Yesterday, I was reading a thread that asked what’s the point of buying a new phone as often as as people do. In the comments there were a variety of answers, but what interested me is that there were a wide variety of answers for how long each person liked to go before upgrading. So I’ve attempted to come up with justifications for a bunch of different intervals. Let me know what you think.
Every….
Year: You spend multiple hours a day on this device, it’s worth having the most up to date. You can sell your old phone for a pretty good price so it’s not as expensive as it seems
2 years: If you like getting your service from one of the major providers then getting a new phone with a new contract can be a cost effective way of getting new tech often.
3 years: With this interval there’s often a noticeable hardware upgrade when you get your new phone and a 3 year old phone still has some resale value.
4 years: Samsung and Google both guarantee 4 years of support, so this is a natural interval for these phones.
For the rest of these, I’m going to focus on iPhones because I use an iPhone and it’s what I’m familiar with. I suspect that a lot of this also applies to android phones. Perhaps push all of these milestones 1 year forward since apple guarantees 5 years of support instead of 4 like Samsung or Google.
5 years: For iPhones this is the interval you’d want if you always want to have the newest iOS. Most phones get compatibility with 6ish iOS’s including the one that comes installed. For example the iPhone X (2017) -> iPhone 14 (2022) since it’s not going to get iOS 17
6 years: For iPhone X again, this is basically the same as 5 years, but you stretch it another year because it’s not a big deal to go without iOS 17 between it’s release and when you buy an iPhone 15 a little while later.
7 years: Let’s continue with the iPhone X example. iOS 15 has continued to get security updates this year so it’s likely that iOS 16 will receive them next year. It’s security, not software features, that are truly important and it’s the last year that apple guarantees having parts, so 2024 is the best year to trade in an iPhone X on from an economy/function trade off point of view
8, 9 and 10 years: you dislike change, you are incredibly broke or you only have a smartphone in the first place because it’s basically necessary to function in modern society. Plus you get to be smug about being green. Most major apps to support back to iOS 12, which makes 2023 a good year to upgrade from your iphone 5s before all your apps start to break, and your aunt starts to wonder why she can’t contact you on whatsapp.
10 years I’m not sure what you’re doing, but you do you, keep up the good work 🫡
One final note, if your phone is too old to have a resell value worth the hassle, still go through the effort of finding an electronics recycling drop off. The plastics won’t be recycled but the metals, especially the rare earth metals will be!
For me - whenever the battery degrades to a level where it doesn’t hold a charge a whole workday - or - the device goes end-of-life. Normally battery dies before the support. This tends to be about 4-ish year cycle for me (My last upgrade was iPhone XR -> iPhone 14).
Once EU forces Apple to replaceable batteries I’ll stretch this to “as long as it’s supported with security updates”.
I want maximally secure phone (since all important things like identity, access to accounts etc are stored on it) that has reasonable battery time.
That’s it. Phones have been “feature complete” for a long, long time, I’m not looking for new features and I try to minimize my app usage to bare bone necessities.I’ve heard a few people say this and honestly I’m still confused. I got my iPhone XR’s battery replaced by apple themselves last year. I think it cost 80USD, which is too much, and EU law will be a welcome change. Hοwever, it’s still saves money even if it delays your new phone purchase by only one year.
Pure convenience for me. We only have one Apple authorized repair shop in the city and in order to replace battery, I need to turn in my phone and wait - sometimes that’s quick, but often there’s a 2-3 day queue for repairs … and arranging for backup phones etc is just too much of an hassle. My company pays for my phones, so it’s not a big deal for me personally. If this was coming from my pocket, I’d probably do as you say.
But yeah, being able to swap batteries easily is very welcome.
A decade ago, one phone generation was a significant step up in performance.
Today that increase is marginal at best.
Over that time I think many people’s renewal cycle got longer as the utility of upgrading dropped.
the only thing practically capping the lengthening of the cycle is planned obsolescence. If your phone starts acting weird and losing usability 2 years in, and you cant fix it without shelling out the equivalent of a new phone (I’m looking at you apple), there’s no real way around a new phone. be it old model or flagship, you’re still forced to buy because no phone is understandably not an option for most people.
