I only replace mine because the batteries are crapping out. Usually it’s 3-4 years.
When my screen is so broken I can’t use it anymore.
Just get a the battery replaced. With the new rule for the EU forcing companies to make the phones with user replaceable batteries, it’ll be even easier.
I thought about it last time but the whole thing where I’m not getting OS updates anymore make me anxious. I’m not sure that’s actually a problem though.
It’s a little more hands on, but when you reach the end of OS updates support, you can switch to a community-supported OS.
Like Linux? I don’t know anything about it. I’d definitely try.
Sorta. (Android is technically Linux) What you would want to look into is a custom Android ROM. Something like OmniROM or ArrowOS.
As a side note though, installing can be a bit technical for some people and some apps don’t like to work outside of the “security” of a factory version of Android. If you are interested, I would browse around the custom Android communities here (if there are any yet) and check out sites like https://www.xda-developers.com/
Is that where you have to root it and sideload the OS? I’ve read about it.
Rooting is a slightly separate thing from sideloading a custom rom, rooting gives apps you give permission to access to system files whereas sideloading a rom replaces the system files but doesn’t necessarily give you root access. Both involve a similar process of unlocking the bootloader, installing a custom recovery and flashing a file so it is easy to get the two things mixed up.
Yeah
Also mention lineage OS, Graphene OS and Calyx OS too
No, there are unfortunately no truly workable Linux OSs for phones yet AFAIK. But there are plenty of Android-based OSs that work really well, and are usually maintained for quite a while, depending on the popularity of your device. Look into LineageOS, or Pixel Experience, to name a few.
There’s ubuntu touch. I’m not sure how many phones that works on though.
I bought a second hand pixel 6a a couple weeks ago, my previous phone was the OnePlus 3, lasted me 5 years and at the time of purchase it was already a two years old second hand, bought them for basically the same price, 200€.
How are you liking your pixel so far? I know its off topic, but I have one myself and am really happy with it and wanted to get another perspective!
I love it, performance is good, battery is awesome, build quality is pretty good and I’m happy with the stock OS, back in the day I used to unlock the bootloader and root as soon as I get the phone, but with the software support this phone is going to have and the features it has, I hardly see any reason to root.
I generally upgrade every 4 years too these days, at least the last few times and for the next upgrade. Let’s see if I can remember my whole phone list.
- Motorola M301
- Ericcson 628 or 688 I don’t remember which (or whatever the modified name was on one2one back then)
- Nokia 8100/8146 (you know, the ACTUAL matrix phone)
- Gifted Nokia 3110 or 3210 (8100 broke down)
- Nokia 6100/6126
- Sony Ericson T68i
- Sony Z1010 (my first phone with a camera, spoiler alert, it was terrible)
- iPhone 3GS
- Samsung Galaxy S2
- Samsung Galaxy S4
- Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+
- Samsung Galaxy S20+ (current)
Wonder if I missed any that were that forgettable?
Generally an upgrade outside of 4 years was because there was a feature I particularly wanted or needed. On early phones this was quite often (think SMS support, WAP, EFR, GPRS). But then contracts were generally for 1 year so it didn’t matter too much. Later phones it’s been 3G/4G/5G/Wifi calling etc that generally drove upgrades.
4 years? How cute.
Not surprising. I used to update every 2 years but my last couple have had a 3 or 4 year gap.
As it should be really. These can be very expensive devices that only make sense if you get a decent life out of them.
I just don’t see the point of upgrading every two years, and even if I did I’m buying used at this point.
I’m on iPhone and despite all the fanatics creaming their pants over each release, very little actually seems to change.
I know a guy with a 6 year old phone, and when he listed off the features it made me realise how little things have actually changed since it was released.
I have an iPhone 8 and see no reason to update in the near future.
Reading this on iPhone X
deleted by creator
Emergency satellite SOS was a massive selling point for upgrading to the iPhone 14 to a lot of people. To your point though, my 2015 iPad is just now being dropped from future updates.
Meanwhile in Canada it’s being recommended to disable emergency SOS on both iPhones and Androids because of how many false 911 calls they end up placing, causing first responders to waste time on non-emergencies.
