Hacker News Reader

Comment by moonka | Hacker News Reader

Since I got my first HTC EVO, I've eagerly upgraded phones every two years, and frequently every one. Now I'm 2 years into my pixel one, and don't see a phone worth upgrading too. Between rising prices and the way it feels each recent phone has removed features I'm in no rush.

View on HN

Phones have reached the same point laptops reached maybe 10 years ago. They are "good enough" and no real innovation is happening. It's probably just the normal curve for most things. Once things mature, they still sell well, but the excitement is gone. Happened to cars, TVs, PCs and now to phones.

I could get excited about smaller phones though...

To be fair, laptops also went through that period where the only resolution available was 1366x768 unless you bought a Mac or an extremely expensive workstation class laptop. Manufacturers just kind of seemed to give up on them. Lots of mediocre hardware put together in a slapdash fashion, and this was not too long after the big nVidia chip failure fiasco. Combine that with Intel's year to year speedups being generously described as modest and AMD falling on their face with Bulldozer and there was little reason to upgrade to a new laptop.

This makes me wonder. I bought an iPhone X outright and didn’t mind the original cost. But I will not be upgrading to the iPhone XS. They were able to get me to cross the $1,000 phone barrier but it almost has a negative effect because I would traditionally not blink twice upgrading every year at the previous price point.

Well, will you upgrade next year? If so, not a dramatic difference between $1000 every two years and $500 every one year.

After I saw the announcement for the XS I immediately bought a used iPhone SE. $160 for a 64GB model. Even if it only lasts me a year (it won't get iOS 13, which I may or may not care about) the value for money is astronomical compared to Apple's current offerings.

Wait, why won't it get iOS 13? Or are you saying "if it doesn't get iOS 13, it may only last a year"?

It seems highly unlikely that Apple will drop the 6S and SE with iOS 13.

I agree. They will probably drop the 5s in 2019, the 6 in 2020 and the 6s/SE in 2021.

Unless they just don’t want to support the 4 inch screen anymore.

For some reason I had it in my head that it wouldn't. Fantastic, even more value!

I don't know, but I believe the reason iPhones get dropped from support is not calendar years, but rather architectural change. That is, the 32 bit to 64 bit transition dropped the old 32 bit phones after a while. So unless there is a major architectural shift I don't see why they would drop the 6s and SE.

$1,000 seems like a lot, but Verizon charging $46 a month instead of $32 a month doesn’t.

$46/month is more than my voice/data costs.

At least 4 years ago I had already gotten to the point that my phone could: take pretty good pictures and video, capably handle internet and communication, and run what apps I use (no games) sufficiently well. From then on no smartphone has offered me any new major benefit. They just do all those things a little better, but it was already good enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com