Thread: How often do you think a new phone is needed?

I always hear of people buying a new one every year or every other year and I never understood why. I don't think much changes on phones that quickly but I could be wrong. I think people feel obligated more so to have the latest new and shiny thing. Since most phones these days are not cheap, it makes more sense to spend more on one built to last and use it for 4 or 5 years because you get a new one. What are your thoughts on this? How often do you think people should be buying new phones if their old one still works perfectly fine?

I'll be honest with you, I hate smartphones with a passion but in this day and age it's impossible to live without one. I normally get a new phone every 3 years and it's normally the 2nd most recent model due to the overall cost of phones nowadays (you can get a decent computer for the same cost). I would say that the only reason why I've upgraded phones was as I've accidentally dropped my old one shattering the screen and the repair would have cost as much as a new phone and performance although security updates also play quite a big role with older phones being more vulnerable.

If you've ever used a samsung phone with an AMOLED screen for more than 2 years you'd start noticing screen burn in which is also a pretty good reason to upgrade, as it becomes an eyesore to look at.

My phone is the Samsung Galaxy S8 so it's about four years old now, and being a tech nut I am looking to replace it. It's just annoying that phones seem to be getting ever more expensive with each passing year.

Also, I'm not entirely desperate as my S8 still performs perfectly fine the majority of the time, only struggling on the very rare occasion. The 1440p screen it has is also something that many phones still don't have. The screen resolution is the most important to me on a new phone as I don't take many photos, so I'm still quite happy with what I have.

I think of the evolution of phones similarly to desktop computers. The jump from an operating system as primitive as Windows 3.1 to the comprehensive Windows 98 in only six years. Software rendering to dedicated graphics cards. The leaps in hard drive capacities were huge too. And going from the floppy disk to the CD-RW.

Every year we were blown away by something new. It was kind of the same with phones too. In the late '90s I had the "Matrix banana phone" by Nokia. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Slow text messages in all caps? But hell, I played so much Snake. Only a few short years later we had colour screens and... cameras? What kind of wizardry was that? The age of smartphones utilising Java, but the leap from those to Android was phenomenal. More and more innovations, eventually driven by the competition between Android and iPhones.

But then it kinda stopped. Sure, we get new things every once in a while. I found face scanning as a way to unlock my phone to be truly next-level shit. Cameras improve quite a lot. But it's not like it was back then. Like with computers, the innovations felt like huge leaps. Now it's only really gradual improvements. Because of this I really do not see a need to "upgrade" from my Xiaomi Mi 8 which I've had for around two and a half years. It's still in great condition. It's fast and the camera is great. There's nothing more I really want.

5G? What's the point? Networks promise 5G, but what use is all that extra speed when their unlimited plans (which would be the only way to utilise that speed) have fair-usage policies that completely cripple your speed (hardly even at 3G speed) once you reach a usage that's easily done with 4G? So 5G is is impractical. What other innovations are there to hook me?

I think there's a good reason to upgrade if your phone is around five years old because cameras have improved significantly. (That's if you make use of the camera often.) But these days I mostly see companies relying on gimmicks to sell their tech rather than major innovation. So there's a phone that not only has zero bezels, but the screen also wraps around the sides, a bit like a canvas. I guess it looks futuristic, but does that really do anything?

I think I'll be sticking with my Mi 8 until around 2023 at least. Tech doesn't excite me these days.

I get a new one every ~3 years. By "new" i mean one or two models back from the most recent. I'm not big on mobile tech.

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