These are two separate features.
I doubt many people actually have a use case for satellite SOS though.
There’s some pretty remote places in the US. So you don’t need it 'till you need it.
Very interesting, do you have any source or references that springs to your mind? I have emergency SOS enabled, but it never happened to me that it has been falsely triggered. And I can’t imagine many scenarios were it would be.
I had it enabled for a bit and everything worked fine, but I was worried about accidentally triggering it so disabled it before hearing about the false alarms.
Here’s an article from the CBC about it.
Yeah, marginal camera improvements are kinda meh to me. Has there really been anything that significant since Face ID?
5G is the only thing that springs to mind for me, but I’ve honestly never felt that 4G held me back on a phone considering it works perfectly for playing videos…
Next iPhone gets usb c.
That’s great, but considering everyone’s already got the cables they need, for most people it’s not really a feature to upgrade for.
Most people have 1 cable they need for their phone and a lot of usb c. Upgrading means no more going to find that 1 unique charger.
Yeah, it’s nice, I just don’t think that feature is worth upgrading for most people.
Face ID and Apple Pay were jumps forward in the way that people use their phones and were quite exciting, introducing USB C is just backtracking.
Buying a handful of spare chargers is much cheaper than buying a new phone.
Absolutely not. I don’t have a laptop, have a family group that have between us, iPhone X, XS, 11 and an old 7max. All chargers I have owned for the last 10 years are USB A at the charger. So the cable will be USB A to lightning for all the phones and to something else, like micro usb for other devices like a rechargeable bike light. USB C is just to cause e-waste and of no practical use.
Android has gotten high refresh and variable refresh which is great for battery life. Other than that just raw speed, which is usually just throttled down for better battery life and monstrous huge screens.
As far as I can see on the apple side they haven’t seen anything but incremental, and sometimes increments in the wrong direction, changes in the last 6 years.
Recently , 5G in the 12, 144hz in the 13 pro , satellite and crash detection in the 14 , this year usc-c. Upgrading that often is an enthusiast thing really (or marketing).
deleted by creator
They need to give us back the headphone jack, that’s a feature worth getting a new phone for, but then again we can just use an old phone instead.
deleted by creator
Have a framework, probably the 1st gen.
It had a big bug where it would go to sleep and never wake up, but I finally found a firmware upgrade and it’s been perfect since, maybe a bit on the power hungry side while asleep.
You might want to consider a used thinkpad, they last literally forever and you can get a decent one for $500 or so.
Just my thought, the fw is great, tempted to upgrade the mobo at some point, or get the 16, but it’s not cheap, it’s more about being able to upgrade and the flexible i/o, which is actually cool.
Or you could put a usbc dongle on all of your headphone cables for $1 each and finally move out of the 80s tech bubble.
You say it’s from the 80s like it… matters at all whatsoever. It works, and it works well. It doesn’t stop me from adding an extra useless bit of cable on the end of them either, if that’s what i really wanted to do.
deleted by creator
When smartphones first took off, each new one was a large upgrade. But each passing year sees new phones being more and more iterative. There’s hardly any difference at all anymore between individual years.
I’m at the point now where I keep my phones until they break or stop getting security updates.
When smartphones first took off, each new one was a large upgrade
And they were subsidized by the cell phone company, so they only cost $200 (In many places in the US, at least).
Yeah definitely this is a big factor.
I have a small pot I save into for my phone upgrade each month. Waiting longer means I get a shiner new phone when I do finally decide to upgrade.
And once I have it I want it to last as long as possible!
When it used to be just part of your contract you wouldn’t think about, just get a new one when your contract said it was time.
There wasn’t even a maximum on the contract. When I got my first two phones, I agreed to a 2-year cellular contract. If I closed my account or moved providers before that, I had to pay AT&T some amount of money to kill the contract. After those two years were up, I could do whatever I wanted. I was then on a month-to-month payment, like standard cell plans today. They just wanted to make sure to recoup their money over 2 years for subsidizing my cheaper phone upfront.
