I mean, most of the population isn't buying a new phone every year, it's just that there are enough people using phones in general that at any given time there are people buying new models. It's the same reason why there are people buying cars every year.

I personally use my phones for about 3 years. Sometimes up to 4, but usually year 3-4 is when the battery degradation gets so horribly bad and performance stutters so much that I figure if I'm going to do a full reset and buy a new battery and all that, I might as well get a new phone.

The main reason to do it is when the manufacturer no longer releases security updates for the phone. Given the security history and the typical corporate attitude of caring little for the customer, I want to minimize the risk posed by not having a very out of date operating system.

Because they welded the one consumable that needs replacement to force you to buy new every few years: the battery

Vanity, marketing and buying shit unnecessarily.

I have a Fairphone 3 that I got in January 2020. Its a great device. I want to using it daily for between 5 to 10 years. And I have no doubt it will do that.

Meanwhile my brother has bought 3 Samsung devices in that time. And each one still works fine. He doesn't need a new phone each time but he will still insist on it.

The only real issue are updates. After just 3 years my previous phone didn't get any security updates and I had to get new hardware. I actually liked my previous phone more than my current one. But it is how it is.

Planned obsolescence wiki link

Gaming? Most of them are p2w or microtransaction garbage

And? You may not like them, but there's clearly an audience.

Don't buy a new phone if you don't want one, but why be so mad that other people have reasons you don't?

I buy a new phone when my current one breaks. So like every five years.

Lots of people are bad with money or don't prioritize the same things I do. I try not to worry about this. I worry about other unimportant shit like why do people roll for stats in DND 5e.

The world around you uses Instagram daily. They do need a better camera and all the AI photo enhancement filters. Plus, consumerism, you know.

Other than that, there's no technical reason to buy anything better than what flafhsips were a few years back. I have one and it's constantly underutilized.

I mean, maybe 5G or wifi 6 could be a reason to migrate.

I can't see why you can't see the difference. I've been swapping every few years from the lowest tier phone that's recently come out and each change feels like night and day each and every time. Perhaps you should stop buying overpriced phones?

Status symbol. That, and many people are horrible with their devices. They drop them and scratch them, crack the screen, chip them.

They abuse them and load them with tons of apps. Fill up the phone with videos and photos. The battery holds less of a charge because many people use their phones as computers and will constantly be cycling it dead 3 times a day or more.

Apps update and use more resources and space. They could just clean up their phone, do a reset, and have a case for protection but choose not to and just buy a new one.

It's stupid I agree

It used to be that a new phone came with a relatively substantial new feature set. People have become accustomed to this and businesses have been built around this. At this point, it’s mostly about consumerism.

I’m still rocking an iPhone 12 Mini without the slightest hiccup as well as an original iPhone SE as my main music player. I used to be the person who got every new phone because there used to be such a jump in performance and hardware features. Now I have no reason to upgrade at all. Honestly, I’d love to get rid of my phone all together and just use an iPad, Apple Watch, and my camera and journal.

I feel like when I was younger and phone tech was changing a lot in the early days of the iOS and Android the difference even 1 year made was sometimes huge. Nowadays it’s much more incremental. A slight processor boost here, a couple GB of Ram there. I think a large part as to why that is is two things.

One, the tech has stagnated to some degree. Innovation doesn’t exactly sell a phone to regular non tech folks, a stable “don’t have to think about it” experience is what most people are after.

Two, a lot more issues with the cell phone platform are solved with software rather than throwing around more powerful hardware.

All that being said when I was younger I loved the idea of bleeding edge tech in my pocket, I upgraded all the time. The appeal was more customization at a lesser cost to performance, I wanted all the bells and whistles and less of the jank that came with it. I’m a little older now and lean much more towards the “give me something that works and doesn’t crash for the 10 minutes I have to look at my phone” club.

For those that upgrade to the latest iPhone/Pixel every year no matter what, I chalk that up to lots of expendable funds. It doesn’t appeal to me any more but I can also recognize that there are probably plenty of people out there now, like I was 10 years ago, so it could also be a general interest in the tech and how the bleeding edge keeps pushing for faster, more efficient technology.

There is a HUGE difference in 4 and 12 GB of ram if you're using 20 different apps at once that are all running background tasks.

The camera raw megapixel are of little significance these days but things like optical zoom or a larger sensor and aperture make a lot of difference.

The main reason to upgrade otherwise is unsupported OS versions. you'll stop getting security updates leaving your phone vulnerable to attack.

