US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

I bought my S10e for 450AUD ($300US) on clearance six months after it was released. I've replaced the factory rom, and the battery once.

There's nothing on the android market like it, it's only slightly larger than the iphone 12/13 mini that's also discontinued. Small phones with all the bells and whistles aren't made anymore by anyone. I will be very sad when I can't get parts.

Also a S10e user here. I've been eyeing the Asus Zenfone 10, but it's unfortunately not available in the US for most mobile networks here. Truly a shame that not many are making small phones, and those that are are not paying attention to the US market.

I have an iPhone 13 mini, the last <5" flagship phone you can buy. I'm not particularly tied to the iPhone ecosystem, but when this dies, I don't know what I'm going to do.

I also loved my S10e. Unfortunately the mainboard on it died few few months ago.

I bought Sony Xperia 1 V to replace it. It has a 3.5mm headphone jack and a MicroSD card slot. The build quality is excellent but I'm a bit worried what the software support will look like in a few years.

Eventually you'll just have to upgrade because the phone is too slow. I had to upgrade from my galaxy S8 earlier this year because it slowed to a crawl, my wife commented on how slow it was every time she used it. I had it for 5 years. I still hate not having a headphone jack, but having 5G and an insanely fast phone made it worth it.

Oh, I didn't even notice why I keep postponing upgrading my out-of-line phone that can't even get new software from the play store anymore. But yeah, it's because I dread of looking around trying to decide what I'll give up to get a headphone jack.

I loved my s10e, although the camera glass (or rather plastic) cracked during the first months from basically placing the phone on flat surfaces. Otherwise the form factor, dimensions, audio jack port, photos quality were excellent.

Still with SD cards and headphone jacks? The world has moved on, my man.

I'm pretty sure almost every mainstream phone nowadays has wireless charging. The iPhones do, Pixel phones do, etc.

And new phots are super expensive. You are paying more in the phone than your work notebook, something is terrible wrong with that.

Former S10 owner here. It had an audio jack, and an SpO2 meter (which is useful to a family member), and FM radio (used it a lot when doing farm work). The S22 has none of those, and it is heavier. Feeling so cheated by phone ~~makers~~ grifters is making me very careful with any of my next purchases. It's as if the market has reached a peak and the only thing they can think of is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

My galaxy s10 rocks. I guess the battery has had almost 1000 charging cycles and is still performing good enough. I like the smaller than average size and weight, the smooth and snappy scratch resistant screen. Speaker sound is quite decent.

I don't see how I would benefit from things like 100Hz or more screen refresh rate or even tinier pixels. 5G, I would not use since that would increase the amount of wireless data so much that i'd need a more expensive plan.

I guess a lot of phones in use are sitting on a 'more than decent' plateau. It's a good thing.

I'm not upgrading from my Pixel 5A. It has a fingerprint reader and I can unlock it from my pocket. It has a headphone jack. Every new phone has taken these things away. Very disappointing.

That is what EVs are for. Replace the battery every few years and replace your car whenever a new incompatible plug standard comes out.

> Imagine how pissed the car industry must be now since most people drive cars for 10-15 years instead of replacing them once per few years like iPhones.

They have been for years, Western markets have been saturated for years - that's the reason why especially the German carmakers shifted all their attention towards China, the only place left that has enough wealthy people to afford their cars.

> Note the negative tone about having our phones actually work longer, last longer and be usable longer without draining our money just to keep the threadmill rolling.

Indeed, it's a really positive development. Finally this market is pretty mature and one can buy something that isn't completely unsable within a couple of years of purchase.

My family of three phone users just upgrades our phones to whatever the lower end pixel is when they break (due to some accidental damage). Despite the horror stories, these phones have always been fine for us.

The last remaining barrier to this strategy (limited security updates from Google) is finally going away, so the future for "replace it when it breaks" looks even better.

I'm on Apple's yearly upgrade plan and still don't bother. I'm not interested in a device larger than their mini form factor, and they keep a) killing the mini and b) making their devices larger. At the moment the mini I have is better than their SE offering. So why bother updating my phone?

