Other than your carrier give it for free or cheap, I don’t really see the reason why should you buy new phone. I’ve been using Redmi Note 9 for past 3 years and recently got my had on Poco F5. I don’t see the point of my ‘upgrade’. I sold it and come back to my Note 9. Gaming? Most of them are p2w or microtransaction garbage or just gimped version of its PC/Console counterpart. I mean, $400 still get you PS4, TV and Switch if you don’t mind buying used. At least here where I live. Storage? Dude, newer phone wont even let you have SD Card. Features? Well, all I see is newer phones take more features than it adds. Headphone jack, more ads, and repairability are to name a few. Battery? Just replace them. However, my Note 9 still get through day with one 80% charge in the dawn. Which takes 1 hour.
I am genuinely curious why newer phone always selling like hot cakes. Since there’s virtually no difference between 4gb of RAM and 12gb of RAM, or 12mp camera and 100mp camera on phone.
I mean, most of the population isn’t buying a new phone every year, it’s just that there are enough people using phones in general that at any given time there are people buying new models. It’s the same reason why there are people buying cars every year.
I personally use my phones for about 3 years. Sometimes up to 4, but usually year 3-4 is when the battery degradation gets so horribly bad and performance stutters so much that I figure if I’m going to do a full reset and buy a new battery and all that, I might as well get a new phone.
See thats where im with OP.
Lots of people do switch every 1-2 years.
And swapping a battery costs idk 40€ and an afternoon, full reset costs nothing and takes 20 minutes. Why would i generate that much trash and spend a thousand bucks on the latest shit thats 99% the same instead?
Capitalism and Marketing, bro.
I had a 4 year old phone that I had to charge twice a day. I figuered I switch the battery with an official branded replacement which had costed around 100€. The difference between the old and new battery were unnoticable and I still had to charge the phone twice a day.
tough luck. Sounds like it was straining to keep up with background apps / OS updates rather than a broken battery.
Guess trouble shooting is half the battle in these cases.Perhaps the replacement battery was manufactured a while ago?
IPhone maybe? I know they restrict your battery capacity with software as your phone ages, so the short lifespan has nothing to do with the actual condition of the battery. Iirc some other brands do it to, but I don’t know which ones.
It‘s the other way around. Capacity decreases on its own just through usage. What Apple (and other manufacturers, as you said) does is decrease clock speeds of the CPU and RAM to make degraded batteries last longer. Basically trading performance for battery life. And that feature should deactivate automatically if the device senses a new battery being put in. At least it did with my old iPhone 6S.
Not charging my old phone to 100%, rather to 85% or 90% has helped with battery longevity immensely. After almost 5 years in use, accubattery still shows 80% battery health, and even if that’s not accurate, it still lasts quite a while. The SD625 that phone had was very sluggish though, so in the end I still replaced it
I used to do that, but it was a chore to keep monitoring my battery life. I wish there were a “charge phone to 80% and stop” option.
My samsung has the feature built in, but on that old phone I rooted and installed Advanced Charge Controller. (Not feasible for most people i know)
Samsung phones let you restrict the battery percentage to 85 percent. I think Apple does the same now.
The main reason to do it is when the manufacturer no longer releases security updates for the phone. Given the security history and the typical corporate attitude of caring little for the customer, I want to minimize the risk posed by not having a very out of date operating system.
You don’t need a new phone every year to get this.
Some manufacturers drop support after a few years. It’s usually less frequent than every year but if you were worried about spyware or someone getting all those weird pictures you have saved to your camera roll it could make sense to upgrade for peace of mind.
“After a few years”. So if you have a few years why are you buying a new home every year?
Be honest with yourself. You’re addicted.
Because they welded the one consumable that needs replacement to force you to buy new every few years: the battery
Luckily for us Americans, the Europeans have their head on straight and can force companies to fix this by the end of the decade. So that’ll be nice at least
welded??
Probably soldered.
I don’t think a phone where the battery is welded to the body exists.
I know you’re probably being hyperbolic, but sealing a phone’s body construction to make it waterproof is very different from ‘welding’ the battery in.
