I initially swapped to iOS to save money, and it’s actually worked out quite well.
Apple is expensive if you’re constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest, but at the mid range longevity is more important than initial price alone. People replace their phone enough the important bit is how much your paying per month not the actual device cost.
Very low end Android devices have issues, and the midrange need to be replaced significantly more which more than offsets the price difference.
Basically, a device that’s got a 30% price premium for equal hardware, but lasts 50% longer saves me money.
PS: I would suggest a battery replacement at year 3 or 4, that dramatically reduces the issues with older phones and can push you well past that 50% mark.
The iPhone SE is highly cost competitive with Android and has double or more support timeline, higher resale value (even for a trade in from Google store!), and better build quality and processor.
So you bought an iPhone SE? Personally I think the Pixel 6a would be a better option, more battery, better camera, screen, worse processor though. I honestly think processor is much less of a concern than the screen and camera on a budget smartphone.
I think the 6a really illiterates the problem. Spec wise it’s fine, but as a phone you run into issues where for example battery size isn’t as important as battery life. Initially it came out at near parity with iPhone SE prices where today it’s at a significant discount. Unfortunately, it’s also much closer to end of life, and that’s the basic problem with mid range Android last years phone is already long in the tooth.
“Whether it's the smaller battery, the demands of the Tensor chip or some other factor, the Pixel 6a fell flat on our battery test, in which phones surf the web continuously until they run of power. The Pixel 6a lasted an average of 6 hours and 29 minutes, which is more than 3 hours behind the Pixel 5a's result on that same test. Even worse, the Pixel 6a trailed the iPhone SE (2022), and we consider the 9 hour, 5 minute time that Apple's phone produced to be below average for a smartphone.” https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/google-pixel-6a
That’s the trend, a new model Android phone has near iPhone prices for a device that’s comparable but will have a shorter lifespan/ worse resale price. Buy an older model and you save money today, but need to replace the phone even more frequently.
I am on my fifth iPhone. I easily sold/traded in the previous four after replacement. In two of the cases, I ended up making a profit!
Further, in each case I did so after three to four years of use. The one exception is an iPhone 8 I a) bought used from Sprint/T-Mobile, and b) traded in after 18 months to the same carrier for an incredible deal toward a new iPhone 13; otherwise I would still be happily using it.[1]
There is no way that any used Android phone, even the most expensive flagship model, would ever be worth anywhere as much. And that's not including their lack of software updates. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5S I sold in 2017 after four years of use believing that it would soon lose software updates a) did not lose active support until 2019, and b) still is getting security fixes (the most recent four months ago)!
[1] More happily than the iPhone 13, really. I hate Hate HATE Face ID.
I'd never buy an iPhone because of Apple's practices, but it does make sense. Spending $500 on a phone that gets updates for five years is almost impossible to do in many Android ecosystems. Samsung has been getting a lot better the past two years, but even two or three years ago you had to buy Apple if you wanted an update guarantee of more than "two major upgrades, eventually, and security updates, sometimes". If you care about security updates, you would've had to buy a new phone right in the middle of the support period of iPhones that will soon be abandoned.
On the other hand, almost nobody I know outside the tech sphere gives a crap about security updates. OnePlus is a very popular brand with an atrocious update policy, but it delivers much better value than something like an iPhone. Xiaomi is also getting very competitive in this market, often ignoring or rescinding their software update promises but handing you an excellent phone for super cheap. The cheaper iPhone models also offer this, but often with weirdly outdated designs and comparatively inferior screens.
Buy last years model second hand for half the price. Keep it for 3 years. Sell it for a reasonably high value since it’s still getting updates and repeat. I have done this twice now.
Apple is expensive if you’re constantly upgrading to the latest and greatest, but at the mid range longevity is more important than initial price alone. People replace their phone enough the important bit is how much your paying per month not the actual device cost.