Sure, but they're in the business of selling as many phones as possible which means getting you to upgrade every so often. Unless they settle on a business model that allows them to make money from your old phone, I see this continuing.

Honestly why should I care what their business model is, if it is detrimental to users and the environment. That's the whole point of laws, to discourage behaviour that we as society deem undesirable.

> Sure, but they're in the business of selling as many phones as possible which means getting you to upgrade every so often.

Indeed they are, but planned obselescence should quite simply be illegal. For sure it'll hurt some businesses, but it's better for everyone else.

"Selling as many phones as possible" allows yearly upgrades, but instead of 10 different models per year they can sell 3 models per year with 3.3x sales of each model. I am looking at Samsung models on the market, they are close to 10, Apple has maybe 2 or 3.

Plus one flagship phone neglects the largest portion of the market who want cheaper phones

Then they should do like Apple did(?) and continue to sell older generations as the low end segment offering.

Which should incidentally make sense since they'd be still supporting because of the said law anyway.

Another side effect is this may also discourage them from churning pointless new models year after year with minor spec bumps.

> from churning pointless new models year after year with minor spec bumps.

They'd never abandon a working business model like that

> Unless they settle on a business model that allows them to make money from your old phone, I see this continuing.

...like apple and its recent focus on services?

And that's why you can't let the market govern lives, and we have regulations.

Basically... be more like Apple?

How so? Apple also releases new models almost every year with very dubious quality. I remember some scandals about antennas, and more recently about RF interference with pacemakers, but i'm sure there's a lot more i'm unaware of. Apple prevents users from using the hardware however they please and blocks the bootloader. They don't even give you root on your own phone!

Also they're famous for making their products hard to repair. It's hard to find spare parts, hard to find their custom screw heads, and hard to tear everything apart. You can't even remove the battery without tools which is very user-hostile, bad for the environment, AND was a pattern "popularized" by Apple, because if any other hardware manufacturer had dared to do that, they would have sold exactly ZERO phones.

All in all, Apple is close to the worst manufacturer i can think of to get inspiration from, although on specific topics (eg. LCD screen solidity) they are definitely not the worst.