Gaskets, o-rings, and screws exist. The waterproof argument is a weak one that doesn’t hold water. There’s no reason why it needs to be glued together and past phones have had waterproofing with a removable back and replaceable battery.
I’ve had a waterproof phone with a removable battery. It’s not crazy. Within the last 6 years or so even
Yeah I’m sure you’re more informed of the engineering trade-offs with regard to smartphone manufacturing than literally every major smartphone manufacturer.
Yeah I’m sure phone companies communicate engineering truth to us, and not what their marketing departments find most in their interest.
Of course they don’t, I’m not saying anything about what phone companies communicate, I’m talking about what they do.
The smartphone market is extremely competitive, they are very highly motivated to find the most efficient way to engineer a device that maximizes consumers’ purchasing preferences.
A world class product team produces a design that matches customers’ preferences according to world class market research. World class engineers figure out how to maximize features that satisfy those preferences. That virtually always involves trade-offs.
When one company does a better job of maximizing features that match consumer demands, their market share goes up.
When a company focuses on maximizing features that a vocal minority of users want, they struggle to move units.
It’s not some conspiracy to provide inferior products, it’s just capitalism being capitalism. Companies make what people will buy.
Marketers do not just passively give users what they already want. They also manipulate what users want. This isn’t some conspiracy theory, the marketing discipline is quite open about this. When something is in the interest of the company making more profit, they convince users that it is in their own interest. This is just capitalism being capitalism. Not being able to easily replace your battery is as clear an example of such a thing as you could ask for.
Except it’s not, you just live in an echo chamber where people endlessly repeat the misconception that the average consumer as any interest in replacing their own battery. They don’t. Marketers aren’t manipulating millions of people into thinking they don’t, either.
If companies like Apple wanted to force people to upgrade, all they would have to do is stoop to the level of the competition by not offering 6 years of OS upgrades on new phones. Or they could not offer first-party, warrantied battery replacements for ~90 dollars. Honestly, apple constantly goes out of their way to make their devices last longer than the competition, and still the bigbrains on Internet forums walk around with their heads in the sand.
You go ahead and do you homie, nobody is going to be able to change your mind from something you’re so desperate to believe.
Implying manufacturers want us to be able to repair our devices more easily yet can’t design them that way because of some impossible feat of engineering required to add an o-ring and some screws? Give me a break dude. None of this is groundbreaking territory.
That’s not what I’m implying at all.
Manufacturers want to give consumers a device that meets consumers’ purchasing requirements better than their competitors’ products do.
They only want us to be able to repair our phones inasmuch as consumers will buy more easily repairable phones instead of more tightly sealed phones, which is absolutely not the case. Sealed phones consistently sell waaay more than non-sealed phones, likely because they can be slightly thinner with marginally larger batteries. Every once in a while an OEM will release a phone that has a hot-swappable battery, but nobody outside of niche online electronics communities cares.
What I’m debating is the idea that there’s some nefarious conspiracy to withhold hot-swappable batteries from consumers to force them to upgrade their phones. That’s ridiculous. OEMs make sealed phones instead of easily disassemblable phones because consumers buy sealed phones instead of disassemblable ones when given the choice.
And it’s not that hard to figure out why, honestly. Personally, I would rather take my phone to an Apple Store and have them swap the battery for what I can be certain is an OEM replacement for $90 than spend $50 on eBay on a probably fake battery, take time out of my day to swap it myself, and assume the liability in the event of an improper seal. And consumer purchasing patterns show that I’m in the company of the majority of phone buyers in the US.
Sealed phones consistently sell waaay more than non-sealed phones
OEMs make sealed phones instead of easily disassemblable phones because consumers buy sealed phones instead of disassemblable ones when given the choice.
Give some examples of the phones you’re referring to here because I’d bet you’re referring to recent phones like the XCover Pro which use ancient hardware that appeals to nobody.
For 30 years, manufacturers sold phones with replaceable batteries and consumers gobbled them all up with nobody demanding that they instead glue phones together.
You claim phones are thinner when glued yet my Note 4 from 2014 is thinner than my current Galaxy S21 Ultra even though the former had a removable back and replacable battery.
