Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
I think that is far too optimistic.
For powerful devices like tablets the battery will degrade to the point of being unusable much sooner than that.
Not just that they won't hold power, but that they will generate enough excess heat to cause instability.
I have a NotePro 12.2 tablet, which I've had for about three and a half years.
Battery life has dropped from 10-12 hours to maybe and hour or two if you are lucky.
Once it gets below around 40% it is likely to spontaneously reboot, and it does that a couple of times a day regardless of charge level. It is permanently a bit too hot to be comfortable around the top middle of the screen.
Power socket still works fine, but the headphone socket has stopped detecting whether headphones are plugged in.
If there was an equivalent replacement I would have got one at least a year ago, but there isn't.
I'm still running Android 4.4.2, so I agree with your general point that the hardware remains useful long past any OS updates, but I think the viable timeframe is much shorter than you think.
Battery technology is the limiting factor for most tech.
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Mileage varies.
But I have a Vista era Netbook that (through multiple upgrades up to Win10) still works. Battery life is less than two hours. But it still runs fine. Noticeably better than when new thanks to the OS upgrades. The power connector is mostly okay. A bit loose. A replacement battery is $15 but running it strictly off AC is good enough.
My older-still Compaq tablet works fine off battery but the power connector just won't connect. I have an external battery charger and a spare so it works on battery power but it's too much of a hassle to bother.
At the day job the experience is similar; power connectors and batteries are the first to go, screens the last.