Yep that’s 100% true for me. I used to get itchy to upgrade every ~3 years or so. Now my phone is 4 years old and an upgrade isn’t even present in my mind unless I come across a thread like this. And if I do…I’m just like “wah I don’t wanna spend money.”
The only thing I’m looking forward to is a later-generation folding phone, once they’re more reliable. So maybe another 2 years.
My upgrade cycle is now: “If I smash this one, or I can no longer source replacement batteries. Then I’ll get a new handset”
This, the differences aren’t that great. Sure, a bit faster processor or the camera is “even better” but that’s not something I notice. I don’t game on my phone and photos are good enough. The form factor doens’t change a lot and new features or inventions don’t appeal to me (for a long while after the iphone/touchscreen there was nothing, now we have fold phones. That could be nice). So why upgrade when it doesn’t feel like an upgrade.
All you wrote is just an ad to purchase more stuff and to give zero thought about the consequences.
8, 9 and 10 years: you dislike change, you are incredibly broke or you only have a smartphone in the first place because it’s basically necessary to function in modern society. Plus you get to be smug about being green.
Your whole thing is about money. If you think that all this technology, energy, CO2, minerals come for free then you are in for a very bad surprise.
You are paying the price as we speak, through the inflation of all the other products you pay for every day. You will pay all your life for your privilege of falling for an ad campaign. Less crops, lower quality of crops? -> You will pay good money because of it. Less irrigation water? Same effect. Insurance companies in general will increase their premium non-stop because the risks will be everywhere. All this money comes out of your pocket.
A phone is not a necessity to function in a modern society, and green people are not smug. You talk as if you were out of the game, as if you were not impacted. Are you from the northern hemisphere? Don’t you feel the heat these days?
A phone is not a necessity to function in a modern society,
Perhaps not, but you do need a computer of some kind to function in modern society. You get nothing done without one.
You need to pay bills, taxes and conduct other government business over e-services. You need 2-factor auth to identify yourself (both officially to govt. services, banks etc and your own services like e-mail). We live in a cashless society - sure, you can use cards, but it’s increasingly popular to just put your cards into your mobile. People want to contact you - more often through text messages than actually calling you.
Maybe you don’t need a phone. But a portable communication device is quite essential is modern society.
Having said that - perhaps we need to separate the “portable computing device” from “seasonal fashion accessories”
You take these luxury items for granted. It’s a luxury. It’s the same than saying that you cannot function without Ubereats in a modern society. Might be true in San Francisco but not anywhere else.
Anyway we cannot mass produce those phones forever, who is seriously denying it? The end of this phone era will be forced upon us.
You need to pay bills, taxes and conduct other government business over e-services. You need 2-factor auth to identify yourself (both officially to govt. services, banks etc and your own services like e-mail). We live in a cashless society - sure, you can use cards, but it’s increasingly popular to just put your cards into your mobile.
People paid their taxes before the iPhone. Their bills too.
You take these luxury items for granted. It’s a luxury. It’s the same than saying that you cannot function without Ubereats in a modern society. Might be true in San Francisco but not anywhere else.
I live in Sweden mate.
Device with Internet access is not “luxury”. It’s basic human right.People paid their taxes before the iPhone. Their bills too.
Yes sure you can. But it’s massively inconvenient. You basically need to take a day off work to pay your bills because bank offices are generally only open between 10am - 3pm. Even my 85 year old mom pays her bills online.
You don’t need an iPhone. But you need a some kind of computing device with Internet access. Cheapo Android from last Xmas sale will do.
Yes sure you can. But it’s massively inconvenient. You basically need to take a day off work to pay your bills because bank offices are generally only open between 10am - 3pm. Even my 85 year old mom pays her bills online.
Fantastic, but it’s gonna end because of a lack of resources. And by indulging into this technology now you are making sure that you won’t have a pension. You are walking into a dead end. Also once we remove oil from the economy all the consumer products will become extra expensive. The north won’t be rich for long, because eating will get more and more expensive. The day when eating was cheap are already counted.
