I don't think they do that at the low-end (nor the high-end, though that doesn't matter here - higher-end manufacturers have a small margin they can eat into). People on the low-end phones want a new phone, they just cannot afford it!
There's also the issue of phones occasionally getting broken, of course.
My desktop PC is from 2008 but I'd never consider this to represent anything like common usage. In fact it's so unusual that I get to point it out in posts like this.
https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-17,ip...
Is the newer model better? Sure!
But it had 4k 60fps video, optical image stabilisation, a "super retina display" etc five generations ago. The specs have kept improving, but it's not a quantum leap in performance.
You buy a new phone every two years, it comes with a camera, a cpu, a gpu, a host of sensors. Same as phones did two years ago, and ten years before that.
I don’t use my current smart phone in any ways that are different to the iMate PDA2K I had twenty years so.
Because that's what happens if you use an old cheap phone in the modern day.
I even had a phone that would occasionally just crash when on a heavy website and the onscreen keyboard popped up. That was not at all infuriating!!! Especially when it would crash when I try to refine a Google search.
> You buy a new phone every two years, it comes with a camera, a cpu, a gpu, a host of sensors. Same as phones did two years ago, and ten years before that.
Some of these serve some interesting niches that might now disappear due to this DRAM supply issue, e.g. Unihertz for extra small phones or CAT for extra durable worksite phones.
It's easier to name the countries where iPhone ISN'T a luxury, as you can count them on very few hands.
This is a great thing to happen, actually. Those phones are all essentially trash that ends up in a landfill within a year or so. They should not exist at all.