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With regard to the issue of the EU wanting to implement a law with a minimum of 5 years for smartphones updates and parts availability.
While @gigastacey is correct, that it is hard to find chips, outside of perhaps Apple, that have support for that long currently, there are good reasons behind the law.
Judging by the people I know, 5 years is probably the average for how long a phone is kept. I have been lucky, so far, I have been able to afford a new phone every couple of years, but most people I know have older phones.
My eldest daughter has an iPhone X, the youngest swapped out my 2018 Huawei Mate 10 Pro for my old 2020 Samsung Galaxy S20+ this year, and she will probably keep that going for another 3 years, if I know her, at least. Her boyfriend updated from an iPhone 4S to an Xiaomi in 2020.
Most of my wife’s family have older phones, my eldest brother-in-law replaced his Samsung Galaxy S3 mini (last security update 2011/2012, in 2020 as well, because WhatsApp no longer worked on it. Battery & phone were still working fine, but the OS was so out of date that the apps just stopped running.
A friend of my wife’s lives on hand-me-down phones, she is currently using a 6 year old Wiko phone, which cost, probably, 200€ new. She can’t afford a phone, but friends give her theirs, when they upgrade, but they often upgrade first after 4-5 years of use.
These are the sorts of people that need protecting by these laws, and 5 years isn’t really that long, compared to how long they currently use their phones, but 5 years is better than what they have today.
I would never use a phone that didn’t get security updates - upgrades to the newest OS are nice, but regular security updates are a must. I like playing with new tech, but I am also slowing down in how often I change my kit out these days.
I’m expecting my current iPhone to last at least 4 years, this time round. Likewise, I’ve gone from replacing my PC every 18 months in the 90s to probably every 5-6 years these days, and that is still more regularly than most people I know.
I currently have a couple of Raspberry Pi 3B+s running DNS and network monitoring, my new Mac mini M1, which replaced my 2017 Ryzen - and that was only because it offered similar performance for a fraction of the power usage, the Ryzen is still perfectly serviceable, but power hungry. I also have a 2016 HP Spectre laptop, which my wife uses and a 2010 Sony Vaio running Linux Mint as a backup.
Again, my brother-in-law, he currently uses a 2017 Lenovo IdeaPad as his business laptop. My work laptop is a 2018 Lenovo ThinkPad, the company expects that to last at least another year.
I would keep my for as long as it physically operated if only I could replace the battery. I am safety minded, and I know an old OS can be dangerous, so it might get replaced for that reason, but I would probably still keep the old unit and find another use for it, because it just seems too wasteful to throw something otherwise perfectly operational away. Look at tube TVs… they still have a use, even though we’ve have LCD tech for 20+ years.
I believe the sole real reason we can no longer replace batteries is because they want us to have to throw old phones away every 2 years or so.
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