And as you say, everything works fine enough for me, so there's no pressure for me to move off my stance.

As the technology matures, you don't really need to upgrade it every year. You can already see that the updates in phone are incremental. For a person updating their phone every 3 years, it's a big update but that's not the case anymore for a person upgrading their phone every year.

One issue is that your Pixel 5 won't get any more security updates (past October 2023). My wife's Pixel 4A is in the same boat - perfectly fine except no more security updates. Doesn't matter much right now, but will gradually start to matter over time.

I'm starting to get nostalgic for the early days of smartphones (2008-2014 or so), back then every year the phone you upgraded to was miles ahead of the previous generation device. I remember walking into the Apple store a few weeks after the iPhone 3GS came out and being blown away by the performance compared to my iPhone 3G.

Phones have gotten way better since then but they also became boring and commonplace. Back then all the power users either jailbroke if they were on iOS or installed CyanogenMod if they were on Android. My 3 fondest memories of that time were:

1. Getting BiteSMS on my iPhone 3G: BiteSMS was an alternative SMS app that offered quick replies, something the native messenger didn't offer until a year or so later. I felt so cool at school when my friends saw the pink logo on my dock instead of the green one.

2. Hacking Multitasking on the iPhone 3G: IIRC when iOS 4 came out alongside the 3GS, the 3GS has multitasking but they never backported the feature to the 3G. When I jailbroke iOS 4 on my device it gave me the option of enabling multitasking. Once I enabled it I realized why Apple didn't backport the feature, the 3G was so down on power compared to the 3GS that it completely crawled to a halt if you had more than 2 apps running.

3. Around 2011 I got a Samsung Galaxy S2 and after installing various ROM's and quite a bit of hacking I got Google Wallet to work on the device. I remember the first time I tapped my phone and paid for something it felt like magic. Now we all take it for granted with Apple Pay and Google Pay but back then there were barely any terminals to even tap your phone so getting to do that felt like black magic.

And yet I still bought the 15 pro. Slightly faster and lighter with slightly better camera!

The processor is faster when compared to a 2017 phone and the camera is much better when comparing images side by side. I wouldn’t have noticed but I put a Motorola Android 2017 next to a iPhone SE 2020 and it became very noticeable.

Reading this thread reminded me to check my Pixel 5 (primary phone, purchased new just over 3 years ago) for updates. And to my surprise, there was a Android Security Update available which, now that it has been downloaded and installed, is dated Nov 5, 2023! Maybe that'll be the last one this phone gets, but maybe not.

Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with my Pixel 5 (aside from slightly declining battery performance, it's "as good as new"); I even bought a "excellent" refurb'd Pixel 5 9 months ago to use on a second/backup line (I was also thinking to use one or both for anticipated trade-in's on Pixel 8's, but with nominal updates all in the rearview mirror, Google's trade-in value has declined to negligible, so I plan to just keep using the 5's; the cost of the 8 vs it's value add was not compelling). 8GB RAM and 128GB of local storage is plenty for my needs, and I certainly don't want a bigger phone!

I basically ran my Galaxy S9 into the ground before replacing it last January. I replaced it with a Xperia 1 III because I didn't see the point of paying a extra $500 to get the IV. The new phone runs noticeably smoother than the old phone, but not by a game changing amount, nor by the amount one would have come to expect from about a 5 year leap forward in technology.

Just buy a new iPhone with a carrier subsidy, and use it for 4-6 years probably replacing the battery once during that time.

We desperately need 3.5-4 inch phones. My iPhone SE with 4.7 inch screen is too big to use comfortably (I can’t reach the opposite corner with thumb and I am a male with average size hands) and I also have Unihertz Jelly 2 which is 3 inch screen, which is smaller than you’d want, but not unusable. Where is the middle ground? The first iPhones with 3.5-4 inch screen were if a PERFECT size! Why can’t we make nice things anymore?

> want a reasonably sized phone

I think that's the biggest problem. If you accept >6" screens, you'll find a phone that hits most of those criteria. But if you want a smaller phone?

iPhone 13 mini from 2021 or Pixel 4a from 2020. And I still would call those large, one-handing those screens is uncomfortable even with large hands.

