Is my iPhone 4s ready for retirement?

December 25, 2015 5:49 PM

I have an old, old iPhone 4s (bought used about 2 years ago, it was probably one of the first 4s's manufactured!) which has been great and very reliable. It's doing some things that worry me, though, and I was wondering if I really must get a new phone soon or can I put it off longer.

Lately it's doing things like running super slow sometimes (which is forgivable) and sometimes not responding to touch at all (not forgivable). I tried doing a factory reset, which it's still in the middle of, but I'm worried about it not responding when I really really need it to. For example yesterday I got a text and I had to turn the phone off and back on again before I could get past the lock screen. What if it was an important text?

In your experience is it silly to not get a new phone at this point? Do you think the factory reset will fix it? I don't want to find out the hard way if other people have seen this before.

posted by bleep to Technology (20 answers total)

I don't have an authoritative answer to give you, but I just replaced my 4s with a newer phone. It was too slow, I couldn't update a lot of apps, and it sometimes just froze up for no reason and took a while to reset. I was worried that it would do this when I was stuck on a roadside or something. If it's affordable, I think you'd be happier with a new phone.
posted by wintersweet at 5:53 PM on December 25, 2015 [4 favorites]

Last month I upgraded from a 4S to a 6S when the same thing started happening. No regrets. My husband's 4S died last year after doing the same thing for about a month or so.
posted by melissasaurus at 5:56 PM on December 25, 2015

Get a new phone!!! I am going through very similar issues lately with my iphone 4 (not s), where I'm basically resetting it every week to try to keep it alive. The screen is unresponsive, safari and chrome crash constantly, and everything has become incredibly slow. It's so sad, too, I hate replacing electronics when I could squeeze a little more life out of them, but I'm honestly at a loss for why this phone has become such crap over the past year.
posted by mittens at 5:56 PM on December 25, 2015

My mum has an iphone 4 and it also started having a lot of issues recently. Eg MMS not coming through until she powercycles, then they all come through at once. I think it is just time for a new phone.
posted by kinddieserzeit at 6:04 PM on December 25, 2015

I think it's time. I upgraded from a 4s to a 6 a couple of months ago, and the improvement in battery life alone is life-changing.
posted by ottereroticist at 6:11 PM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

It might be worth backing up, resetting, and restoring to see if it's a hardware issue or just some cruft. Either way, you should be looking at a new phone. If the 6S seems a bit dear, you can get the previous generation (6/6+) for cheaper now-a-days.
posted by SansPoint at 6:17 PM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is like any other computer. Over time, the operating system and the applications require more and more memory and processing power, and only a hardware upgrade can resolve this.

The difficult part of the iPhone is that you can't just use an older OS and older applications that just ran fine when your phone came out back in 2011. Obsolescence is built in because the required software updates need corresponding hardware updates. In my experience, you can stay 3 generations behind on an iPhone before it becomes burdensome to use.
posted by deanc at 6:49 PM on December 25, 2015 [5 favorites]

I'm in the same situation. Mine would freeze, suddenly drop battery life, a bunch of little irritating things, not constantly, but enough. I reset it which helped a bit with speed, and then put in a new battery a month ago. It still is unresponsive from time to time, but better. Really though, I think the end is near. I probably should have saved the battery money to put into a new phone.
posted by Cuke at 7:16 PM on December 25, 2015

I swapped from a 3S to a 6 last year, and with hindsight I should really have changed on 5S. The difference is night and day - there is just a huge amount more I can do on this phone that I couldn't do on my old phone (like, no way could I read metafilter, it was too slow and the screen resolution was too crap).

Upgrade! You'll be so much happier.
posted by tinkletown at 7:23 PM on December 25, 2015

I had an iPhone 5 that has been acting up since September - mainly incorrect battery percentage and the occasional spontaneous restart.

So I tried restoring it - reinstalling the software with a plan to then restore my backup.

Restoring the software left me with a phone that restarted every 4 minutes. I couldn't restore from backup, because the spontaneous restarts disconnected the phone from iTunes. I tried restoring again to see if that would do it, then gave up.

I'm typing this on an iPhone 6s delivered so quickly from Apple it made my head spin. I love my new phone. So fast. No restarts. I vote for trying a restore but being ready to replace if needed.
posted by hilaryjade at 8:21 PM on December 25, 2015

I know you've only had it for two years, but the iPhone 4S is over four years old. Which is a pretty long life for a phone. About 7% of iPhone users currently have an iPhone 4S or older - so don't expect anyone making software to spend a lot of time making sure things work great on it. If it's working still, there's no need to upgrade, but if it's starting to run into problems, it shouldn't be super expensive to upgrade it to something that will enjoy better software support, like a 5S.
posted by aubilenon at 10:00 PM on December 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Joining the chorus: upgrade to a more modern phone. I very reluctantly accepted recently that my similarly wobbly 4 needed replacing. I'm typing this from my new 6s which is a delightful and responsive little speed monster that just works.

