Comment on Vodafone Finds Brits Keep Mobile Phones for 4 Years Instead of 2
Achird@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Not surprising. I used to update every 2 years but my last couple have had a 3 or 4 year gap.
As it should be really. These can be very expensive devices that only make sense if you get a decent life out of them.
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.
When smartphones first took off, each new one was a large upgrade
And they were subsidized by the cell phone company, so they only cost $200 (In many places in the US, at least).
Yeah definitely this is a big factor.
I have a small pot I save into for my phone upgrade each month. Waiting longer means I get a shiner new phone when I do finally decide to upgrade.
And once I have it I want it to last as long as possible!
There wasn’t even a maximum on the contract. When I got my first two phones, I agreed to a 2-year cellular contract. If I closed my account or moved providers before that, I had to pay AT&T some amount of money to kill the contract. After those two years were up, I could do whatever I wanted. I was then on a month-to-month payment, like standard cell plans today. They just wanted to make sure to recoup their money over 2 years for subsidizing my cheaper phone upfront.
Now, the subsidization is more like a subscription fee, where there are additional fees on the bill each month toward the phone and the cell phone company encourages you to get a new one once it’s paid off. You’re still paying full price for a phone. Possibly forever.
li10@feddit.uk 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months 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 10 months ago
Reading this on iPhone X
6xpipe_@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I have an iPhone 8 and see no reason to update in the near future.