You want an actual small phone, around 5", like the early iPhones? Fucking XZ2 Compact from early 2018. At least Linage still supports it...

As people go longer between upgrades, phones depreciate less, the phones become more durable and better supported; their price sensitivity ought to go down not up.

I also don’t see all that much reason to wait when you can always get an old model of phone. I also see tons of competition at the mid-range of the market anyhow.

Phone sizes nowadays make me furious. I bought a Pixel 6 one year ago, because "on paper" it looked similar to my Pixel 3a. Just 1mm here, 1mm there. But it actually feels way much bigger and heavier in reality. Impossible to conveniently use it with one hand. (Not possible to verify at shop how it would feel, because all shops have those large anti-theft thingies glued to the phones).

Effectively, the Pixel 6 became my "tablet" at home (or a "camera" when travelling), and I still use Pixel 3a as the default on-the-go phone.

A few months ago I was looking exactly for that and I settled on the Pixel 7a (with GraoheneOS, clearly). I am very happy with it!

Yup, originally had Nexus One, found out it couldn't be upgraded after a couple of years because of the decision to make the installation space so small. Upgraded to Nexus 4. Battery expanded like a blowfish after a year. Bought a Nexus 5. The Gorilla glass wasn't as durable as my clumsiness confirmed. In between the 4 and 5, bought a Nexus 7 (I think, it was a pad device), it's display stopped working almost 1 year to the day.

Back to the Nexus 5, after dropping the 5 accidentally and destroying it, upgraded to a mid-range LG phone. Wow. It was great. Still works like 5 or 6 years later though 2 years after buying it, LG announced they would exit the smart phone business. That was a blow.

The LG will works but is slow now so the only option left was a Samsung phone, mid-upper range. About a year later so far so good but I had to disable a thousand crap apps they install and revert a thousand more crap default settings. Worse than buying a new Windows PC which is why I use Ubuntu Linux on my PC.

The last couple of times I upgraded, bloat in maps navigation was reason enough to upgrade to a faster phone. I don't want a sluggish UI while driving. Hoping Google doesn't cram much more ads or junk into the maps app or Waze.

I read somewhere its similar to the singer sewing machine story.

They kept adding new features every year but once most people who had a sewing machine sales tanked.

It would be nice to have full LIDAR based 3D scanning on phones, one for better imaging and two to provide datasets for 2D to 3D LLMs.

No, there still is a reason to need to replace a perfectly good phone, and it is purely software related. Manufacturers stop supporting their OS for phones, leaving you with something obsolete with lots of security holes. App makers enforce a minimum version of Android.

Even if you can unlock your bootloader and install a new version of Android OS, you will still get screwed over by SafetyNet, good luck installing any banking apps.

I had two P20s, probably my favourite phone I owned. Both died from water damage after about a year, which never happened to me with any other phone - not sure if I got unlucky or they have a particular design flaw here.

I was in a similar boat. My Galaxy S9+ was in its 5th year when I learned about the security update stoppage. I went for a midrange Pixel 6a that approximates the flagship of 2018. I'm not sure if this is due to getting used to the Samsung UX style after 9 years, but I find some choices Google made to be less intuitive or smooth, though I've gotten used to it. The only thing I maaay look for in my next phone which I don't currently haven't yet had is a 120hz refresh rate - but I might not want the extra power draw. So I'm satisfied. The extra battery life is a huge QoL improvement.

Long press the chrome icon, drag it off the screen, it's gone. Tested on pixel 8 just now.

I don't understand this issue. I also have a Pixel 8 but I don't use chrome, so it's not on my phone.

I upgraded my P20 pro to a Samsung S20FE, and it felt like a downgrade. My wife took over my P20pro, and she's still rocking it, more than 5 years later. The screen is cracked in a corner, but the phone trucks along like nobody's business.

That was a seriously underrated and good phone. I'm 2 years on my Samsung and I hate it so much.

> I can't even customise the home screen as much ( Literally cannot remove a link to Chrome and other google apps ).