Is there a local tinkerer or phone shop that would take your phone and make the last few useful bits valuable somewhere else? That should help ease the transition.
posted by maudlin at 10:27 PM on December 25, 2015

I have a 4S. I think you can make it until ios10 and the iPhone 7 if the phone isn't something you rely on much. Days when I have to do a lot with it are manageable but not fun, and I'm only keeping it because I don't have many of those days and I will dearly miss the size of the 4S when I have to upgrade.
posted by michaelh at 11:27 PM on December 25, 2015

The 4S will continue to receive system support from Apple until September, a full five years after it was launched (surely a record in the modern era).

Of course, as others have said, a new phone would be much better - - but if you want to soldier on, then 9 more months to the launch of the iPhone 7 would be a natural time to make a change. You could either enjoy the thrill of a brand new iPhone design, or take advantage of the concurrent price drop of the older models.

One additional exit point might be the rumored April launch of the iPhone 6C, a new smaller 4" screen model for those not enamoured with the phablet trend.
posted by fairmettle at 12:16 AM on December 26, 2015

I am still using my iPhone4, no s.

I deliberately didn't update the OS so I'm still on iOS6.

The home button stopped working 18months ago so I switched on the assistive touch button.

I don't have many apps but happily many apps offer the option of downloading a previous version. I have all the major social media and messaging apps.

I've had the battery replaced once. Once in a while I need to turn my phone off then back on. My phone serves my purposes. I'll get a new one when it doesn't.
posted by stellathon at 12:16 AM on December 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

I got mine in 2011, and it now functions tolerably well as the thing to connect to the that-size connecting whatnot on a small bookshelf stereo set in my kitchen. It stopped being reliable, much like yours. I did not find a way to fix this. I am not a heavy smartphone user -- I would have held on to it for longer if it didn't start acting flaky (battery life was also an issue). I replaced it with a 5c, a relief. I fretted briefly over replacing an old thing with a slightly-older thing but remembered they are things that get dropped and shattered/drowned in toilets/etc. If you were happy with the 4S until just now, I wouldn't fuss too much about getting the most recent model.
posted by kmennie at 12:57 AM on December 26, 2015

I have a handmedown 4 that I've had for the last year and a half. Just in the last month I've had to restart it a couple times due to it hanging - which is something I had to do multiple times a day with my previous Android phone, so I've counted myself very lucky. But it does seem to indicate that the end is much nearer now than it was just a few months ago, so you're not alone in asking this question! I'll be using this phone until the very very end, unless another handmedown finds its way to me.
posted by Maarika at 12:30 PM on December 26, 2015

The 6 is getting to be under $400 used. I've seen some for like 300ish even. You could even get the plus version, which has AMAZING battery life, for around that much.

Having used the 6 and 6s side by side i think the 6 is a great buy right now. Hell, i think the 5s still is too. Both of them have at least another couple years left in them.

I have, generally, been a person who buys a new phone every year because i felt like it. Sometimes even more often if i want something to play around with. The only upgrade i didn't do was 3g>3GS(i tried out android instead, which i also did the 5s generation, but ended up getting a 5s anyways). The 6 is the first phone i've had that just made upgrading seem utterly pointless. Like not just "oh, i don't really want to spend the money on that" but actually pointless.

It's faster, and you can tell, but the 6 isn't slow. It's still VERY fast, and has gotten even faster with the latest update(which is unusual for apple!).

The majority of iphones and ipads out there have the same or lower specs than the iphone 6. The ipad air 1 and mini 2/3 still have the A7 CPU, and those are "current models" still. Even the air 2 has an A8, not the A9 from the 6S.

I honestly bet it's still going to be a great performer in 2017. I'd bet on it. The 5S still performs amazingly right now.

Go buy a used 6 and enjoy it.
posted by emptythought at 2:07 PM on December 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

I went from a 4S to a 6 in the last month and it's an amazing difference in speed and battery life. If you can afford it, I would recommend it.
posted by desjardins at 8:59 AM on December 27, 2015

Response by poster: Got my new 5s after the old one started crapping out again even after being reset. I probably would have continued to put up with until a real emergency. Thanks for the push. I love my new phone!
posted by bleep at 5:25 PM on January 6, 2016