About banks, we won’t sacrifice our climate because the banks refuse to accommodate their opening hours.
I went to Sweden and it was ridiculously difficult to use money. Completely ridiculous. I was waving a bank note and no one wanted to take it. I had no battery in my phone and I couldn’t purchase a train ticket, no internet means no ticket, ri-di-cu-lous. Also Stockholm can do without individual cars. I saw it, I was there. Many countries will tell you that cars are mandatory, they are not.
Again, we cannot maintain this level of high tech production. It’s the laws of physics, it’s not politics, it’s not morality, it’s energy production and lack of minerals.
Fantastic, but it’s gonna end because of a lack of resources. And by indulging into this technology now you are making sure that you won’t have a pension
Eh. I understand you want to turn back the clock to pre-industrial revolution, but unfortunately the laws of physics don’t allow time-travel to the past. We are here because we’ve arrived here.
Wanting to change the society to a more sustainable future is commendable, and we all should think about our environmental footprints, but I very much doubt “removing access to the Internet” is part of that. I think this thread is a good one, reminding people we don’t need new phones every year. But saving the planet? There are larger issues at hand. Like CO2 emissions from Chinese industry and the global manufacturing supply-chain that leans heavily on those emissions.
I went to Sweden and it was ridiculously difficult to use money. Completely ridiculous. I was waving a bank note and no one wanted to take it. I had no battery in my phone and I couldn’t purchase a train ticket, no internet means no ticket, ri-di-cu-lous.
Yes, as I said above, we’re a cashless society. It’s hard to pay with cash anywhere or interact with banks/government without Internet. Cards work, and many people use contactless payments on their phones, because it’s convenient to have everything in one place. We also have digital ID’s that work in phones. Hence the need for phones and the Internet.
Also Stockholm can do without individual cars. I saw it, I was there. Many countries will tell you that cars are mandatory, they are not.
Yes, I’m 50+ and I’ve raised two kids not owned a car in 20 years. You can bicycle everywhere in the city and we have functioning public transport. I’d like it to be tax funded so using it would be free, but we’re not there yet. I’m all in for car-free cities. But that’s well off-topic for this thread.
Having a phone, access to Internet - these things are essential. Changing your phone like underwear is not. EU is doing a lot of good with mandating common chargers, right to repair and replaceable batteries so let’s continue on that path and demand better phones with renewable materials.
I’m not sure if you know this, but dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as having fallen for an ad campaign isn’t a particularly persuasive rhetorical tactic.
But that aside, a smartphone someone buys every few years is a drop in the bucket for someone’s individual contribution to climate change compared to driving, flying, living in inefficient low-density environments, eating pork or beef, or a host of other disproportionate activities. This just comes off as moralizing for its own sake.
He never claimed to be looking for rhetorical efficacy.
Speaking or rhetoric, yours is dumb. The implicit consumerism underlying such practices obviously extends beyond phones and in all fields of consumerism.
I’m not sure if you know this, but dismissing anyone who disagrees with you as having fallen for an ad campaign isn’t a particularly persuasive rhetorical tactic.
Reminder that this dude wrote this in his essay:
Plus you get to be smug about being green.
Well, you get the greetings of smug people. Also I don’t care about rhetorical. Better speakers than me already talked to you all before and they failed to convince you of anything. So you can imagine how much I don’t care about being persuasive or rhetorical. I care about facts.
But that aside, a smartphone someone buys every few years is a drop in the bucket for someone’s individual contribution to climate change compared to driving, flying, living in inefficient low-density environments, eating pork or beef, or a host of other disproportionate activities. This just comes off as moralizing for its own sake.
Liar, the digital emits more CO2 than aviation.
This just comes off as moralizing for its own sake.
You are a bloody liar or ignorant. It took you like 30 sec to write your rant and spread some lies. But it took me way more time to find the source to debunk your crap. Well, I guess that’s what it is to be a green smug.
I don’t post the sources, you won’t read them anyway.
I don’t post the sources, you won’t read them anyway.