Uh... I'm not following here. You definitely can. What are you trying to do, exactly? It's true you can't uninstall the apps, because they're in the ROM. But you can absolutely use whatever you want on your home page.

This doesn't absolve Pixel phones from having a horrible launcher, but Nova launcher has been a savior.

Just take the Chrome icon, hold it with your finger a sec, and drag it to the top of the screen where there's a box that says "remove" or something like that. That works for me on my Pixel

On the same boat. 13 mini is just the perfect size. No feature missing, no need to upgrade until it dies.

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the latest SE model. Absolutely do not want a phone the size of the new flagship models. Prefer touchid to PIN or faceid, which rules out the minis.

This is absolutely it for me. I could upgrade my personal Pixel 5, but for the ~$1000 layout I'd be getting a device whose fingerprint sensor works maybe 20% of the time vs 98% currently. There's absolutely nothing compelling to me about a newer Pixel - it's only downside.

Same. Pixel 5a will be my primary until it's unusable. It's the most perfect phone there is right now, and I've tried a lot of them.

Rear fingerprint sensor is amazing, especially with the case. I don't even have to think about it because my finger naturally lands there and it unlocks quickly and accurately while I'm lifting the phone. The in-screen fingerprint sensors are a giant pain in the ass that I have to think about and work for.

The camera notch is in the perfect spot all the way to the left so it doesn't interrupt the top bar. It has a headphone jack. The camera is pretty good and the phone size is good.

It would very much so be a downgrade for me to move to a newer phone.

Me too, but I'll probably move on when updates end. This was my first pixel after being frustrated by even shorter update lifecycles from other brands.

Beware though, there are lots of posts about sudden death of Pixel 5a phones over on the XDA forum. Just a "black screen" failure to start. They even extended the warranty by 1 year for this particular issue, so it seems like a real hardware failure mode. So maybe this will not be a phone with staying power even for those not bothered by the lack of OEM updates.

That chargie device is interesting!

The latest versions of Android and iOS have finally built in battery management that does basically the same thing (they will not rapid charge over night, and will sometimes limit charge below 100%).

I'm curious to see long term how much these changes will help.

I was so sure that my iPhone did that for me. I have setup one shortcut to send a notification when I reach 35% (to not go too below) and another one when I reach 85% (to not go too above). Since I'm in front of a computer all day, I never charge during the night anymore.

As a tangent, there are android phones out there with charging contact pins still.

I switched to wireless charging last year because I too feared wear and degradation of the charging port.

Aren't you years behind on security updates on that model though? I guess if I'm just using text, maps, and phone calls, I wouldn't care...

I kinda like this strategy

There were rumors of having smartphones be on subscription.

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphone-subscription-service

I don't want an AI agent, I want simplicity. My phone should make my life less complicated. It seems like every new feature achieves the opposite.

The Pro iPhones are in a different league. I can't go back now.

I 100% agree with you but the market does not. For instance Apple's latest mini did not sell well at all.

Interesting. I had a Moto G7 and I was happy with it for a year until I broke the screen and couldn't find anyone to repair it. I replaced it with a similar Moto G Power since the G7 was discontinued and I ended up in the same boat as you: Android security updates ended but it still works perfectly for my limited purposes. I can't stomach the idea of paying several hundred dollars for a new device when this one works and I use it so little. I started an "Ask HN" thread about it last year (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33197291). I was looking at the LineageOS route but I don't think it supports this device. I'm still just hanging onto this thing and trying not to worry about it.

Same here! Although USB-C seems enticing, I think i will hold out one more year, since that alone is not really worth the € 1k upgrade. Other than that, I dont really see any innovations.

I feel like 2020 has been a tipping point for smartphones. Since late 2020, most phones above $500 have nice display with a fast refresh rate and take decent photos in all conditions. The RAM and CPU are plenty good enough to check Google Maps or browse Reddit in bed.

I guess power users can look into foldables, but for the rest of us upgrading a phone that's less than 3 yo is only a marginal update. The prices are relatively high too, so it's hardly worth it.

I have an iPhone 12 and still can't bring myself to upgrade to a 14 or 15.

