Remain in the iPhone ecosystem for as little per year as possible

In October, I realized my iPhone 5S was done for. The new iOS release no longer supported my hardware, which seemed like bad news to me. Most importantly, I have been using a virtual second line for my work for years now, and if for some reason the software updated and no longer supported my outdated OS, I’d be toast. Even one day without being able to call clients could be a malpractice suit for me (I’m an attorney).

But that’s all I care about: how do I keep my apps alive.

I don’t care about the newest features. In fact, if I can just be patient, today’s newest features will be mine in a few years. And I’ll save a boat load of money in the mean time.

Calculating the cheapest per year cost to remain in the Apple Ecosystem

First, determine how long an iPhone is supported in new iOS releases. This seems pretty easy to me actually – I know exactly when my iPhone was released, and also exactly when Apple no longer decided to support it in iOS releases. End result: 6 years.

Second, determine when every iPhone was released. I did this through some Wikipedia searching – and began a spreadsheet, which you can see here.

Third, calculate how many years of iOS support each phone has left in it. The newest phones will last approximately six years. The oldest that was currently supported when I began the research was the iPhone 6 – so I figured it had 1 year left.

Fourth, find pricing for each iPhone and calculate the “average cost per iOS supported year.” I used a combination of Gazelle and Amazon for my price matching.

The results really surprised me! Going in to it, I thought maybe a generation behind the current cutting edge might be the best deal, but I was wrong. Here are the results:

As you can see, the iPhone 11 is cheaper per year than any of the iPhone XR, XS, or X. Even the iPhone 8 Plus would be barely cheaper than the iPhone 11 at $112.25/year. For just $4.42 more per year, you could snag the iPhone 11 and have a larger screen and better tech over the iPhone 8 Plus.

I chose to pass on the iPhone SE because Apple listed it at the bottom of all of their support documents, suggesting to me that they intended on dropping support for this phone earlier than others – perhaps because it has a smaller screen than every other phone currently supported by iOS (it’s the only phone with a 4 inch screen, everything else is 4.7 or larger)

So I went with the next best thing – an iPhone 7. I had to upgrade though to the larger capacity model because I carry work documents on my phone and am already at capacity with the normal 32gb size. The next largest size cost just $13.33 more per year ($239 total) – still cheaper than the other options.

I then found an Amazon vendor who guaranteed to send me a phone without scratches – but they failed. My phone was scratched up. I wrote them and complained and they offered me a $30 discount. I took it. End result, my total cost to stay in the Apple Ecosystem was $209.99, or $70 per year.

Conclusion

Given the immense utility my iPhone provides, I feel fine about spending that much per year – it equates to just $6.64 per month. That’s less than I spend on my virtual phone line for my law practice!

I’m really happy how this turned out and I plan to continue using this method for the foreseeable future to reduce my total cost per year to remain in the ecosystem. As it is, I saved myself at least $50-$60 a year with this approach. But even at that, if you purchased ANY of these phones and simply held on to them until they lost iOS support, you would be doing better than some of my peers who are enrolled in the iPhone Upgrade Program. This costs between $35.33 to $54.08 depending on the model, for the lowest storage capacity. If that’s the benchmark, I’m saving between $353.96 to $578.96 per year to have a largely similar experience

Others may feel differently, but I’d prefer to keep those hundreds of dollars to myself each year and invest them instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for reading

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