[masraum]

Originally Posted by john70t

My major complaint was that it stopped functioning like a basic phone, which could be a hazardous condition under some circustances.
The brand name of the product is "iPhone".

Yes, that's bad. I've never had a phone, Apple, Android or otherwise do that. I can see that if someone is using a really phone, and the technologies used by 99.9% of carrier users have changed so that old phones won't work on the new systems, that's another issue, but I wouldn't think that would yet be impacting any iPhone. That's similar to folks that used to have C-band satellite TV being told "we aren't going to support that any more, you've got to upgrade to one of the new, little dishes," and that did happen.

New feature additions were not part of the original contract.
These were forced.
They might as well add CRAY/SETI/Bticoin mining super-computing functionality, but that would still alter the original agreement.

It's as if new Ford Mustang owners found their performance remotely degraded from 460hp to 310hp and then the engine won't even start.

A fully functioning phone as advertised was originally bought and paid for.

Those should all be "off" by default.
Those should all be "opt-in" by default with known defects disclosed and a clear choice to revert available.

Meh, these are more like mini-computers with phone functionality. These really aren't that much different than a PC running Windows or a Mac. Computers become unsupported and obsolete. It usually takes a REALLY long time (at least 5-10 years in my experience). My mom has been using dumb phones up until this past summer. She finally got her first iPhone because her previous flip phone literally fell apart. Electronics die and become obsolete, especially these days when almost everything has some sort of processor built in somewhere.

The other item to remember is that you don't really own it all. You had to agree to an EULA to setup the phone, and, I'm pretty sure, the EULA doesn't say "you own everything and it'll work forever."

It's also completely possible that changes to the carrier network caused the issue (vs the phone being the cause).