I spend a decent amount of time in the backcountry and the satellite communication feature would at least bring some peace of mind, but even that is not enough to justify the cost of upgrading.

Which iphone 12 pro do you have, I also have the 12 Pro and I'm ready to upgrade just based on the lack of storage and other oddities that I feel would be addressed by getting a faster phone.

WhatsApp can become unusably slow for minutes at a time, apps I just used will close due to limited RAM; mind you I don't have a single game on my phone, I have bank apps, store apps, and messaging apps mostly, along with various utilities apps, like PW manager, smart home stuff, and various productivity apps (MS, Google suites). Nothing feels like it should be this terrible, and yet somehow its become a little too slow and jittery.

The term phablet has been pretty much obsolete since 2015 or so. Better accept that we're not going back.

Most advertising for iPhone 15 seems call out that it's made of titanium... there is nothing else of note.

I have one and I do love it but the only innovations I'm interested in going forward are:

- get rid of the camera hump, make it a true slab (even if that means smaller/fewer cameras) - engineer away Dynamic Island.

Then it's really done with this form-factor, and I'll be waiting for holographic projection out of my watch.

That's my thought as well. Although probably part of the reason for them extending the cycle is that consumers are more comfortable with the idea of keeping the devices longer.

And, tbh, that makes sense too. Three year old phones can still run the latest software and still have pretty good performance. The newest are better and will certainly have better cameras, but the drive to upgrade every other year feels excessive now.

If you do anything where security might be a concern(like getting those 2fa SMS messages) you almost certainly want to upgrade to something that can still get security updates.

Phones 10 yrs old will have so many security holes it's not even funny.

It's tempting, but I don't think I can give up Google Maps and the various chat apps I use.

I’m not glued to my phone as I ditched most social media years ago. It’s still great to have as a travel camera (even night photos look good now), use google maps, have a browser on a decent screen when needed, and for podcasts when I take a daily walk. It’s social media itself that kept me glued to my screen. It’s also liberating to take pictures in a relaxed way for yourself and not worry about getting the perfect shot to share. It helps keep you in the moment.

You should be able to do a lot better than $15/month for a dumb phone. I have a smartphone that I mostly use like a dumb phone, and my cost is $5/month for 500 minutes and 500 MB of data. The provider is Red Pocket, and it's an annual ($60/year) GSMA (i.e. AT&T) plan.

My phone bill is about $15/month and I have a smartphone. Lots of good prepaid plans

Curious: outside of people who take lots of high res video, what do people need high-speed USB C for?

If the company releases every year, you can always buy the lastest tech when you decide to buy. If it only releases every four year, unless you just happen to be in need of a new phone the exact year of the release, you're buying (slightly) older tech.

> Rather than giving everyone a significant reason to switch every few years, the industry seems to think that releasing new models with incremental differences every 9-14 months is the best way forward. It's dumb IMO.

There's a significant reason to switch every few years because (current model vs model of a few years ago) are quite different, even if (current model vs last yeast model) are not.

Seems to me that you're praising Apple for the worst excess of capitalism, turning phones into status symbols, encouraging consumerism and vendor lock-in.

Granted, I got a Pixel 8 this year, but mostly because my old phone was falling apart at the seam. I planned to design my own skin if only to incentivize me to not take off armoring from my phone.

I see all that, but there is a sizable market that just can't afford an iPhone that's worth looking at. Though maybe if used iPhones are usable for longer time periods, that eats a little into Android's dominance of the low end?

Apple's Mac business is doing poorly and the iPhone business is not doing particularly well. It's one of the biggest losers in this upgrade cycle delay, with Nest/Pixel being the only manufacturer growing.

Being bullish on excess capitalism during a slow down doesn't seem like a no-brainer play to me.

But to each their own.

Realistically, I'm just not sure how much growth Apple has left unless India becomes a gigantic market and pulls of a China miracle of its own.

It's already by a large margin the largest private company in the world...

You have it backwards IMO, the only reason Apple is able to achieve this effect is because their phones are heads and shoulders above the rest in hardware quality and integration. Build it (well) and they will come

What percentage of Apple's sales do you attribute to these types of reasons? they sell a couple hundred million of them per year.

