iPhone longevity was one of the things that convinced me to switch. With all my Android phones I usually couldn’t wait to upgrade after 2 years, because they tended to get sucky when the manufacturer gave them their last update. Then I had a Pixel 2 that, other than having to ship it in for a warranty replacement about 18 months in, was still going strong after 3 years when Google stopped supporting it. I looked at my stepdaughter with a 6-year-old iPhone (her mom’s old phone) still getting updates, still easy to get repaired locally with parts readily available (needed when a kid is using it!), and wondered why I was spending so much money on something that would be abandoned so fast by the manufacturer.
I’m glad Google is promising longer support now on newer Pixels. It might someday switch me back, but my iPhone is working fine and has years of life left.
The timer is just the difference between the timestamp when the timer was started and the current timestamp, but I don't know of any timer app that let's you import/export timestamps as easy as that would be to implement.
Does it show the "laps" and their times? If not, I think it can still be implemented by storing just two values - time delta before previous stop and timestamp of previous start/un pause.
I used to start a stopwatch when I'd get a new phone so I could see exactly how long I had it. Can't say I ever tried to move them to a new device though
Stupid, but I'd just lap it. Would give me the difference and worked well enough for the rare occasion I actually needed a stopwatch.
Also the Google sign in trick only works if you're signed into Google. I used to put lineage on my old phones and now GrapheneOS. I stopped doing the stopwatch thing long ago however.