The reason why they’ve all gone to sealed phones is because they ran out of innovative ideas years ago with the yearly release cycle and have now resorted to raising revenue by making phones harder to repair yourself, removing accessories, locking down firmware, and building them with more fragile materials. It’s the same enshittification that we’re now seeing in social media and streaming services. Don’t fall for the marketing propaganda that these companies are pushing because it’s all bullshit.
My guy, you’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and it’s embarrassing.
Manufacturers used to sell phones that you had to have plugged into the wall at your house, and consumers gobbled them up. The market has innovated, and now consumers expect something different. How is “consumers used to buy x when it was all that was available so obviously they must prefer it over y” anywhere close to a rational argument?
My claim was that phones are thinner with bigger batteries. Your s21 ultra has a 5000 mAh battery, the note 4 had 3200 mAh battery. The s21 ultra has a much bigger battery in a smaller footprint.
The smartphone market is insanely competitive, if any manufacturer were deliberately making their phones worse, other manufacturers would be capitalizing on that and taking their market share. Phones are easier to repair today than they were 3-5 years ago, you can check out the ifixit repairability scores if you want. Phone firmware is no more locked down now than it has been in the past, unless you’re specifically talking about how much worst modern pixels are than they and nexus’s were in the past. I don’t know about Androids since 2020, since that’s when I switched, but the steel bezels and flat glass on iPhones since the 12 pro make them FAR more durable than any phone I’ve used. Haven’t had my phone in a case for 3 years, and there have been a handful of times it’s fallen out of my pocket while getting into my truck. The stainless bezel doesn’t deform like aluminum, so side impacts aren’t transferred to the glass. Countless drop tests corroborate this.
You think phones are getting worse because you want to think that, despite the objective reality. You personally want a feature set that’s not widely popular, and you’re mad about it. Which I actually totally get.
The point is that virtually every mobile on the market has a non-replaceable battery, and that’s a huge factor driving over-consumption via planned obsolescence.
They do? That sucks. I’ve only had iPhones and have gotten the battery replaced in both of them. It’s increased the lifespan of my phones by a couple of years, but it doesn’t double it. I usually start to sick of my hardware after about 5 years.
Your iPhone is the same and requires you to take it to a service center and pay someone else to do something that we’d been doing ourselves in 5 seconds for the previous 30 years.
The person you’re replying to is trying to push the narrative that modern smartphones (iPhones in particular) have bodies that are sealed with adhesive in order to force people to upgrade sooner, instead of to provide waterproofing/dustproofing.
That claim makes no sense in light of how Apple meaningfully supports phones for significantly longer than any other major OEM and goes to great lengths to preserve the usability of older devices. That doesn’t deter people from making that claim because they’d much rather believe apple bad, and other phone manufacturers bad because they’re trying to copy apple.
Inb4 but x phone from 2016 had a removable backplate and was “waterproof,” or but y phone with 0.01% market share is serviceable with a spudger and is “waterproof”.
Apple literally admitted it engages in planned obsolescence practices and has been fined in multiple jurisdictions for doing so.
Not sure why you feel the need to support shady business practices. There are designs that achieve waterproofing/dustproofing while still enabling replaceability. The obvious question then is why would the majority of manufacturers choose a design approach which restricts replaceability?
Gosh, that narrative is one of the most pea-brained things that I’ve seen circulating on the internet in my lifetime.
As the link you provided clearly states, apple was fined for not disclosing to users that iOS was underclicking the CPUs on phones that had batteries that were too degraded to provide the required power consistently under heavy load.
Anyone who used an Android phone from that era can tell you about how a >12 month old phone would start randomly powering off between 10% and 30% remaining charge. When a lithium ion battery degrades, it’s no longer able to output its original nominal voltage in a sustained way. Instead, I’ll output the requested voltage, then suddenly the voltage will drop. When the CPU in an older phone was under heavy load, it would put heavy load on the battery, and the battery would fail to provide consistent voltage, which would cause the phone to power off.
On the Android side of things, we could try to replace the battery if we knew that was the issue, but most people would just feel pressured to buy a new phone.
The obvious solution to that problem is just to undervolt the phone’s CPU if the battery isn’t capable of providing consistent peak voltage. Doing this is objectively the opposite of planned obsolescence, it lets people use older phones reliably for longer.
