My only guess is that, if they are making more money from services, they need to sell less phones. Therefore hardware obsolescence becomes less important as a means of getting revenue.

I don't see why they would put effort into making the phones last longer, though, if this didn't matter to them before.

Anyway you can't exactly pull a longer lasting battery out of thin air

> Anyway you can't exactly pull a longer lasting battery out of thin air

I don’t know if intentional but I enjoyed the pun about the iPhone Air, here.