I’m almost curious why you bothered replying at all then. I would have, actually, but since it seems your main objective here is just to rant for its own satisfaction, I’ll leave you to enjoy that on your own.
I’m almost tempted to ask what carbon-neutral electronic device you’re somehow created to type this comment from, but that probably wouldn’t be productive. Cheers.
Of course not, it all comes at great cost to the planet. We obviously disagree on the necessity of a phone for modern society. In my frame of thinking where it is a necessity, I write from the point of view that obviously keeping your phone longer is better. It doesn’t even warrant mentioning. So my motivation for making this list was to encourage people to consider keeping their phones one year longer. To do that I have to list every single interval so that I can reach the people who most need the convincing: those who upgrade constantly.
Is being smug bad? It’s a feeling I enjoy so I listed it as a genuine benefit.
It comes to a great cost to you, not the planet. You are paying the price now and you will pay it for a very long time, with money, not with morals. The prices of food are never going down. The yield of crops will constantly fall with each increase of the average temperature.
We obviously disagree on the necessity of a phone for modern society.
We do disagree, the difference is the environment will do the arbitration. We cannot sustain this model. It’s not about morality, it’s geology, physics, biology…
Most of the cost will not be borne by me personally. Even if the price of food goes up, as someone from a rich country I already spend relatively little of my income on food. I suspect this is the case for most people reading this thread right now. So for me it is about morals not money. Yet, I fundamentally agree with you; money not morals is the easiest way to convince people to make a change. That’s why I focused on it in my original post.
I want to push back on your idea that food prices will continue to go up. IRL, I work in food sustainability, which means that companies hire me to to help them decrease the environmental impact of their companies. While the increasing global temperatures will push down yields if nothing changes, things are constantly changing and tons of people are working very hard to make sure that food yields are resilient to increasing heat. Plus, and this is the area I work in, we are working to reduce food waste at the producer level which will also help reduce upward price pressure.
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed our discussion
Most of the cost will not be borne by me personally. Even if the price of food goes up, as someone from a rich country I already spend relatively little of my income on food.
Even in rich countries, people stealing in grocery stores is becoming way more common today. People in poor countries will move where there is food. Guess where it is?
While the increasing global temperatures will push down yields if nothing changes, things are constantly changing and tons of people are working very hard to make sure that food yields are resilient to increasing heat.
Monsanto already said that the germination of corn was very complicated and that we shouldn’t count on them. Replacing corn by something like sorghum would still greatly lower the yields, since corn was a superstar of yield.
And it’s not just the yield but also the quality of the grain itself in function of the temperature, the amount of calories in the grain. The projected drop of yields of corn is around 1% per tenth of degree. +4°C mean a drop of up to 40% yield.
I usually replace my phone when it becomes impossible to both use the manufacturers version of Android and maintain the illusion that it is my property.
Tends to be every 3 or 4 years.
I only upgrade my phone if my current one stops working, though I’m poor right now and my current phone is giving me some issues so I just kind of have to deal with it at this point haha.
I’ve had a total of four smartphones starting in 2012. The reasons for my three upgrades were, in chronological order: battery degradation, theft and battery degradation. I’m hoping that the next one is battery degradation too.
Regarding your 1-year justification, I do spend all day on my phone. It just happens that it’s already more than good enough for my needs. The OLED screen is sharp and doesn’t tire the eyes, the size is great for my hands, the storage space is sufficient and the camera is as good as you can expect a camera with a tiny photoreceptor to be.
<rant> I use my phone’s camera a lot, but the marketing gimmick of just upping the megapixel count and barely anything else means that smartphone cameras have effectively been the same for years. Which is why this ugly trend of multi-camera phones came around as well. My 24 megapixel Nikon camera delivers much better images than my 64 megapixel phone. The best way to improve picture quality in phone cameras would be to increase the size of the light-sensitive surface, not just to subdivide it into more and smaller pixels. But that would require a larger distance between the photoreceptor and the lens, which means a thicker phone.
