I have iPhone 12 Pro 128GB
It’s been working fine but 3 things are starting to bother me:
I was planning to upgrade to 15 pro 256GB once the 16 gets announced.
But times are tough so I can:
I’m wondering if it will hold up for another 3 years like this.
It looks moderately difficult with a fair chance of damaging the device (especially the screen).
I wouldn't recommend unless you've had some experience in repairing electronics.
New battery and use a free cloud service until you can afford a new phone.
But remember, nothing is as underwhelming as buying a new iPhone and realising you just bought yourself a new phone that essentially is no different to your old one 😂
More underwhelming is using a four year old phone and being familiar with the limits of it. Liberating is getting a new phone without those old limits. The sight lag when opening certain apps, little stuff like that. If you don't use your phone much then this is less of an issue. If you're on it all day and use it for work and keeping in touch with people then getting a new phone feels a little like repairing slight brain damage. imo
After going through so many iphones, i found that the later models (everything x and above) tended to hold out better over the years.
While yes, it does slightly improve your experience, it also doesn’t fix all the annoying things that phones do but we attribute to being an old phone.
Eg: misclicking keypad or it having some occasional input delays.
So for $150 a battery and cloud service is a good investment to buy another year or two.
The A11 Bionic chip they introduced in the iPhone 8/8 Plus/X was really stellar. I've had my iPhone 8 since early 2018 and it's still going strong. A bit laggy at times because the battery has degraded but it still does everything I need it to do and if I change the battery again I'll probably get another two years out of it at least, as long as developers don't require newer iOS versions to run their apps.
Consoom
nothing is as underwhelming as buying a new iPhone and realising you just bought yourself a new phone that essentially is no different to your old one
Haha you captured it perfectly - I remember picking up my iPhone 8 on launch day and the shop assistant said something like “You must be so excited for your new phone” and I was thinking that it’s exactly the same as my old phone.
If you decide to upgrade look at something like Mobile Monster to sell your old one.
Does it pay better than FB marketplace?
You can check the pric online based on the condition of the phone.
Go to Gerry and swap it for a removable long lasting battery dual sim extra memory slot and built in games Nokia.
Personally, I would go for new battery.
What's it's health at? You can check in Settings>Battery>Battery Health
What's the issue with Lightning? Just carrying an extra cable around?
You might want to consider a leaving a wireless charger at your desk which is easier than any cable imo.
I would try and offload photos (they should be backed up anyway) and delete any unused apps.
It’s at 79%
I have unified everything to USB C now
Getting sick of keeping both lightning and USB C everywhere. (first world problem)
That being said I like your attitude on saving money.
I have a 64GB iPhone 12 and wholly concur with @FireRunner. I only charge wirelessly so never have issues with port lint. Get Apple to do your battery because if anything goes wrong your handset gets replaced with a refurb (happened twice with puffy batteries in my iPhone X). Apple also offers loaners if your phone needs a trip to their tech centre. 200GB iCloud $4.49 per month shared with family covers off handset backups and storage headroom. Upgrade only if you vlog for a living and need the higher USB C transfer rate.
I have an iPhone XS and the only reason I upgraded was to get a better camera. We have a big trip coming up to Europe. I normally change phones when I run out of iOS upgrades.
Same question for XS MAX with 83 pct battery health.
Are the camera upgrades worth the switch to 14 plus or 15 plus?
As the years have gone by Apple has changed the iPhone camera to take photos that are more oversaturated and overly processed (IMO and if you google it there are others who feel the same). I personally am trying to use my iPhone 8 for as long as I can because I prefer more natural-looking colours.
Every time I make this comment I get downvoted for it too surprisingly. I miss the days when the iPhone was known for taking photos that were more neutral in colour compared to Samsung phones which took more overly-saturated photos. This was probably 8-9 years ago.
Recently I replaced my kid Iphone 11 pro screen when I went to Indonesia. Worth it but for battery I would keep it as it is, original battery health is 70% it should be fine as long as you don't keep updating os.
Download the photos to your hard drive ssd and keep it.