Asklemmy

I have been using same phone for 5 years now. Never visited to service center. Always used cover & screen protector. I usually see two strategies either buy very cheap phone and keep upgrading in 2 year or buy a mid-range use it for 5-10 year before upgrading. There is usually no significant upgrade in tech in 1 year but wait for 5 and you will feel you are actually getting something new and better

I upgrade when the opsys gets hopelessly outdated (as in apps no longer supporting it) or the device physically breaks. My last phone (Huawei Ascend P7) lasted for 7 years, but the Android 4.4 got just a bit too old, plus I cracked the screen a month after removing the battered to hell glass screen protector...

I don't care much about the phone not getting OS updates since I don't keep anything important on a phone in the first place and I don't care much about CPU/GPU performance since I don't run intensive apps on my phone—that's what my desktop and server are for. My current phone I bought last year will last probably for 5 more years.

I changed from a OnePlus 6t to a Samsung S23+ after about 4 years of using the old one and at least for me the difference is huge. Both are flagships in their own time. The oneplus was starting to feel a bit laggy here and there, but I never expected the S23+ to be all around so snappy in comparison. Camera quality is leagues ahead. The battery life is way better. The fingerprint sensor was never good on the oneplus, but it's amazing on the Samsung. There are many other features I like or find useful like the wireless charging or the water resistance. The new phone is an all around better package for me and a surprisingly decent upgrade.

You definitely don't need to upgrade every 2 years and it probably matters what you expect out of a phone and how patient you are with the issues, but I think new phones do still offer compelling reasons to upgrade, just not as often as in the past.

I've felt this way for a long time. After paying off an expensive contract for a S7 edge, I swore to never pay more than £100 for a phone. My S7 lasted 5 years before the battery gave out and the phone started to struggle.

I replaced it with a Redmi not 9 and after a year and a half i was having problems running my most used apps, bit to mention the ammount of bloatware was shocking.

I have just bought a refurbished Pixel 6 for £250 and the difference is in quality and performance is staggering! I have never been happier with a phone.

So my advice would be avoid the cheap brands and buy something future proof, but i totally agree there is no need to get a kew phone every year.

For me it's either when I find the included RAM is too small (as apps grow over time) or when the flash memory degrades to a noticeable degree, or when the camera loading takes too long.

I'm asking myself the same thing. I grabbed myself the the cheapest phone available at my local electronics store after I dropped my old one in the river 2-3 years ago. I think I payed around 160€ or something and I see no reason to get something new

I follow my life rule of changing phone every 5 years. But my phone broke and become unusable after 4 years. Was xiaomi user for yrs, i bought s23 ultra now as xiaomi prices became expansive. Buy good phone mainly for the picture quality.

Lack of memory card slot is a big deal for me. I get the cloud usage and all, but what about having a local copy? Space fills up really fast with a few videos and photos. I don't want to have to manage my storage painfully every month or so.

Also I prefer compact phones which are basically non-existent these days.

I haven’t gotten a new phone in the last 3 years and I don’t think that I will get one before the iPhone 15 comes out. I’m well satisfied with my iPhone 13 mini.

The fact that most newly released phones don’t go that small annoys me so I’ll keep it until I find something worth while or of similar size.

I don't. I usually buy something good (hardware wise) and use it until it dies. Repeat the process.

I try to milk my phones as long as possible. But that’s mostly because I’m lazy and moving all the 2FA and getting things set up how I like and whatnot is a ball ache.

Every year no.... Every two maybe, most stop receiving updates after the 2 years, except for some brands and maybe top models...

Nowadays it's slightly better as usually there is a couple more years of security updates but that's it.

Of course if there is scene and you can get some custom ROM like lineage or similar it is slightly better.... But honestly most phones nowadays are locked down.

There's a lot of reasons. Single people can spend a lot on tech without thinking. People have lot of money. People don't like their current phone. I say let them spend and keep the companies in business. If all of us stopped buying phones every year and only bought once in 4-5 years, the companies producing phones will have to shut down sooner or later and we'd have just one or two left. I only upgraded recently after 6 years because the phone OS was too old and the cpu was like snail.

You do it to give Samsung or Motorola or Google or apple or Amazon your money every year, obviously

Only reason I see is because of phones breaking. My current Mi 10T Lite was great for the first two years, then it started getting annoying. I can no longer use Wallpaper Engine because of a stupid system update, notifications started getting stuck, sometimes it has other minor annoyances. The hardware is still fine, there's no reason this phone shouldn't work, but it doesn't. Xiaomi clearly wants me to go buy another phone.

So I did. Just not from them. My Fairphone should be arriving any day now. My friend already got hers, and she got me super excited for it.

I previously thought it would be a way to upgrade phones faster without losing (much) money.

Say, you have a 800$ phone and you want a new 800$ phone. Most people would just buy a new one for 800$ (outright or installment, doesn't matter) after 2-3 years. My idea was to buy a new phone every year, sell the older one for half the price and voila - you paid the same amount but got two phone upgrades.

The problem with that logic is that reselling takes time, energy and luck to get the price you want, plus it is possible to buy new phones for cheaper by just waiting anyway.

I buy a new phone anytime a new innovation comes out. I ordered the Google pixel on day 1 and am loving it.

My Galaxy S8 had a lot of annoying problems both on stock ROM and Lineage OS. After three years I switched to Zenfone 8 and so far I am satisfied. The battery life is crap though, especially after updating to Android 13. I'm considering a downgrade if it's even possible