Ironically, a small minority of weirdos are so desperate to hate Apple that they spun a feature that’s obviously intended to increase the longevity of an iPhone into an entire narrative about apple slowing your phone down to get you to buy another one. Which doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, because not undervolting the CPU in a phone where the battery can’t provide consistent peak voltage is way more likely to push people to want to replace it.
I hate consumerism and mega corporations way more than most, and I’m definitely not suggesting that Apple is any kind of moral or ethical company. They’re a company that exists to maximize profits at the expense of anything else, on the backs of exploited workers.
But when the most widespread complaints about a company are things that make the complainers look like idiots who are desperately searching for something to complain about regardless of how disconnected from reality it is, it makes it seem like there aren’t any legitimate complaints about the company. If I were wearing my tinfoil hat, I’d be inclined to speculate about whether that’s actually intentional. The ‘Apple is slowing down my phone to make me buy a new battery’ narrative is so ridiculous that I can almost believe that Apple’s behind it to draw attention away from valid criticisms.
They’ve been a “not user serviceable” component since before phones got water proofing.
Additionally plenty of things can be disassembled with screws and such, that are waterproof… Watches come to mind.
The fact that they’re making it impossible for we the people and owners of the products, to change the battery isn’t a technological limitation, nor a practical one. They did it so people will be forced to seek help to get a new battery, at which time, the vendor/carrier/whomever, can simply upsell the end user.
They did it to sell more phones. If you believe anything other than that, I have some land in Alaska to sell you.
Yeah, of course they did it to sell more phones. Phone OEMs sell more units when the units are as compact and water/dust proof as possible. Sealing phones with adhesive maximizes both of those metrics, with virtually no (non-hypothetical) trade-off to the vast majority of users.
Maximizing profits by maximizing the characteristics of smartphones that customers care about is not only a perfect explanation for sealed internals, but it’s the only explanation that stands up to any amount of critical thinking.
The “they want to force you to upgrade” narrative is popular because people want to believe it. I mean, obviously they want you to upgrade, but they also know that consumers are more likely to buy their products over competitors’ if the product has a reputation for longevity. Which is why OEMs like Apple support their devices for as long as they do, and even tailor software to provide a consistent experience with a degraded battery. If they wanted to plan for there devices to become unusable after a certain time, it would be a lot more straightforward for them to just stop doing the things they’re doing to make sure devices are usable for 5+ years.
This is so pedantic and competely misses the point.
The literal second sentence of my comment clearly demonstrates that I understand the point that the other commenter was making, that I’m aware that they’re being hyperbolic, and gives a direct response to the point being made.
If you can’t manage reading past the first dozen words of a comment, maybe you’d be better served by keeping your reply to yourself.
The world around you uses Instagram daily. They do need a better camera and all the AI photo enhancement filters. Plus, consumerism, you know.
Other than that, there’s no technical reason to buy anything better than what flafhsips were a few years back. I have one and it’s constantly underutilized.
I mean, maybe 5G or wifi 6 could be a reason to migrate.
Or – Christ it’s 2023 – Apple’s first fucking USB-C phone. Holy mother of god, having one stupid cable for the devices I want was a siren song of a mad god, but we’re finally here.
In 2023
maybe 5G or wifi 6
This is why we need phones with swappable modules. I’m pretty sure my current phone could last for decades if I could replace it’s radio equipment to keep up with modern standards.
Framework Phone When
Fairphone
I would love to build a smartphone like a Desktop Pc.
Planned obsolescence wiki link
There is a HUGE difference in 4 and 12 GB of ram if you’re using 20 different apps at once that are all running background tasks.
The camera raw megapixel are of little significance these days but things like optical zoom or a larger sensor and aperture make a lot of difference.
The main reason to upgrade otherwise is unsupported OS versions. you’ll stop getting security updates leaving your phone vulnerable to attack.
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I buy a new phone when my current one breaks. So like every five years.
Lots of people are bad with money or don’t prioritize the same things I do. I try not to worry about this. I worry about other unimportant shit like why do people roll for stats in DND 5e.
why do people roll for stats in DND 5e.
