Submitted 8 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to economics@lemmy.world
https://www.androidauthority.com/smartphone-upgrade-cycle-duration-poll-result-3627249/
Nearly half of our readers now wait three years or more to replace their phones as spec upgrades have plateaued.
Three years is a long time?
I usually have mine for at least five years, and only replace them when the battery won’t hold a charge and there is some kind of massive discount.
My last phone was 8 years old and was still doing well.
Really after 8 years the new phones were finally significantly better for the same price.
Battery replacement is $50-100, don’t replace the whole phone for battery performance.
While good advice, the replacements have been between zero and $100 but I wouldn’t have bothered switching for free if the battery wasn’t going dead.
I usually keep mine for as long as it is getting security updates (plus a few months). This currently means 5-7 years.
And quite frankly, I would like to keep it longer. New phones just aren’t that much better anymore.
Consumers behave somewhat rationally despite capitalist dipshits hoping they wouldn’t.
Cool headline bro.
Companies stopped innovating. Phones are getting worse each year, yet they cost more and more.
There’s innovation! What are you even talking about‽
I just upgraded my phone two months ago and now two of the four cameras (which is the same number as my old phone that I bought four years ago) have something like 20% more pixels!
Also—now that I have the latest chip—I can talk to my phone in like three more languages. I don’t speak any of them, but… Innovation!
My new phone is also significantly heavier than the old one and the battery life is like 10% better than my old phone when it was new! Also, my display has a few extra lines of resolution on the top and bottom!
No innovation? Hah!
Lol.
The adhesive was pretty much come entirely off the back panel. My camera lens literally fell off the other day. My usb port has been unusable for years. There’s more than a reasonable chance it will eventually blow up in my pocket.
Still using it, though I probably actually should upgrade or get a quote for repair or something. But I’ve been saying that for like 15 months now.
Longest I made it was 7 years on a galaxy s9. Nowhere near the amount of damage you have, just a cracked back. Battery replaced every 2 years, but I made it last.
Upgraded to an S23 renewed from Amazon for $400 and hopefully will get another 5 years from it. Upgraded nowadays are just too expensive for any performance or features.
What I think’s funny is it’s still on its first battery. S20 FE, went through a skateboarding ‘phase’ and rarely used a case, so the poor thing has been beaten up pretty badly.
Did pick up a used S22 Ultra a couple months ago, but this was a mistake. It has have significant issues staying connected to my mobile network and apparently this is a common problem. Gave up the ghost and just put my SIM back in the S20, the Ultra’s just my Pocket Paint mini tablet at this point.
Every time I bought a new phone, I considered it a downgrade. There is literally no phone I am in any way interested in purchasing.
I want a phone small enough to fit in a normal pocket, and has physical buttons for basic navigation, that supports current wireless standards. No such thing seems to exist.
iPhone 12 mini here. I don’t know when or what my next phone will be, but I want to get as far away from Apple and Google as possible. I seriously considered just going back to a landline, but I discovered Century Link no longer offers POTS, it’s only VOIP now, which surprised me.
Yeah, unfortunately lots of states are dumping their “carrier of last resort” regulations, and companies in those that haven’t are doing everything they can to kill them.
They’re the most incremental upgrades ever now, with very little innovation outside the foldable space.
I’m going to use this Pixel 8a until it drops dead. I’m not sure how other people feel, but smart phones have largely plateaued to me. It feels more like my PC. Like I only upgrade when something fries or I can no longer run the latest applications I need.
I have a Galaxy Note 20 Ultra from 2020. Phenomenal device. The folding phones intrigued me, though, so I looked into it.
The specs are meaninglessly better, anything you get today is bundled with AI bloatware, I’d lose my stylus and any choice, even the Chinese ones (which are tricky to get and use in the US grrr) cost at least $1,700 for the privilege.
No thanks. I cracked the screen on this device and paid $250 to get pretty much the entire phone besides the main board replaced (another bitter grr, I used to swap digitizers off smart phones myself for $20) so I don’t see any reason to swap for another few years.
In this economy? It just doesn’t make sense.
I have an FE 20 model, same gen. It was a high/midrange model that took their flagship and basically sized down and removed a couple gifs of ram. It has never let me down, and even years later, I still don’t need anything better. I will keep using it until security updates stop.
