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!
When it used to be just part of your contract you wouldn’t think about, just get a new one when your contract said it was time.
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.
I could understand upgrading so frequently at the advent of mainstream smartphones, where two years of progress actually did represent a significant user experience improvement - but the intergenerational improvements for most people’s day-to-day use have been marginal for quite some time now.
Once you’ve got web browsers and website-equivalent mobile apps performing well, software keyboards which keep up with your typing, high-definition video playback working without dropped frames, graphics processing sufficient to render whatever your game of choice is for the train journey to work, batteries which last a day of moderate to intense use, and screen resolutions so high that you can’t differentiate the pixels even by pressing your eyeball to the glass - that covers most people’s media consumption for the form factor, and there’s not much else to offer after that.
Yeah my semi-techie friend still has an S9+ from over 5 years ago and honestly he isn’t really missing anything beyond a few iterative improvements.
Not surprising when flagship devices have more than doubled in price in over the last decade.
That and the fact that many modern devices feel like compromised devices with purposeful downgrades despite the huge cost increase.
I want a cell phone with a headphone jack, physical navigation buttons, and a rectangular screen like they used to make. At this point, I’ll have to go with a flip phone if I want all of those features.
I only replace mine because the batteries are crapping out. Usually it’s 3-4 years.
Just get a the battery replaced. With the new rule for the EU forcing companies to make the phones with user replaceable batteries, it’ll be even easier.
I thought about it last time but the whole thing where I’m not getting OS updates anymore make me anxious. I’m not sure that’s actually a problem though.
I’ve had my tablet for 9 years, and I’d have had my phone for 4 years now had it not become faulty.
Devices have reached a point that they just don’t need upgrading often, unless you’re using them for video games or something cutting edge.
And of course, they’re super expensive now too, and we’re living in the worst cost of living crisis of our generation, struggling to pay for food. Of course we’re not going to waste money replacing something that works fine 🤦♀️
What do you mean “instead of”? I always heard it was a three year product lifecycle anyway, which is already annoyingly often.
i use electronics until they’re unusable. my last phone lasted 6 years, my laptop lasted 11 years. i don’t have a tv or anything else.
No TV. How do you watch coronation Street and EastEnders?
i limit how much entertainment i consume. it’s improved my mood.
I watch all of my shows from laptop personally (not the person you are replying to). I don’t care super hard about the big screen. And it means I can do other things on my other monitors at the same time.
I like working at the living with the TV precisely because it offloads the work to a different device. So compiling and running heavy scripts doesn’t affect the video playing and the reproduction doesn’t compete for CPU/GPU cycles or internet bandwidth with work tasks. It’s not about the big screen (though I do enjoy big screens) but more about separation of concerns.
I kept my old Sony Xperia right up until I could feel a bulge on the back of it, lol.
I don’t upgrade until the thermal runaway takes my device from me!!! Lol
I don’t upgrade until my phone decomposes lol
Not surprising. For most people smartphone reached a point where replacing every two years is pointless. My phone is also 4 years this year, still holds his battery and works flawlessly.
Yeah I mean the processing power and general hardware just got to a point where nobody really needs more. In fact my 4 year old phone has the same amount of RAM and similar processor to my new one lol. Unless you’re cutting edge 3D gaming it’s not needed to have anything more.
I upgraded only because of battery life, higher Hz screen, newer android version, and to get a wide angle lens. Now I have those even its like…what next? Camera quality is all I ever need, screen Hz is perfect. I’m not sure what will make me upgrade next time but if I replace battery down the line and use a third party OS then maybe it’ll go even longer!
I noticed the same trend for PCs in the last 20 years too. In the late 80s and throughout the 90s, things were advancing at a blistering pace. At the start of 1990, a common configuration was maybe a 20Mhz CPU and 16 MEGAbytes of RAM, and by then end of the decade, we broke the 1Ghz barrier and were putting 512MB-1GB of memory into our machines.
Yet now, I’m still playing recently released 3D games on a first generation quad core i7 from 2009 just fine (as long as nothing in the game starts spewing too many particles).
I’ve noticed that a lot of the reasons to upgrade now are artificial. My wife dug out an old PC to use two monitors recently, but still does the same tasks that she was doing a decade ago. The computer is ridiculously slow though because of ‘updates’.
Bog standard things like checking her emails and opening Word slow the computer for nothing. Even bare Windows runs slowly because of the graphics enhancements.
Yep, if you’re doing mundane office stuff, you might as well fire up a 386 with Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. Except for file formats and more shinyness, not a damn thing there has changed.
Also windows now just hates running on spinning drives and will get the 100% disk useage issue, the only fix I’ve found is swapping to an SSD. HDDs are pretty much only useable as secondary drives now.
I will buy a new phone when my phone actually dies, broken screens and old batteries can be replaced. And iOS gets updates for like forever.
I’m on an iphone 11 (or is it a 10?) and it still gets updates.
Going on 6.
Had mine for 5 years so far and not planning to replace it any time soon. It even has a 720p display, can’t say I ever notice or think “wow I wish I had a QHD phone instead”
Jokes on them, last phone I bought from them was in 1999. Still have it somewhere. Haven’t used it since 2000 or so of course.
I bought a second hand pixel 6a a couple weeks ago, my previous phone was the OnePlus 3, lasted me 5 years and at the time of purchase it was already a two years old second hand, bought them for basically the same price, 200€.
How are you liking your pixel so far? I know its off topic, but I have one myself and am really happy with it and wanted to get another perspective!
I love it, performance is good, battery is awesome, build quality is pretty good and I’m happy with the stock OS, back in the day I used to unlock the bootloader and root as soon as I get the phone, but with the software support this phone is going to have and the features it has, I hardly see any reason to root.
Still rocking my iphone X! Upgrade may be in order this September as the battery lasts about an hour and the screen is cracked, but damn good run.
Not as old but I have an iPhone 11 and I just replaced the battery. Feels good as new and the battery wasn’t expensive
Yeah I went to thr Apple Store to do that, and they said they couldn’t replace the battery without charging me €300 for a new screen, so I declined
Oh that’s too bad
