fne8w2ahVodafone Finds Brits Keep Mobile Phones for 4 Years Instead of 2
shinjiikarusThat is going to be a problem for apple, better make the next iPhone’s battery be I replaceable and self destruct after 2 years.
I’ve been using iPhones since iPhone 4. So far I’ve had the iphone4, iPhone 7+ and iPhone 13max.
All my phones have been replaced upon end of updates. I think you mix android and iPhone here - I know nobody under 70 that manage to keep an android over 2 years
All my phones have been replaced upon end of updates. I think you mix android and iPhone here - I know nobody under 70 that manage to keep an android over 2 years
AltoAnd pretty much everyone in my family has used our android phones for 4+ years for as long as I can remember.
It's almost as if anecdotes are worthless!
As far as I know, until recently no android phone manufacturer except Google provided updates to their phones past 1-2 years. So while it’s been possible, I have never recommended keeping an android phone past 2 years.
See androidauthority.com/phone-update-policies-165863… for some background info if you think it’s just anecdotes
See androidauthority.com/phone-update-policies-165863… for some background info if you think it’s just anecdotes
Low end devices normally last less than high end ones. It’s easy to forget that, as all iPhones were designed as high end, that phones can still be made out of cheap plastic and cost 200 bucks. Any android device in the sane price range as the iPhone will last at least as long.
Oh sorry, this wasn’t an iOS-vs-Android dig, all the android manufacturers are constantly near bankruptcy, but apple has shareholders who are expecting growth, they will be hurt the most by consumers holding their on to their phones longer. (Samsung is reporting over 90% profit shrinkage, the Chinese brands are probably just PLA plants to capture as much communication as possible worldwide without a profit motive to begin with)
I’m agnostic when it comes to technology. The choice of iPhone vs Android both at my previous and current workplace has been and is based on what they provide. Currently we are iPhone, Samsung and Fairphone only - previously iPhone only.
When it comes to age of iPhones (in US) I see the same pattern as in my current org. 9to5mac.com/…/how-long-users-keep-iphone.png
TIL that Samsung is near bankruptcy.
Far from it, it their profit is down like a lot.
appelMy dad is still using my old OnePlus one from 2014. Works fine for him. Using lineage OS. I know it doesn’t get security updates but he’s not stupid and doesn’t use it for anything security critical anyway.
I’m way under 70, and I’m using an S10e I brought in 2019. So four years.
Updates stopped coming in March. But I’ve no plans to replace the phone yet. Since this one works fine, and very few phones released since have the features that matter to me.
wiki.lineageos.org/devices/walleye/
Pixel 2, released 6 years ago, supports the current Android version via LineageOS.
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
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
I think the most popular phone in the last ten years is an IPhone 5 w a broken screen.
DarkhoofNot 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.
r00tyI think it is mainly battery life which drives upgrades now. Unless you really want the best camera. It's the only thing that seems to improve for the last few iterations.
Everything else is pretty much perfected at this point, but batteries and tiny cameras are hard to perfect. Still have to wait more than two years to see any meaningful improvements in either of those.
I’ve been upgrading every two years because usually they have some promo for trade ins (Samsung) so I’m getting a new battery and warranty (and slight improvement of camera) for about $200
Only just replaced my close to 4 years old OnePlus 7 Pro, because it just bricked out of the blue. Would have happily used it for a couple more years. Practically the only improvements on my Pixel 7 Pro, compared to the OnePlus, are battery life and the cameras (especially since I was running Pixel experience on it anyways).
my XR is still going strong. unless the quality starts decreasing dramatically, I see no reason to upgrade just yet
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.
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.
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?
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.
PatMeanwhile 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.
Very interesting, do you have any source or references that springs to your mind?
I have emergency SOS enabled, but it never happened to me that it has been falsely triggered. And I can’t imagine many scenarios were it would be.
I had it enabled for a bit and everything worked fine, but I was worried about accidentally triggering it so disabled it before hearing about the false alarms.
Here's an article from the CBC about it.
narc0tic_birdThese are two separate features.
I doubt many people actually have a use case for satellite SOS though.
There's some pretty remote places in the US. So you don't need it 'till you need it.
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…
Next iPhone gets usb c.
That’s great, but considering everyone’s already got the cables they need, for most people it’s not really a feature to upgrade for.
Most people have 1 cable they need for their phone and a lot of usb c. Upgrading means no more going to find that 1 unique charger.
Yeah, it’s nice, I just don’t think that feature is worth upgrading for most people.
Face ID and Apple Pay were jumps forward in the way that people use their phones and were quite exciting, introducing USB C is just backtracking.
You are the minority then. If you do a poll on what would make people buy a new iPhone it will be the usb c connection.
Yes, but if you actually forced people to buy a new phone if they answered yes, then a majority would stick with what they’ve got.
TipponBuying a handful of spare chargers is much cheaper than buying a new phone.
Absolutely not. I don’t have a laptop, have a family group that have between us, iPhone X, XS, 11 and an old 7max. All chargers I have owned for the last 10 years are USB A at the charger. So the cable will be USB A to lightning for all the phones and to something else, like micro usb for other devices like a rechargeable bike light. USB C is just to cause e-waste and of no practical use.
You don’t have a laptop? I think you are the minority then
Got three macs and a pc, playstation and my work laptop is the only thing that has usb-c on it. But it’s off no interest when not working, I just can’t think why usb-c is so important to some people. It seems like if you had been upgrading constantly on android phones, there’s the driver.
The only person I work with that keeps banging on about usb-c is the Android phone guy.
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.
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).
6xpipe_I have an iPhone 8 and see no reason to update in the near future.
Reading this on iPhone X
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.
BlizzardThose damn Brits, how dare they?! Buy more, more often!
hubobesI will buy a new phone when my phone actually dies, broken screens and old batteries can be replaced.
I'm on an iphone 11 (or is it a 10?) and it still gets updates.
As everyone says, not surprising, and also it’s been predicted for years that the upgrade cycle for phones would become similar to that for laptops as the market matured.
KofuThe 2 years life span had a ridiculous affect on the 2nd market that, now will never be the same.
o_oliYeah 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!
When I looked at the S22 as a potential upgrade to the S20 I have now. It is basically a better camera but no SD card slot (yes they do huge capacities, but boy do you pay for it). So, actually a downgrade for me. Couple that with the fact my battery is still good. Keeping it until at least the S24 now.
TimeSquirrelI noticed the same trend for PCs in the last 15 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 512-1GB 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 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.