And since by some divine decree phones must continue to become thinner and thinner until they can double as razor blades, that’s never happening. Thicker phones could also mean larger batteries, a more comfortable grip, better impact resistance, the return of the headphone jack, more easily replaceable components (battery especially), better heat dissipation and more, but who cares about making a product that’s actually better when instead you can aim for a paper-thin sheet of overheated components with a transparent battery that lasts twelve minutes and a 128-gigapixel sensor where each pixel is as wide as an anorexic electron and half the processing power is used to reduce noise in the ISO 9000000 setting required for that sensor to actually register a visible amount of light? And then you take your wire-thin phone and put a huge kevlar case on it so that you can actually hold it without cutting your fingers and it doesn’t shatter into dust when you drop it. </rant>
8, 9 and 10 years: you dislike change, you are incredibly broke or you only have a smartphone in the first place because it’s basically necessary to function in modern society
We live in a mini valley in a rural spot, and don’t get cell reception in our house. Also, I always liked using desktops much more than phones.
Plus you get to be smug about being green
better than to be smug about being “anti-green” 🤮
Whenever I meet someone who brags about intentionally doing something bad for the environment anti-green, I look at them with disgust. I had a co-worker tell me that she got around the emissions tests for her pickup by buying one of those devices online, and she had the audacity to look at me like she expected me to be impressed.
I wait for features to appear. I have an apple phone, but I loathe facial recognition. I have an iphone 13, so it’s new enough that I see no reason to upgrade until there’s a chance that fingerprint comes back. I can’t tell you how many photos I’ve missed waiting for facial recognition to time out so that I can type in a code. It’s ridiculously slow. (I kayak, my phone is in a safe spot, I need it to unlock as I move it into position for the photo…and in most cases, it doesn’t see my face properly during that motion) It’s been so long though that I’m losing hope that Apple will ever give us another option to unlock the phone.
Other features I’m waiting on are getting rid of the lightning port (yay! that’s happening) and getting a better camera that has more robust manual controls. I loathe the automatic options like it deciding that the lighting is too low, so it’ll use a wider angle/faster lens and crop the image. Talk about some nasty, pixelated, artifact fiddled, fuzzy shots! How about just say that the lighting is too low and I’ll move myself closer to the object so I can use the smaller lens? Or skip the picture entirely… Don’t even get me started on watching my phone shift which lens it’s using back and forth…perspective shifting the entire time and messing up cropping. Let me pick the damn lens to use!
Rant off…yes, if apple ever fixes the camera to work without so many automatic “features”, I will likely consider upgrading then.
Oh, for reference, I like a 5 year upgrade cycle. Currently I have an iphone XR, and I’m planning to get an iphone 15 this winter.
In the early days of Smart Phones I upgraded pretty frequently, going through iPhone 3G, 4, 5, 6s but my cadence steadily moved out as fewer major features that I cared about were being added. It got to a point where the camera was ‘good enough’ and the anything else being added was stuff I just didn’t care about.
I’ve had my current iPhone for 3 years now, and I have no plans on upgrading any time soon. Despite the bug crack in the back.Honestly for me, if my phone fits my needs, I see no point to upgrading. I tend to steer towards iPhones for their long support and the “just works” aspect. I had an iPhone 8 until this year and only just upgraded to an 11 after breaking it. But each to their own, a phone is just a tool for me.
Oh nice. I wanted to talk about used phones, but I’ve only ever bought new so I struggled.
I just wait for family or friends who are on contracts to upgrade. They’re usually pretty happy to let them go for a reasonable price. My partner just brought a 12 (I think) from her brother who upgrades every other year.
You could also have battery is noticablely worst after 2 years, also one argument most people don’t realize is that the antenna technology starts to receive less of a signal (from past experience and from what I heard I don’t know how scientific it is)
It sounds exceptionally not scientific.
Unless the components of your antenna stick out from inside the case and rust, I’m pretty sure that’s not true.
agreed I have just noticed that phones usually degrade over time when it comes to signal. I don’t know the exact reason.
For me is when I feel like I need to.
I have a Pocophone X3 NFC from 3 years ago and I don’t know any app or anything that I would like to do on it that would justify getting something newer.
