iPhone 7 Plus time to Upgrade and my Next Move is 12 Pro

Plus Size Phone Story: Google Nexus 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S Plus

I have had quite the story on Plus size phones. After being fed up with my last Android phone and my last personal new phone purchase a Google Nexus 6 Plus, which was a giant phone at the time, and seemed like a good price new of $399.99 back in 2015. I was inspired by Apples long term commitment to provide updates and a usable software experience, so I selected a iPhone 6 Plus to buy with the hype, since it was pretty affordable used back in 2018 at around $254. I was immediately impressed back then with how well it was performing especially when compared spec for spec to the newer Nexus 6. Selecting the 6 Plus at this point was a mistake now that I look back on it. When I switched carries later I ended up correcting the mistake by moving to a 6S Plus. Now the 7 Plus a phone I had purchased used for my mom to use. Battery ended up expanding out of the phone and mom needed a new one, I was able to salvage the 7 Plus and get a new battery installed and used that phone for about a year.

iPhone 7 Plus the last of the Classic Plus size iPhones for Me

First off I have been very happy with my iPhone 7 Plus thus far it’s been a great short run and for only the price of fixing a bulging battery for about $60 it was a great value too. Now I finally and unfortunately reached the point where a mission-critical application is no longer working.

I ran this iPhone 7 Plus until the very last moment for me and now have an idea of exactly how long I can keep an old phone usable for me. While this was an older iPhone in numbers, functionally everything I needed to work worked for me, until it did not anymore on June 15, 2024.

Reason for needing a new phone

The primary reason was a banking application I use for mobile check deposit stopped working when the app started requiring iOS 16 or later in order to be able to reliably open. There was no other way to do this deposit, I tried the banks mobile website on mobile and desktop, and it did not offer a check deposit option from the webapp. And my iPad mini 4 is also running iOS / iPadOS 15, so just completely out of luck with my older software obsolete hardware.

iPhone 7 History milestones

First introduced September 2016

Last Major OS Update was iOS 15 on September 2021

Apple dropped current OS support status with the release of iOS 16 on September 2022

August 26, 2023, date I put into full time service as my Primary phone.

When I first ran into a mission-critical application that was a deal-breaker for keeping the device June 15, 2024

Choosing the next iPhone for me process

My first instinct was to continue the tradition and just pick up an iPhone 8 Plus and be able to reuse my old case etc. While this option would have worked and would be arguable the least expensive option only if you have working iPhone 7 Plus to sell. I was not looking forward to all the work of having to buy and sell a iPhone this year and possible next year as well. Also, the price on a iPhone 8 seemed steep for getting less than a year of support based on the track record from the app that stopped working for me. Anyway this time I wanted to come up with a chart and do a comparison of almost all the options from the used market to just buying new from Apple or authorized dealer like Costco.

So with all of that my initial list of possible phones to jump to looked like:

• iPhone 8 Plus
• iPhone XS
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 Pro

My goals as it were was to spend less than $300 on a replacement phone, and also to pick and figure out what the approximate cost per year is on various iPhone models old and new. And also factor in how many more years I could expect to use the phones in my initial list. My end goal was to find the best value iPhone in my price budget.

The Model I ended up choosing

July 7, 2024, I put the iPhone 12 into service.

Well I went Pro and paid a semi Pro price, next time I think I will stick with the value leaders as indicated on the table of the iPhone 12, but that being said I am happy with the 12 Pro.

Now with choosing I completely failed on staying under the $300 mark with the phone purchase price at $350 and battery repair pushing that cost to nearly $450. But squeezing that out over the next four years makes it not such a bad deal. And I am saving $600+ buy not buying brand new like a iPhone 14, and the saving go up from there.

iPhones after 7 Plus to Consider Spreadsheet

iPhones After 7 To Consider - ODS Spreadsheet

Column Notes

The description and notes for each of the columns included in this spreadsheet.

Cost of Phone

The price to obtain cira July 2024

Cost of accessories

This is the price of a case, screen protector and any other repairs like replacing a battery as needed.

Total cost to BUY

This is the price of the phone + the cost of accessories using formula =B*+C* where the * is just the current row #.

years of support left

This is based on my calculated column “official support left estimate” from post iPhone Years of Support.

cost per year

This is generally speaking the total cost of the phone + accessories divided by numbers of years of support left or just 1 if the device has 0 years of supported estimated.

2 iOS version behind current works for me

This is a thing just for me, but I am finding I can use almost 2 version behind the current release and have no problems with App support, this number may be something you can tweak based on your app support experience, past the currently supported version. How long can you go on the old iPhone hardware until you need to buy newer hardware? For this column I am taking the “years of support left” column and adding two to it.

Best Value for me

This generally the factor of what the phone cost - what I sold the old one for and then dividing by number of years of support remaining factoring in adding two years past the Apple six year mark in my case. Feel free to download and tweak that number to how long you can go…

Sell Price Current Phone

This what you sell your current for or your best estimate for what it may sell for this is I3 in the table, and is used for calculation in the Best Value for me column.