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Comment by potatofarmer45 | Hacker News Reader

This survey almost certainly wrong. 9 out of 10 people when given a leading question will probably say they think buying the latest smartphone is a waste of money, but the whole point of marketing shows that's not the case.

Average upgrade cycle is 24-36 months now. 75-85% of that is a "current" model. The caveat here is that "latest" device and flagship devices are not the same thing. For example, the latest oneplus can be either the flagship 8T or the new mid-range Nord.

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A 24-36 month upgrade cycle means people aren't buying the latest smartphone every year. I don't think that the latest smartphone is a good value, and that's why I try to hold on to mine for a few years before buying a new one.

If you buy the new iPhone every year you can sell the old one for around 70% of its initial cost on Craigslist in a day (if you’re in the Bay Area).

For me this makes it worth it because the resell value decays over time and you always get the newest device with a fresh battery.

Seems like a reasonable place to spend money for something you use probably more than anything else.

Maybe so, but there is still friction in that approach in terms of advertising, evaluating potential buyers , exchanging goods, handling money.

I don't know how iPhones handle the transfer process but anyone I know with an Android phone also dreads setting up a new phone because there's always something manually tedious that needs to be done.

> I don't know how iPhones handle the transfer process but anyone I know with an Android phone also dreads setting up a new phone because there's always something manually tedious that needs to be done

FWIW I've used Android phones for the last decade+ and my setup consists entirely of signing into my Google account once (and setting a wallpaper, if I feel like it).

You are still paying 1/3 the price of a new phone a year for that privilege, which is no small sum these days. Most people I know including myself are getting like 5-6 years out of their phones now.

Say you buy a $1200 iPhone. One third is $400. Works out to a little over a dollar per day. For a device you probably use for hours per day.

Alternatively, I buy $100-$200 smartphones (I prefer ambitious phones that didn't sell at MSRP and then get marked down; Fire phone, Nextbit Robin, Essential PH-1, had to buy regular phones after that; considered the new iPhone SE, but after the PH-1, I'm not buying anything without a headphone jack I can't lose, and I'd rather not do anything without usb-c). Those usually last 12-24 months and then you get a fresh one.

and these phones never at any point in time had the performance or capabilities of the flagships so it's a lot like when I was shocked to realize these budget laptops everyone is so proud of themselves for "stealing" had cpu benchmarks still unable to compare with my 8 year old desktop

I should know, I did a few years of the $200ies and then got a $400 Xiaomi Note 10. Difference is absolutely beyond night and day for some uses

Majority of people don't need fast cpu. Majority of people need fast phone or those better capabilities even less.

I had 5 years old phone and bought new one only because of battery going out and the phone screen on the verge of breaking. Yes new one is faster and have better camera. No, I would be actually fine with the same model as before.

I’d argue more people need faster phones more than faster computers because more people need a phone more than a computer.

There’s some weird status thing with people preferring to be digital masochists unnecessarily. Like people who used to loudly tell everyone they don’t have a TV, good for you?

Getting a high end phone every year when you can trivially recoup most of that cost from flipping the old one lowers the bar.

Sure you can choose to use outdated hardware for years if you want to, but a lot of people would rather not.

The thing is, you gain nothing of value by that new phone every year. It is not masochism when you feel zero pain.

Also, but that is my personal pet peeve, new phones are too big for my hands. I had to buy new, it is smallest that was available and still uncomfortably big.

The smaller phones that were before were more comfortable and i could control them with one hand. So currently it is even loss that i had to buy new.

Fire phone had a Snapdragon 800, Robin had an 808, and PH-1 had an 835. Those were all flagship chips, and they were all cheap when I bought them. I'm hoping someone else comes by with a new flagship to firesale, but maybe investors figured it out. :/

I agree. I have a Pixel 2 XL and was considering OnePlus Nord, but I think I'm fed up with Android and will buy some model of iPhone 12 as soon as it's released. People might say that iPhone is a "luxury item" but for me and surely for many users, not having their phone randomly disconnect with Bluetooth devices/restart/take literally 5 seconds to launch the camera does not count as "luxury", but instead is a bare minimum for something you use heavily day-to-day. Therefore spending e.g. 600 euros more is a no brainier especially given the payment can be made over 2 years. I won't upgrade my phone every year but 36 months sound about right.

By the way the similar logic applied to my laptop and I felt much more at ease and productive after returning to Mac after three years with X1 Carbon + Arch Linux. The cost was easily worth it (the one thing I missed is a proper window manager like Xmonad but I can get by with Amethyst just fine).

Exactly. I bought mine new 4.5 years ago and it's still going strong. I had to get a new battery put in recently, and there have been occasional bugs crop up (lately it seems to have decided to reboot when a timer goes off) but apart from that it is all good.

Furthermore you can buy a new smartphone every 24 months and still not buy the latest model. I on average buy a new smartphone about every 24 to 36 months but I tend to buy used smartphones.

There’s a substantive technical/engineering case to be made for buying the latest every other year, depending on the maker’s R&D tick tock.

A survey is unlikely to pick this sort of nuance up.

Just because someone thinks it’s a waste of money or poor value doesn’t mean they won’t buy it anyway.

I have an iPhone XR and, while there’s nothing about it lacking in daily use, I still have persistent thoughts of it as an older low resolution phone that I should upgrade.

It can objectively be a waste of money but practical concerns require people to buy new phones. Users have no control over the fact that the OS and apps get ever more resource hungry despite marginal generally unimportant improvements in utility.

The 24-36 month figure is likely not static, but continuing to go up. I'm over 48 months and if it's not broken, don't fix it.

I think most people don't upgrade their phone until something breaks, maybe that's what is driving cycle length. That underlines the marketing genius of non-user replaceable batteries, which are usually the first thing to go.

Isn't it worth going into a store to replace the battery?

> if it's not broken, don't fix it.

Agreed, though I also add "unbearably slow" as a form of being broken. Whether you view this as the cost of running newer software/webpages with fancier animations, a collective form of donations to developers using less efficient languages/frameworks, or an externality pushed onto users by the ad industry may vary.

“It’s a waste of money” and “I bought it” are not mutually exclusive.

I did the math and I have upgraded, on average, every 90 months, and that still feels really extravagant.

Or they know it's a waste of money but they want it and buy it anyway.

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