Most people at this level don't really care about specs like higher refresh rates. They care about cost and functionality.

Hundreds of millions change their phones every year, which is why there's supply for the used market.

Billions of people don't change their phones every year, because they can't afford to or don't care to.

AT&T offered me $1000 for a 2 year old phone. It only cost me about $200-$300 for my new phone with a much better camera sensor. I could care less about other features including speed but now that I have young kids my camera is important.

The screen refresh and always on Lock Screen are added bonuses.

I think, to the GP's point though, that even though phones are having these significant tech refreshes, they're not significant enough to a growing number of end users to chase. I'm right there with him, tbh. I broke an iPhone 8's screen a couple years ago, and had to replace it. Had that phone not been damaged, I would have kept it for a couple more years.

>Many people change their phone every year.

Very few people upgrade every year. The average lifespan of a mobile phone is 2.5 years.

In the late 2000s that length of time was lower because phones were improving by leaps and bounds every year but now phones are waterproof, have more resilient screens, cost more, and performance increases between models have slowed.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/smartphone-users-are-waiting...

The lifespan increase pattern is mirroring the personal computer upgrade cycle, but more rapidly.

Perfect username for the reference you made in your comment.

"Many people change their phone every year." I expect that to be one of the things that immediately changes with our current, fantastic economy in the US.

My new phone has the same screen size as my old phone, and my old phone had a big enough screen that I'd need to sew custom pockets onto my pants if I went any bigger. New phone has a better refresh rate but all that does is kill the battery faster in exchange maybe things look slightly smoother when playing games, but the games I play on my phone don't really benefit from the increased refresh rate so I just keep it at the default 60Hz.

I think many people in this forum don’t change their phones as often because we view phones as limiting computing devices. I am using a 2nd Gen. iPhone SE. The newer iPhones don’t seem so appealing that I feel left out.

Many do. Most don't (at least from what I've observed around me).

I've never replaced a phone sooner than 5 years after I got it, but I know I'm a weirdo.

The refresh rate escalation is a complete jerkoff bit of tech spec nonsense. "Far better cameras" is an exaggeration, as most are marginally better. iPhones have been incredibly fast since the XR, almost five years ago.

There was a period of dramatic progress but now things have largely settled. I recently replaced a 12 Pro with a 14 Pro and it is likely nothing at all changed. There is zero impact in my life. Have the 12 Pro waiting in my drawer for my son with an XR to upgrade, but he doesn't even want the hassle of doing the transfer and then setting up the apps that don't properly migrate data.