When smartphones first took off, each new one was a large upgrade. But each passing year sees new phones being more and more iterative. There’s hardly any difference at all anymore between individual years.
I’m at the point now where I keep my phones until they break or stop getting security updates.
li10@feddit.uk 1 year ago
I just don’t see the point of upgrading every two years, and even if I did I’m buying used at this point.
I’m on iPhone and despite all the fanatics creaming their pants over each release, very little actually seems to change.
I know a guy with a 6 year old phone, and when he listed off the features it made me realise how little things have changed since it was released.
aeternum@kbin.social 1 year ago
yup. they might upgrade the camera, but i mean, who cares? iOS gets updates a LOT longer than android, and so what is the point of upgrading?
li10@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Yeah, marginal camera improvements are kinda meh to me. Has there really been anything that significant since Face ID?
5G is the only thing that springs to mind for me, but I’ve honestly never felt that 4G held me back on a phone considering it works perfectly for playing videos…
WagesOf@artemis.camp 1 year ago
Android has gotten high refresh and variable refresh which is great for battery life. Other than that just raw speed, which is usually just throttled down for better battery life and monstrous huge screens.
As far as I can see on the apple side they haven't seen anything but incremental, and sometimes increments in the wrong direction, changes in the last 6 years.
nezbyte@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Emergency satellite SOS was a massive selling point for upgrading to the iPhone 14 to a lot of people. To your point though, my 2015 iPad is just now being dropped from future updates.
Pat@kbin.run 1 year ago
Meanwhile in Canada it's being recommended to disable emergency SOS on both iPhones and Androids because of how many false 911 calls they end up placing, causing first responders to waste time on non-emergencies.
smolyeet@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Recently , 5G in the 12, 144hz in the 13 pro , satellite and crash detection in the 14 , this year usc-c. Upgrading that often is an enthusiast thing really (or marketing).
giant_smeeg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Similar with android. I had a pixel 5 and loved it, the pixel 6 pro came out and I was dragged in (higher res screen, 120hz etc etc). Then the pixel 7 pro came out and I bought that too (mainly for signal improvements).
Looking back, my pixel 5 did/does everything these do. I’ve decided my next upgrades will be whenever the below happens:
I don’t need some random AI features/camera improvments. 99% of my phone use is podcasts, browsing the internet and any phone from the last 5 years will do that nicely still.
InverseParallax@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They need to give us back the headphone jack, that’s a feature worth getting a new phone for, but then again we can just use an old phone instead.
giant_smeeg@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Again I was sucked in here… I bought WF1000XM3, then XM4. Since having a kid, we’ve had to watch spending a bit more and i’ve really started to embrace repairability and longevity. Recently picked up a Framework laptop that I plan on keeping for a long time.
WagesOf@artemis.camp 1 year ago
Or you could put a usbc dongle on all of your headphone cables for $1 each and finally move out of the 80s tech bubble.
waz@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Reading this on iPhone X
6xpipe_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I have an iPhone 8 and see no reason to update in the near future.