Adidas trainers can be described as a fashion item purchased by people who just want the logo. I buy Adidas trainers because I've learned they fit my foot shape better than most and last longer than cheaper brands I've tried. Similarly I've tried a couple android phones and ended up on iPhones.

It sounds like you think Apple's only value proposition is social status, as if iPhones and Macbooks are the digital equivalent of owning a Porsche or Ferrari. While Apple products do carry more cachet than most competitors, that's by no means the embodiment of Apple products. The social status of owning an Apple product is overstated, IMO. I believe that, even for the proverbial Starbucks hipster, cachet is a tertiary aspect of Apple products. Said products aren't perfect, but they're straight forward, reliable, and have clean designs. Apple was also first to market (or at least that's the perception) with many cool things like a serious mp3 player (iPod), a phone with a touchscreen that can replace a traditional computer for many (iPhone), wireless earbuds that don't suck nearly as much as the competition (AirPods), and so on; when someone buys Apple products, part of the motivation comes from the hope that they'll get first access to something cool, or own something that will work well with the next cool thing.

The reason I don't see myself owning anything but a Macbook for my personal computing is because, having owned many Windows PCs and spent decades now trying on-and-off to make Linux work for the desktop, Apple makes the best laptops I've ever owned. They're not perfect; I've run into multiple keyboard failures over the years, but that's pretty much the only serious flaw I've encountered. The macOS UI has remained incredibly consistent in contrast to pretty much every other OS, and I've seen a tremendous improvement with Apple Silicon being added to Macbooks. Repairs and replacements are less expensive for me now because the last few generations of Macbook Air satisfy all my needs, whereas I used to need a Macbook Pro.

I'd be bullish on Apple not because of social status, but because they're a well run company that provides clear value to its customers. Many of us may disagree with the choices they make, but Apple makes most of those choices very rationally. Social status is worthless the minute people no longer care see Apple as providing them that status. Hardware and software ecosystems, on the other hand, don't become worthless overnight unless you're in the pager business.

This is absolutely the case for GenZ where they've ditched the hyper-individualism of my generation and tend to be far more conformist in nature.

Obviously it was always the case to some extent that the latest Apple gadget or Nike trainers were seen as trendy, but GenZ specifically seem to have taken this to a whole new level where it's actively damaging to one's self image not to have an iPhone or a nice pair of white Nike trainers.

Given this, perhaps the interesting question to ask is what has caused that change. Is it a counter reaction to the individualism preached by my generation, or is it social media putting the youth under more pressure than ever to conform? If it's the latter then it seems companies viewed as fashionable are likely to continue to take market share from competitors which are not. But if it's the former then perhaps this current obsession with having the latest iPhone will soon be replaced by people just wanting something basic that does what they need, but doesn't make a statement.

I think to be bullish on Apple I think you need to have an opinion on that.

That's a weird bubble people have put themselves in, but isn't a rough economy going to have the opposite effect, that people will take a harder look and realize it's all marketing BS and phones are all pretty much the same now? In other words, it's expensive to let yourself be taken in by the idea of a possession being a status symbol so it's one of the first thing to go when it stops making sense.

I don’t think I could be more in disagreement and Apple’s third straight quarter of falling sales seems to support that. At some point everyone has a phone that is good enough and no one cares what phone you have. I feel the same way about Tesla now and see a lot of parallels. I sold mine and I really don’t see it as the status symbol it used to be. There are lots of Teslas around, they even look kind of dated now. And who wants to be associated with Elon or the tons of lame people that just got a Tesla as a status symbol? I’m looking with anticipation at the new Volvo EX30 EV that starts at 35k.

I can see something similar happening with phones except a new iPhone has no revolutionary technology like an EV does to entice someone. My iPhone 12 Mini works awesome and will be pried out of my cold dead hands, since they have stopped making small phones.

How is anything a status symbol that is owned by 60% of the population in the US?

You can get an iPhone for $20 a month or less from either Apple or the carrier.

Heck even the low cost MVNOs are offering a “free iPhone”.