Curious to see what the trends are
When it stops receiving OS version updates
When it no longer works. Current one is 4 years old and everything except the fingerprint scanner is still working fine.
Mine is 4 years old and still works perfectly fine. I did start looking at some phones with a better camera recently, because my wife got a new one not so long ago and the difference in picture quality is almost absurd. But then I have also started looking at getting an actual camera to remedy that, for the price of a flagship phone you can get some amazing digital camera’s.
3-5 years
I replaced my last phone after a year because my sister’s phone broke. I gave her my s20 and bought a Pixel 7 because I wanted root
My iPhone 8 from 2017 is still going strong, it replaced an iPhone 4 (2011-ish I think) when WhatsApp, the bank’s app, and other important applications stopped working. I guess I’ll have to switch later this year or maybe next since the battery life is getting too short and summers hit it good. I hope they make the iPhone 16 tough cause it has to last me until the put out the 32 to keep on this neat powers of two progression lol.
I usually keep my phone until it has degraded / become so incredibly slow, that I can’t use it properly anymore.
Only when forced to by the phone breaking, switching providers, or, as in the case of my last phone, when they shut down a network (2G).
My current (Android, custom ROM that still gets updates) phone is 6 years old. I tend to upgrade when the phone breaks, the battery gives up, I hear of some severe vulnerability, or even these updates stop. As a replacement I get something used in the $100-150 range, so at least a couple years old. Maybe every 5 years or so.
Edit: The power bank is my friend.
I’m the kind of nerd who tracks this kind of thing, so here is a list of the number of months between purchasing each phone I’ve owned, from newest to oldest:
5, 44, 47, 28, 23, 18, 46, 40
The first number is 5 months from my latest phone purchase to the present day. I’m not looking to replace this device any time soon. The previous two phones I owned lasted a decent amount of time, nearly 4 years each. Before that I was buying cheaper second hand phones that didn’t last as long. And if you go way back, the final two devices are pre-smartphone era where phones were simpler with less to go wrong and less need to upgrade.
Do you keep this kind of data on other areas of your life?
I know everything I’ve spent on video games/gaming hardware since 2016, and all the books I’ve read in the last couple of years.
When I’m forced to. My most recent phone was free because carries were upgrading to 5g and I was still rocking 3g. Same story with the phone before that but it was some other network thing I can’t remember. I haven’t paid for a phone in almost 10 years.
I have a 5 year old Xiaomi 9, the only issue is that the battery doesn’t hold power anymore. Need roughly 4 charges/day and I believe it’s bloated because when I leave it to charge for too long the screen would bump up a bit.
Only changed it late last year when company handed me a xiaomi 13.
Whenever it stops working.
This is the way.
When it stops receiving security updates.
Why upgrade when it still works?
The problem with waiting until it’s totally and completely borked is then you have to panic scramble to get another phone instead of planning out a purchase. And I had difficulty doing this because my bank wanted to verify it was me making a large purchase…but my phone wouldn’t work so I couldn’t authenticate myself because that’s how everyone authenticates themselves. It’s a whole ordeal.
Granted, this can even theoretically happen with a new phone if you drop it or something. But at least with an old one, there are often signs before it goes completely kaput. My beloved cheap ass Motorola phone would bootloop occasionally and started doing it more and more often toward the end of its life. One morning before work it just totally died and would never turn on again, not even able to get the boot screen. (Troubleshooting revealed unfixable eMMC failure.) That was a fun couple of days trying to figure out how to buy a more expensive item without authenticating myself on my phone lol.
