I've nursed my wife's SE along until this past week when we bought a used 13 Mini. She has small hands ( not exceptionally small, just small ) and the larger sizes just weren't appealing to her. I've replaced screens, even have a battery for it ready, but the lightning connector finally wearing out and impending End of Support made her upgrade.
You will get held back by software updates in ios then apps long before the device is useless. I have a few perfectly good iphones in a drawer like this. Can’t use any apps anymore.
Yep, Apple has made a lot of marketing around the concept of updates and all that jazz but the reality is that the primary beneficiary are them.
Even when you are potentially interested by features update there is always a weighting to be made about slowdowns or things that change that you wish didn't.
In the end I don't think updates should be much of a thing, apart from security updates. You should buy a device with a set of capabilities and it should stay mostly the same all its life.
And then we should make laws about the minimum amount of time a device has to be supported with its original software.
The problem with computer technology is that we always go with updates, just because we could even though we need to ask if we should. In some ways it's a problem the internet created, the expectation of always being connected to bring in new stuff.