Now, the subsidization is more like a subscription fee, where there are additional fees on the bill each month toward the phone and the cell phone company encourages you to get a new one once it’s paid off. You’re still paying full price for a phone. Possibly forever.
Those damn Brits, how dare they?! Buy more, more often!
You’ll have to prise my 4a 5G out of my cold dead hands…
The 2 years life span had a ridiculous affect on the 2nd market that, now will never be the same.
I kept my old Sony Xperia right up until I could feel a bulge on the back of it, lol.
I don’t upgrade until the thermal runaway takes my device from me!!! Lol
I don’t upgrade until my phone decomposes lol
Isn’t that due to a potentially hazardous swollen battery though? It’s best to replace it before that stuff happens
Yeah I’ve already got a new phone.
Still rocking my iphone X! Upgrade may be in order this September as the battery lasts about an hour and the screen is cracked, but damn good run.
I think the most popular phone in the last ten years is an IPhone 5 w a broken screen.
Not as old but I have an iPhone 11 and I just replaced the battery. Feels good as new and the battery wasn’t expensive
Yeah I went to thr Apple Store to do that, and they said they couldn’t replace the battery without charging me €300 for a new screen, so I declined
Oh that’s too bad
my XR is still going strong. unless the quality starts decreasing dramatically, I see no reason to upgrade just yet
Meanwhile, here I am with a Galaxy S8 from 2017, doing just fine. Only bad thing is some stuff burned into the screen from overuse of some apps in the past coughs reddit coughs.
I had an S8 for my secondary device and had to move to an S10e for something similar.
My main device is an iPhone 12, which won’t get replaced until Apple come up with a USB-C phone. I used to upgrade every 2 years because there were significant changes to each phone. iPhone 3GS, 4S, 5S, 6S, 8, and 12; that said, if we hadn’t decided to try to get my grandmother on a better device, I’d probably still be rocking the iPhone 8. I kind of miss having a dedicated Home button…
Well the networks will try to tie people in for 36/48 months so… they kind of asked for it.
I’ve been sin only for a while, didn’t realise it had jumped up from the average 24 months in the UK now.
I bought a new phone after having the old one for 3 years and as a treat to myself. It was an S22 Ultra. I regret buying it as the improvements are very minor compared to my old phone, and definitely not worth the massive hike in cost.
The camera is better but tbh, I barely notice it as its mostly a few photos for memories. I’m not printing them on canvas or anything so no point really having such high quality photos. Will definitely hold onto this one for as long as i can
I had a crappy honor 5x which had a fake camera and a bunch of fake features, also it had some Spyware on it that caused me to have to report fraudulent charges on my bank account and eventually the battery got spicy. Got a s20 ultra at launch and actually love this thing. It’ll last me a few years more.
About to enter the same boat, I have the Note 20 Ultra and its on the eve of losing security update support. Don’t necessarily want to upgrade but i feel like i don’t have a choice.
Going to look at something like the Nothing Phone 2, it’s not nearly as expensive as the S23 Ultra (which is my direct upgrade path) but is plenty fast enough and has at least some interesting quirks and features.
Tbh, i could get a used digital camera + a mid range android phone and probably out perform the flagship Samsung.
My Samsung s22 has sooo many bugs compared to my old pixel phone Def not worth it Samsung software has really gone downhill
Yeah seems like it, im starting to think id rather have the “subpar” camera of the Nothing Phone 2 than deal with the Samsung skin (which i end up covering with a launcher anyway)
I like mine, but that camera is so stuttery. Do you have the snapdragon variant?
Devices are prohibitively expensive these days. The marginal gains from improved tech is also not used to benefit the end user. Devices are not working for the one that pays for it. If only they would release a flagship device with unlocked boot loader, open drivers and a pledge to support it for 10 years. I would buy that. Otherwise I see no need to upgrade.
It’s less that the improvements are marginal (modern flagships are significantly more powerful than 4 years ago for example), it’s just that 90% of people have absolutely no use for most of that increased power. The most intensive thing most people do on their phone is watch media.
I know a lot of young men who, if they have money, just have to have those extra gigaflops and that 4k 90hz phone screen.
Then 95% of the time they browse the web and use it for twitter, etc… 🙄