Still rockin a pixel 6 here. I upgrade when security patches stop and/or when one of the apps is artificially made to no longer work, always have
Only reason to get a new phone these days is if your current phone dies. Currently have an iPhone13, and it just keeps trucking.
Phone manufactures - noted: Not enough to just lose battery life and performance. In new economy it really needs to be built to fail hard.
A salesperson asked what iphone I had and recoiled when I said 13 🤣
Shit I just upgraded to a iphone 12
I buy my phones second hand and I keeps em until something starts to fail.
Same, always. I’ve had good luck on eBay, but I’ve done swappa once or twice and they’re not bad either
Yeah, Swappa is pretty solid for tech stuff like this.
A bunch of people who upgrade every year put their phones on sites like this. So when you do need to upgrade, you don’t have to spend nearly as much. Conversely, if you do upgrade regularly, this lets you get some of your money back, lessening the blow.
Same here. I upgraded to a Pixel 8 just before the 9 came out. My previous phone was a Pixel 3. The only reason why I changed was because the GPS died on the 3. That’s a function I consider critical these days.
Also, the extended software updates on the 8 and the ability to charge the battery to 80% to extend its life. I plan on keeping this phone until it’s dead.
Yes, the cameras are marginally better and the CPUs faster, but that’s about it. I don’t need, and certainly don’t want, AI features, which is often the rationale for a new phone now. A user-replaceable battery would be nice, though.
Some older phones will not allow you to get the latest OS. So you get stuck with an older one that no longer get security patches. This leaves you vulnerable to hacking. That’s why I eventually get a new one. This takes many years obviously.
FYI: Speech recognition is an AI feature and it gets (marginally) better with the newer chips. For example, in noisy environments.
That’s probably the most-used AI thing that nearly everyone uses on occasion. Older phones had to send your speech to the cloud but with the new chips all that processing can be handled locally.
My Galaxy S22+ is over 3 years old and I expect to get at least two more years out of it. I can afford to get a new smartphone every year if I want but there’s no longer any compelling reason to do so.
You have to keep it for two more years! Because even Samsung can’t get Samsung to sell Samsung DRAM for new phones!
My first smartphone as an S8 thought I got late 2017. I used that for 5.5 years before finally upgrading.
I would have gone longer but the battery could not go a simple workday without needing a charge. Samsung also stopped security updates, so I had to upgrade.
I fully intend to use my current one for as long, if not longer.
I am still on an iPhone 12 Mini, I bought it in 2021, and have finally resigned myself to buying an iPhone 16 this winter.
Hanging on to my 13 mini for as long as i can.
Looks like the foldable will be the next with a small, external, screen. If they can magically get the weight in the ballpark of the mini I might be interested. That said at $2k+ I probably won’t be.
I can see myself dumping €2k for a foldable iPhone/iPad device, but then I would need to keep it for 5-6 years
I stopped getting a new Samsung S# every year when they reduced their trade-in plan drastically. Went from like half the price of a new phone to just $200 if that. Between the and the standard S# slowly approaching $1k each year, I only upgrade every other year and even then I buy the previous model year. Genneraly costs under 800$ for both my wife and I to upgrade.
Yeah, we are seeing people all up and the down the replacement pipeline move up a notch. I have a few friends who used to do the every year upgrade thing, and they are almost all on 2-3 year cycles now. While everyone else shifted to: “well, my current phone still works” cadence.
Didn’t read article, but is every other year what we are considering a ‘long time?’ That’s what I consider a long time for some hard cheeses, but certainly not a phone.
Incremental upgrades has been mentioned, but biggest is likely price creep over the years turning it into a purchase that hurts the wallet more and more.
Time to move smartphones into the “durable goods” category.
pixel 7 pro on deck
6a here. I’d probably still be rocking my pixel 2 if it were for the 3G shutdown.
Same here, and I’m not sure what I’ll go to next - the USB port has gotten flakey.
I want to try a Linux phone, but hardware seems to be made of unobtainium, and the software seems like it’s not quite there yet.
Part of me is tempted to just get another pixel 7 Pro on swappa.
Only reason my wife upgraded her iPhone 7 was because it was stolen.
jaykrown@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
The business I work for which does refurbishment has been doing extremely well. People are buying second hand more often as well which I think is good. We’re at the point where most people don’t need the newest hardware, and can easily do everything they need with a device that was released 5 years ago.