Because having a wizard with 6 CON, a chronic disease, and a built in death wish is funny as hell
In the early 10s Smartphones evolved quickly and it was worth it to upgrade every 2nd year or even every year.
This changed when the tech stagnated. But smartphone was much cheaper in the early days so financially it probably isnt much different if you are buying flagships later now.
I’m the same, use the phone until it refuses to function any longer then jump on a Chinese site and get the cheapest pos with a decent camera and then once it arrives watch a yt video on how to change the language to English
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Foldables are the only interesting thing to have happened to smartphones in the past like 6-8 years. It’s kind of sad.
While the tech is cool, I don’t see folding screens as an improvement, at least for me. Sure, a larger screen would be nice, but I already carry a laptop that’s WAY more capable than any phone.
All the folding phones are more expensive, less durable, worse battery life, and the software still isn’t 100% even 4 generations in.If I actually cared about having a bigger screen on my phone, I could just buy a normal phone + a tablet for the same price as a foldable.
As an avid user of a foldable, the main points for me are around the convenience and flexibility. I mean, it is literally a bigger screen, but carried around in my pocket. At all times. I don’t need to juggle account information and managing battery and storing/swapping between two devices if I want a screen that’s bigger than a usual phone for playing games on (RCT Classic, Baldur’s Gate, Bloons, Arknights, Crashlands, RuneScape… Lots of great games benefit from the better precision of playing on a bigger screen).
It’s great for reading manga, reading PDFs, watching videos, running two apps side by side (ticket on one side, team chat on the other), each with the normal screen real estate if a whole phone!
I adore the ability to pull out my phone and use it one handed like a normal phone, but then instantly switch to a much bigger, more comfortable canvas running the exact same instance of an app the moment I need to do something more involved than typing a few sentences or scrolling on Lemmy. If I realize I want to type with two hands, it’s so much faster and more comfortable on the inner screen thanks to the split keyboard.
Then it’s on top of all of that that with a flip out kickstand case on it I can carry around a pocket folding keyboard+trackpad in the other pocket and a decent pair of earbuds and then if I’m out and about I can comfortably use it like a mini laptop, writing code with Neovim via Termux or writing things down in my Obsidian vault, or even just chatting - All without it feeling like I’m squinting at a tiny phone screen.
To be fair … That could just be the autism though.
I think you’ve convinced me it makes sense for the right person. Especially if it’s the only device you carry around.
I don’t game on my phone apart from some really simple ones like Minesweeper and Flow Free. Everything else I do is just reading, which I have no problem doing on my Galaxy S10’s screen. I never even considered that something like RCT or RuneScape could run on a phone now. All my serious gaming happens on a desktop or my Steam Deck.
It used to be that a new phone came with a relatively substantial new feature set. People have become accustomed to this and businesses have been built around this. At this point, it’s mostly about consumerism.
I’m still rocking an iPhone 12 Mini without the slightest hiccup as well as an original iPhone SE as my main music player. I used to be the person who got every new phone because there used to be such a jump in performance and hardware features. Now I have no reason to upgrade at all. Honestly, I’d love to get rid of my phone all together and just use an iPad, Apple Watch, and my camera and journal.
Yeah this is really it. The answer is that there used to be significant technical reasons to do so. Technology improved enough each year that last year’s phones were really showing age.
At this point even basic phones are so fast and so feature rich that no one except niche groups needs anything faster than what came out several years ago. Everything basic like watching videos, maps, internet browsing, and messaging works perfectly fine on anything.
So the reasons shifted to renewing battery life and OS updates. Which are both at least somewhat artificial since manufactures could easily implement longer updates or replaceable batteries.
Vanity, marketing and buying shit unnecessarily.
I have a Fairphone 3 that I got in January 2020. Its a great device. I want to using it daily for between 5 to 10 years. And I have no doubt it will do that.
Meanwhile my brother has bought 3 Samsung devices in that time. And each one still works fine. He doesn’t need a new phone each time but he will still insist on it.
How’s the camera on this phone? Really the only thing I care about, next to battery life
I buy used flagships.
A 1.5 year old flagship costs the same as a brand new midrange phone, but is significantly better.
