A new survey reveals users are waiting longer to upgrade. Over 49% of readers now wait three years for a new smartphone.
I’m part of the proud “when your current phone breaks” 30%: my current phone is 4~5 years old, and I’m really not planning to replace it.
I’ve always pushed my devices to the point of them becoming so slow an broken that they’re basically unusable. My current one is from 2022 and I consider it practically new. Haven’t even needed to replace the battery yet which is removable as were the ones on my previous devices as well. Modern phones are so uninteresting anyway that I don’t really even have a desire to upgrade. I’d just be losing features - not gaining new ones.
I bought a Poco X3 NFC for £200ish in Dec 2020. I’ve been bored of the phone for a few months and started looking around for a new one, but there’s nothing out there that seems worth the “upgrade”, certainly in a similar price bracket. I’d generally lose a headphone jack and/or an SD card slot and gain erm… a more up to date Android version, I guess. I’d maybe get a better camera, but given my aging eyes and lack of skill are probably the limiting factors in my photography, I don’t realy see the benefit. I only play puzzle-type games and don’t do anything particularly graphic intensive, so where’s the incentive to subject myself to even more intrusive AI nonsense and built in adverts that seem to be unavoidable in budget phones.
I really feel the pressure to upgrade from my S9 but, with ability to install a decent OS on it, I have a choice between a Motorola with the same specs as my current phone, so not much of an upgrade, or a Pixel/Fairphone without 3.5mm or even SD slot.
Fyi: The Fairphone has an SD-slot. No 3.5mm though
No 3.5mm though
They really shot themselves in the foot with this one. The kind of people on the market for a device like Fairphone tend to appreciate features like this. There’s no downside to including a headphone jack even if you don’t need it.
Yeah, having an audio jack and filled SD slot really discourages “upgrading”.
A modern cell phone at this point has no reason not to work for decades.
It doesn’t because you run out of security updates after 5 to 6 years. Which I hate. But nowadays switching to android alternatives is an option once a phone is no longer supported.
Or Apple which is surprisingly good in that department, my sister’s iphone 11 is still receiving updates.
I upgrade every 4 years or so, and that’s really only because it’s also when battery life usually declines.
These days the only improvement seems to be memory, storage and camera. Somehow I feel some of those will stagnate.
But the new Samsung s28, it’s totally a bigger number than what you have now.
I’m really surprised that 256 GB is still the maximum many today’s phones offer. My phone from 2018 has that amount of storage. I know there are a few that offer 512 but after 8 years I would expect the baseline to be higher and terabyte area to be the norm in the higher end phones.
Compare that to 2010 vs 2018.
I got the S24+, and my wife got the S25+, and I swear they are the exact same phone.
The changes we are seeing year over year are minute and iterative - gone are the days of anything “revolutionary” driving you to get the latest model every year.
I literally have a laptop in my pocket, and until we can make huge leaps in battery technology (i.e. good, fast, and cheap), I don’t think we’ll be seeing a need to update our phones for 2-5 years easy.
The bitter truth about electronics:
I think things are reaching a plateau for technical and economic reasons.
The last time I got a new phone, they took away the 3.5mm jack. Now it’s hard to play music without Bluetooth speakers.
I only got a new phone because the battery failed and they no longer offered the old model. New models are taking away features I want to add bullshit I don’t.
They can always release updates to make the apps you use obsolete forcing hardware upgrade quoting security reasons
Three years… amateurs. If my Note10+ still had software support I probably could go another couple of years.
…And given they’ve taken some features away on the S25 Ultra and S26 Ultra, I’m not actually sure I want to pay such a premium price to stay with Samsung (as much as I do like this device).
Dont love that they lumped basically everything over 3 together. Its likely in large part because a lot of phone contracts have you paying off your phone in 3 years so that’s when the carrier starts bombarding you with deals for trading in your phone.
