For my needs it works out much cheaper to buy a new android phone every few years, but it is such a waste.
Depending on manufacturer you get up to 5 years of security updates, but the phone usually costs up to 800 euros less so it simply doesn't make sense to buy the iphone.
You end up throwing a perfectly good phone in a drawer, never to be used again.
In ye olden days, it didn't really matter that the phone was less secure. But with banking apps, you have no real choice in the matter.
I do too but I still trade it in so that it can be refreshed and resold. You're complaining about e-waste and saying "but recycling doesn't pay enough so I just let it rot."
My problem with cheap phones is, that they also degrade fairly quick. At the beginning they still feel fine but after just a few months of usage I already start to feel the micro stutters again. And I hate that. I blame Android in general for that and like that iOS' ecosystem is typically a lot more efficient in that regard.
Maybe. All the Androids I had pissed me off after 2 years latest. Since there were no small Androids at the time, I took the dive and bought an iPhone 13 Mini. I'll see if it also pisses me off after 2 years ^^ But at least what I saw from other people who have their iPhones for far longer, I am optimistic.
CarPlay works much more fluent than Android Auto. That alone already made the switch worthwhile. Oh and having a unified backup solution via iTunes is really nice. While many Androids cannot be backed up at all unless you root them (which I don't want).
I've only ever used Androids, all my phones have been at least 4 or 5 years with me, I've also never bought a flagship model. Honestly, at first having a smart phone for so long aged pretty fast, for the speed of software and hardware upgrades was frantic. But nowadays, I've had my current phone for 5 years and just now I'm considering an upgrade, just because I'm bored with it and want a phone with more storage space and a nicer camera. But otherwise the phone is still solid and functional, just had a software update a few months ago. I honestly hate that most Apple fans like to compare Apple with Chinese shovelware. But there are pretty good solid Android phones if you shop around.
The only worthy ones I found were Samsung and Pixel. At least in regards to update duration. I don't like Samsung's customizations though. So I effectively end up with Pixel. Which would be fine... but that doesn't solve my initial problem of wanting a "small" SmartPhone. At least not at the time I bought the iPhone Mini.
Since Apple buried the Mini series, this might very well mean this is not only my first, but also my last iPhone again. Time will tell.
Get a flip. That seems to be the format that most manufacturers are looking at for a smaller option. I had a friend who was small phone obsessed as well and nowadays he just uses a dumb phone and is starting to turn into a kind of Luddite.
Not yet good enough for me. With small I don't just mean width and height. Also weight and thickness. Even the Xperia XZ1 Compact I had was too bulky for me, even though width and height were perfect. But it was heavy and thick.
So are the flip phones.
The Sony Xperia series is reknown for being extremely nice phones as well, the only reason I don't have one is that I don't know if you can build grapheneos for it or not.
Unfortunately it hasn't received a security update since March and Samsung have put it as EOL. Still a great phone but it's not a small phone, it's about the same size as the S23, it was just small compared to the S10 and S20 which were stupidly big.
At this point, get an S23 or a normal iPhone if the S10e was a suitable size.