installed from the Play Store + the device being of at least DEVICE integrity it's slowly all falling apart.
I don't understand this. Why not trying the "shady battery" for cheap before buying a whole new phone? Even if you somehow don't trust their batteries, I see s10e batteries on ebay for ~10€. Just buy one of those and have them install it?
Every device I've ever wanted to keep after its battery started degrading (mostly laptops, but has happened with a phone too) I've either ordered one from ebay and replaced myself or went to a cheap local shop.
I've had friends take their phones in for a battery replacement, and let's say the results were not better than before they took their phones in.
As with buying a battery from ebay, it's still not gonna be an OEM battery (or am I wrong?). OEM stuff is more important for phones than for laptops, I have found
I did.
I had a Samsung Galaxy s10e, and I have an s23 now, which I got on its launch. The only reason I got a new phone is because they don't have legit batteries to replace my shitty s10e battery in my country of residence (very shitty European country). No Samsung support, no iFixIt (they don't ship here), nothing. Just shady shops selling shady batteries.
I preferred the smaller size of the s10e, and software-wise it did everything I needed it to do. Plus I didn't have to rely on Bluetooth earbuds when I need(ed) to wear some earbuds.
Oh, and the battery has gotten noticeably worse in the past year and a half, and the _only_ reason why I will buy a new phone in a year, year and a half is that I know for a fact the battery life will become (even more) unbearable, and there aren't any official/legit channels through which I could replace the battery.
I know I'm talking about Samsung, but the same would apply to Apple here, and any other brand.
If this wasn't an issue for me, I could see myself using the same phone for 5-6 years, probably even longer if set up lineageOS on it -- but after +5 years I imagine I would like to use some new phone with its "new" features... which I will likely never really use in the first place