I just got a S21 Ultra for cheaper than I would have paid for an A54. (Also Exynos is hot fucking garbage. I wanted to get away from Samsung altogether, but the price on this made sense and I has a snapdragon. Significantly better)
I can’t see why you can’t see the difference. I’ve been swapping every few years from the lowest tier phone that’s recently come out and each change feels like night and day each and every time. Perhaps you should stop buying overpriced phones?
Buying cheaper phones for the purpose of feeling the need to upgrade them sooner doesnt really make sende though, does it?
I have had three phones in the span of ten years. All of them were gifted to me via the line provider. I don’t know what you are talking about, mate,
It’s about how much you are spending every year for a device. A $300 device will last you 3 years. A $1000 device will last you 5. Are you willing to spend that much money, is it worth the improvements, usually in camera and support service?
I just buy mid range $300-$400 phones with big batteries and popular hardware, so I can make it last long.
Well, there are some arguments pro buying cheaper phones.
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You have the option to upgrade, you are not obliged. Even if you finance the more expensive phone you are still committed for more. You have more options.
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Batteries do naturally degrade over time. No matter how expensive or good your phone is.
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Accidents happen some will not be covered by warranty but I also do not see more expensive phones having more than 2 years warranty which is the minimum.
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If you do chose to upgrade you have more phones, that means a backup or a free phone for a member of your family.
Well these are some really good points! I didnt think about batteries degrading but as far as I know, the more expensive phones tend to have larger batteries which will still get you through a day without charging…
Talking about accidents, I dont think the warranty replaces accidents where you are at fault (?). My phones (cheap or expensive) always had a case and tempered glass on them and I have yet to damage any of them but I get your point, expensive phones have to last for longer. I personally worry more about how long I am going to get security updates though…
- Completely agree with you on this one.
Point 4 is more important than some may think, you can dial 911 without an active SIM. For this reason alone I have old phones in all my gloveboxes.
Plus a couple years ago my folks were floating the river and their dry bag somehow stopped being I dry bag, I don’t remember the story cause I wasn’t there. But, when they got home, I was able to set them up with passable phones while the ones they ordered online came in the mail.
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I agree. I only replace my phone when it stops working.
Battery life is decent for 3-4+ years nowadays.
Check out the Fairphone; you can replace parts like battery and the production line tends to be (more) sustainable. They also provide security updates for 5+ years.
They don’t have really high-end phones though, but personally I think most moderate phones nowadays are fine for practically all usecases. For me it works out fine, as I already used mid-range phones for a couple of years.
I hope they will do something like a subscription for even longer updates (if enough people are interested). Don’t need a new phone if this keeps working / being repairable.
I love the idea of Fairphone but it’s too pricy for me unfortunately. my current phone (Redmi Note 10 Pro) only cost £150 ($195) and it’s pretty much the perfect phone for my minimal needs.
That’s of course fair (yes… intended). They are indeed expensive compared to many other phones, especially mid-rangers. It took me a while to decide to switch.
For anyone who can easily afford it though, it might be something to keep in the back of your head perhaps in the future :) I hope this small trend of replacable parts and longtime security support in phones continues.
The only time I ever “upgrade” is when I break a phone beyond reasonable repair. If batteries were easier / more cost effective to replace, I would keep this Pixel 4a a few more years. The battery is starting to lose capacity now, I’ll have to check on the cost of battery replacement before too long.
Considering a Fairphone next time I do upgrade.
Batteries are cheap to replace.
An important change is happening in many industries/ markets. To make devices easy to repair & enable OS updates many more years for long term use.
I totally agree :) I’m S10 until the thing melts, I managed to replace the battery under warranty and plan to rock it as long as humanly possible.
Headphone jack is a huge factor in that as I would not want to lose something I use every day, but also like you say, performance is fine! On top of that is the fact that I’m paying £8 a month for unlimited everything without a contract! :)
I guess there used to be a night and day change, and people kind of still expect that from the next flagship each time they’re offered an upgrade?
That said, these days the trends tend to steer into things I don’t use much, or improving what’s already good enough - its a good time to be on a budget I guess! :)