20 years ago, I had an insurance plan with AT&T. For $30 I could "replace" my phone under the insurance policy (once per year). Then the plan changed it was a refurbished phone not new..... then eventually the insurance plan went to a surcharge of $200 to replace with a refurbished phone.

Back in the old days I simply upgraded every one or two years under the insurance plan. But that was the days before smartphones really took off.

These days I don't have that insurance plan, and simply hold onto my phones as long as possible. I don't get it either.

I have a Galaxy S9 that I've had for five years and it just won't die on me. Not that I'm complaining, I honestly have no clue what I'll buy next. But I don't get the need to upgrade annually.

I buy used flagships.

A 1.5 year old flagship costs the same as a brand new midrange phone, but is significantly better.

I just got a S21 Ultra for cheaper than I would have paid for an A54. (Also Exynos is hot fucking garbage. I wanted to get away from Samsung altogether, but the price on this made sense and I has a snapdragon. Significantly better)

I have never upgraded every year, I used to every two years, then three. Now I’ve had my iPhone 11 for almost four years, and I’m planning to keep it for 5. It will probably still get new OS updates for another 1 year after that (total of 6).

There is no reason to update your phone every year.

There are OS updates and there are security updates. Check with your manufacturer as these periods may be quite short, and considering how tied our finances and porivate info are to our phones, it could be a huge hazard. Most android manufacturers, for example, I think offer 2 years of OS updates and 3 or 4 years of security updates. Apples does 6 and 8 - which is wild to me for all the talk of Android users about FOSS and privacy and security. Samsung does 4 and 5, which IIRC, is one of the highest in the android world.

I'm certain someone will mention GrapheneOS, so let me get ahead of that: You can completely de-google your android phone and get as many years of OS upgrades as your hardware can physically support... but is the average person really going to do that?

In my experience, batteries start to deteriorate after about two years or so.

I just use my phone until it either breaks or can't do what I want it to do.

Since having kids they break more often.

My number one reason: battery life

I agree. I only replace my phone when it stops working.

Battery life is decent for 3-4+ years nowadays.

The big reason is updates. Phones will only get Android and security updates for so long. After that point, you buy a new phone or run the risk of being exposed.

Z fold user here. This thing has a limited number of times of being folded and unfolded. My early upgrade plan is kinda to prevent the inevitable happening while I'm the device owner.

There are people that like new things, there are people who prefer older things. I am willing to spend money on a new phone every 2 years because it is my main computing device. I, also, don’t miss a lot of things of older phones. I never used as SD card, I never replaced a battery, and I haven’t used wired headphones in a decade.

I like my iPhone 14, the LiDAR gives me a ton of cool applications, the camera takes the best photos I’ve ever taken before, it will be kept updated for the next 5 years and the always-on screen is very useful for unlock-free info.

If you trade-in a fairly new phone, you can heavily discount a new phone purchase as well. It’s more like leasing a car vs owning a car. Pay for the time you use the phone, return it while it still has value in the 2nd hand market and get a fresh phone.

On the other hand, my brother sticks his phone in his pocket all day and doesn’t look at it at home. He bought an iPhone SE a few years ago and it just works. He would argue buying a new phone is silly as well. But we use our phones very differently and so our purchase habits will be different.

In Canada, for years, you were almost a fool for not upgrading your device every two years. The "regular" plans we all had involved a 2-yr contract in which time your phone would be paid off. But after that term was up, the monthly bill remained exactly the same. It was stupid, but a lot of Canadians just said, "Welp. Might as well upgrade then." Then the CRTC here stepped up and told the big three carriers here to knock it off.

I had a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ that I held onto for three and a half years. That was the longest I'd ever kept a smartphone. It was going strong too. Alas, I found out security updates were knocked down to quarterly from monthly. And after this year, it would receive nothing more. I reluctantly looked into the Galaxy S23 Ultra as a replacement and thanks to a good deal, I have that phone now. It's an amazing device too and I hope it carries me for another 3+ years.

I was at work last week and two colleagues loaded on an apple update to their phones. Their phones slowed to a crawl and lost battery charge quickly through the day. The next thing I saw was one of them with the internet browser open putting his credit card details in to buy a new iPhone £650 gone just like that. iPhone users wouldn't balk at expensive contracts or spending £600 quid on a new iPhone. It seems to me apple deliberately trash their phones and users accept it and upgrade to a newer model. I could understand if it was a cheap phone but jeeze crazy money for something with such a short lifespan. Would you buy a ln expensive TV if you thought it wouldn't last you any more than a couple of years?

There was a couple years where I could trade in last year's Samsung for like $100 below the cost of the new phone, and they'd give me $250 in accessories with that. It was honestly just the cheapest option for a bit.