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Comment by mupuff1234 | Hacker News Reader

I wish the major phone manufacturers would abandon the yearly release cycle for new models - it makes everything so much more boring and predictable.

Not that it's ever gonna happen.

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You aren’t meant to care about every single release. You just get one after x years and it becomes a big jump. Yearly releases mean that it’s never a bad time to buy. The one that comes out next year won’t obsolete the one from this year.

If you had it on 3 year cycles, the first year would be a good year to buy, the second year would be ok, and the 3rd year would be a bad time to buy. And if another OEM released something that year, everyone who wanted to buy on year three would go with them since they have the best offering of that year.

>You aren’t meant to care about every single release.

I suspect a lot of people do which is why they release on this schedule.

Automobiles are also on an annual cycle. Do you think most people buy/lease a new car every year--especially given that something like 11 years is the average length of time people hold onto their cars these days?

Even with trade-in incentives, the vast majority of people don't get a new phone every year.

Americans buy a new phone every 24 weeks though, so an annual release schedule makes sense even if they don't buy every year.

I think you mean every 24 months.

24 months in the US was historically driven by cellular carrier subsidies. I suspect it's increased since that is no longer as big a factor.

Source? I see lots of people using older iPhones, and even amongst the rich demographic I hang around, no one cares about new iPhones since at least a few years ago.

They simply do not change in a way that affects most people’s lives.

I think they would if they could. The allure of the new shiny toy is strong.

Cars are nominally on an annual year cycle but many models go relatively unchanged for a generation which could be 5 years or more.

It is the same for iPhone. They even sell brand new phones that originally came out 5 years ago (SE).

I’m wondering, do you share this frustration with car manufacturers?

Each new car is incrementally a small upgrade, but accumulated over a few years, makes for a worthy improvement. Those incremental upgrades I don’t buy don’t make anything worse for me.

The difference, I think, is that your car can still run on today's gas. The update cycle for modern electronics is planned obsolescence and therefore forces you to participate in the incremental updates. If you don't, eventually all your favorite software will stop working, especially if it is cloud connected.

It's probably worth discussing the reasoning behind a statement like this. I don't pay attention to low-end Android phones - maybe they really do this to you. But it seems really unlikely.

Do you have examples?

I know many people complain about battery degradation. But really, these phones are using about the most advanced batteries that are available in the relevant price range. They are degrading because you are using the device a lot. You really are. Are there any credible claims that batteries are degrading faster than "normal" given usage patterns?

Your car still runs on gas and your phone still runs on electricity.

I think this statement is overly generous to car manufacturers, who rarely provide software updates. Is that not motivated by an analogous planned obsolescence?

This is a common claim but I rarely see it supported. My iPhone 6S from 2015 is fully supported by iOS 15[1]. I know plenty of people whose cars had day 1 drawbacks in the on-board software which were never fixed (or required paid upgrades in the $500+ range) — and that includes things like “the entertainment system will crash every time you connect your phone because you have more than a small number of songs / contacts” — and most people I know who own cars upgrade them more frequently than every 6 years.

1. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe...

Cars are not something anyone would buy every year. Even those buying every other year are few.

Not that I like the amount of resources we are wasting that way, but a whole lot of people buy a new version smartphone every year.

I have to say this really surprises me, smartphones now are so good that you could easily keep one for 2 years or more and not notice the difference.

My personal cycle is about 4 years, and I do my best to take care of the battery so that I don't even have to replace that during that time.

Do they? Anecdotally I can only think of a tiny handful of people I've known that buy the latest model every year. Most people I know used to buy every 2 years when smartphones first came out but now it seems like most people I know buy a new phone probably average 3 years or longer.

> Even those buying every other year are few.

I think this is true but for the opposite reason you do. The number is few because most people upgrade _less_ often, not more.

That’s not really true. Model year changes come in 3 forms: new generations which are pretty big changes and happen about every 6-7 years, facelifts which happen once per generation and are usually just aesthetic changes, and minor years where they only fix usually pretty minor issues.

It’s not a set of incremental upgrades each year that eventually get to something new. The only time things change significantly is with new generations.

Within that analogy the iPhone X could be considered a new model, the 12 it’s facelift and every other post-X iPhone a minor issue release.

I think multiple releases per year would be even less interesting as there would be much less to look forward to. I think phones have almost approached their final form, a slab of glass. The next 'innovation' could be a really good, thin folding model without a noticeable crease.

I don't use my phone that much so I can't think of important, game-changing things I would like to see besides unrealistic battery-life expectations.

I'd love it if manufacturers could go back to try to make mobile phones smaller again, at least for those with smaller hands (like me). It's almost impossible to find a feature phone that I can use with one hand and reach everywhere with my thumb. Latest phone is a iPhone 12 Mini, but CarPlay is so horrible (and important for me) that I'm looking for a good Android phone again (Android Auto is miles ahead of CarPlay), with the same size and good performance. But it's really hard to find good ones.

Apparently the mini versions of the iPhone sold poorly enough that they won't produce a mini version of the iPhone 14, and instead will push the SE as their small sized phone.

At this point, backing Kickstarter projects is likely the only way to get a small phone made.

Same here, and now that my Sony Xperia Compact is now on life support, I will have to switch to iPhone. There is no Android phone maker left that produces something between the ultra-small Atom and what used to be called phablets.

And even Apple seems to have a hard time selling smaller phones.

> ... I can't think of important, game-changing things I would like to see besides unrealistic battery-life expectations.

I'd like to see a satellite connection, ideally with gprs speeds (calling, chatting, podcasts, music, reading websites anywhere).

It would also be nice to have transflective displays that work in direct sun without using too much power.

Also I wonder whether power could be reduced so much that all-around solar panels can give u a small charge when being away from the grid.

I was under the impression GP felt they should release on a slower cycle, not faster

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