I probably average a new phone ever 18 months or so, but I'm a tech enthusiast. No normal person needs a new phone that often. At a point you saturate your market.
* Twitter is dead for all intents and purposes * Lots of mobile apps are dead/dying and people aren't using them in the same way they used to out of privacy or concerns - such as checking in where you eat or tracking your exercise/fitness. (Nike really screwed the pooch here) and see twitter dead * New phones just push performance which isn't really needed when people merely surf the web or click a few apps while they take a crap
I'd say a lot of the mobile apps are dead/dying because they gave up on the app store paradigm and went subscription. Take myfitnesspal for example - where its 80 bucks a year to subscribe to use USER GENERATED CONTENT and it isn't shareable because its not an app purchase, but rather a sub. So many apps did this now that the family share is useless..
and lets not forget phones are getting expensive in plans rather than more affordable.. remember the days of cable? that's what carriers like verizon are doing where its hard to avoid disney, hulu or game subs or other crap when you just want a cell phone plan
What is true-- outside of the US -- is an extraordinary galaxy of Android phones available for every price point from cheap $80 (and quite capable RedMis) to $2000 Samsungs. All with dual SIMs and 1 TB capable SD Card slots.
Maybe people just don't want to pay for expensive and limited hardware (expansion wise), especially where their monthly salary maybe just $500 USD.
Many people leaped up to the iPhone 14 and are now about 12-14 months in on a 36 month installment plan. Combined with the deep promotional credits offered that made the phones “nearly free” or “free” for many, we’re now stuck in a rock and a hard place.
I plan on buying out my phone after a few more billing cycles since Verizon is crediting close to $22/mo of the phone and I’m only in it for $5.
I buy my phones cash and pay about 30$ for unlimited data on Mint.
After year 1, your doing better buying the phone out of pocket.
1200 a year for Verizon vs 360$ for Mint.
1k for an iPhone, assume the phone is included with the plan. 2400$ for two years on Verizon vs 1k + 720 for two years of Mint.
But VZW works out to $31/line for 6 lines; and we got 6 “free” iPhone 14.
So it definitely seems like the better deal over the 3 year contract period — $1300 extra for 6 new phones.
But I air quote becaus there were some extra activation fees, we pay monthly for the phones but then get a credit to zero it out which I worry is tricking me somehow, and I’m pretty sure our monthly service with VZW is NOT fixed under contract, so maybe they can jack up my monthly bill over the 3 years I’m paying off the phones?? I don’t know.
So far, 6 months in, it’s been a good deal but I much prefer buying phone outright and opting for cheapest service — but I THINK this promotion will get me out ahead, as long as I switch back to a cheaper provider at the end and don’t get an escalating service fee before phones paid off.
I'm happy that you got a good deal, but I found phone salesman to be super sketchy when I was younger. I recall trying to buy a phone, and they didn't have it in stock. The clerk was like, it doesn't matter you should get the more expensive one because both are zero down.
To tackle climate issues we have to enforce an improvement to quality of produced goods.
Remember those old German cars that were easy to maintain and could do 1 000 000 miles without major maintenances?
Capitalism and consumption enforced on ppl (greed) destroys this world.
Carriers will want you on the new wireless standard before then.
Cars reliability has greatly improved over the years, the tolerances got smaller as the manufacturing process got better.
Literally any car today can make it over 100k miles.
As a nerd I prefer to work on cars today, you plugin a scanner, run diagnostics and it literally tells you what is wrong with the car.
The 1 million miles cars were not trouble free, they were kept running by people committed to replacing everything but the body of the car.
It was not uncommon for them to do 500k miles without major maintenance.
Now do that with any direct gasoline injection cars enforced by stupid emission laws.
Those car engines are designed to do max 150k and die and you can do nothing about it, no way to fix it.
And talk to any cars enthusiast about wiring issues, one wire broken in the car computer ? Well you better buy a new car coz noone will ever ever find it :)
Ive been fixing cars as a hobby for 20 years, the quality of cars went downhill super hard and new laws only make it worse by increasing pollution not decreasing it.