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I used to work for a mobile phone wholesaler that also owned a phone repair business and they noticed this trend as far back as 2013. The age of phones coming in for repair was rising year on year. They were coming under pressure from manufacturers and retailers to disincentivise customers from repairing older phones. One manufacturer even threatened to stop paying for in-warranty repairs if the company offered an out-of-warranty repair service.

The problem is that smartphones are way too expensive. Back in the old days of dumb phones a top end SIM free phone would cost no more than €400. Most people would opt for a cheaper model that allowed for a 12 months subsidy with the phone being free and monthly fees being fairly low by todays standards. In the UK it was common to find deals where you got a cheap phone for free, plus a game console or TV on a 12 month contract.

Now it has flipped. Top end phones are now nudging €1000, this means higher monthly fees plus 24-36 month contracts. That's a hell of a commitment, especially considering smart phones aren't as durable as dumb phones were. Of course people are repairing phones when they cost that much.

Plus, there is less of a feature incentive to upgrade. All I use my phone for is web browsing, email, social stuff and photo/video - it's three years old and does all that with no lag. New models don't offer me enough of an incentive to upgrade.

If manufacturers want people to upgrade more often they need to work on curbing the price of top end models. The more expensive they are, the longer people are going to want them to last. Also, a bit more innovation would be nice - must every smartphone follow the exact same black rectangle design template?

> The problem is that smartphones are way too expensive.

No.

People keeping their phones longer is not a problem. People creating less trash is not a problem. People choosing to hold on to their money rather than pumping it into tech companies at a furious rate is not a problem.

I bought a Motorola last year for €160, which isn't a great deal. It works perfectly well. It isn't slow. (Admittedly I am not glued to my phone 24-7 like some people).

I have no idea why people feel the need to spend 6 or 7 times more for the latest iPhone. What do you get for the extra money that is actually useful? I know it has a "better" screen but I never had a problem reading on the phone I have. Faster processor? Are people performing heavy computing on their phones, or just sending some whatsapp messages ans surfing the web?

Exactly. I made a very good decision this time around; I wanted the cheapest phone that was fingerprint-protected and had USB Type-C, since I wanted it to last me several years and pin codes are painful.

I got my current phone for 160€ (if I'm not mistaken) 1.5 years ago and I couldn't be happier. Browses the web perfectly and runs my few apps great, I'll keep it until it breaks. I'm so happy that I'm even considering buying an extra screen to have reparaibility in the future in case they are hard to find then!

It's funny that many of my non-tech friends who spent half a month salary on an iPhone (Spain) are quite confused about me using a cheap android.

Edit: also note that my 160€ phone now is way better than those 400€ phones 6-8 years ago. And there's not even that much difference with a current 800-1000€ phone.

I’ve just never understood the value proposition of how I’m better with a $1000 phone than a $100 phone, $500 cellular iPad, and $400 in cash left over.

I buy a $50-100 phone every 12 months though! (At the low end, specs are still rising quickly.)

> If manufacturers want people to upgrade more often they need to work on curbing the price of top end models. The more expensive they are, the longer people are going to want them to last.

While I agree that lowering the price of a phone will increase the rate of upgrades, I don't think increasing the rate of upgrades is an end in itself for anyone including the manufacturers. If I can sell you one phone for $1000, that's almost certainly going to be better than selling you two phones for $500 each. It front-loads my revenue and most likely costs me less. For the two phones to be better for the manufacturer, they'd need to be taking the lowest margins on their highest-end phones, which is weird.

Selling you a phone every several years means less upgrading compared to selling you one every year, but it also means a lot less work for me. I feel like the actual equilibrium is "manufacture fewer phones".

> Also, a bit more innovation would be nice - must every smartphone follow the exact same black rectangle design template?

I'd settle for the rectangle being available in the same form factors people used to sell. We didn't just converge on "rectangle", we converged on "rectangle so oversized it only makes sense as a laptop substitute".

I baught Xaomi Redmi 5 for $150 a year ago. I could've easily bought the latest iPhone, but when I compared them, I saw zero difference except for the camera. This phone was pretty much ideal for me for the last year, until it broke down (turns out browsing Twitter while lying in a bathtub with slippy hands isnt the best idea). And because of how cheap it is, and the fact that pretty much everything important is synced in the cloud anyway, I'm about to go and buy a new one without stressing over it at all. Out of curiosity, I compared the latest Redmi with the latest iPhone and Samsung Galaxy, and I again don't see a single reason to buy the flagship phones, even though I'm exactly their target audience in term of income.

The problem with smartphones is that they've solved all their problems and the cheap devices are just too good.

There is also rapidly declining value from smartphone as a status symbol and part of identity. People are willing to pay extra for real or imagined increase of status. It has been few years since someone asked what phone I have. Sometimes someone asks "Apple or Android?" for practical reasons.

People check out new smarphones when they are considering buying a new one. They (mostly men) are not so interested checking out new phones all the time as they used to be.

Only thing can think of that could change the trend is AR/VR (Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality) really starting to deliver.

Slightly tangential: I use my phone for the exact same things as you and I usually upgrade every 2-3 years to a high end model for a top camera.

Me and my girlfriend both own the Sony Xperia Z3, which had a cutting edge camera when it was new.

I upgraded to the Galaxy S9 a few months ago, she still has her Z3. The advancement in photos is striking. It's incredibly noticeable, especially the reaction time after pressing the button and the low light performance. To a point we explicitly use my phone to reshoot images we already did on the old phone, if we like the motive. I upgraded mostly because 16GB internal space wasn't enough for me anymore and Android keeps bloating. But if I had experienced the camera difference before, it would have been enough to make me upgrade.

From my non-professional perspective the only thing lacking to a real camera is optical zoom. Otherwise I'm positive many shots of the S9 turn out on par or even better than mid-level Canon/Nikon reflex camera shots, if taken at the right distance.

The camera market is getting more and more redudant for non-professional use cases.

Everything you said and you can get an excellent phone for 200 quid without a contract in the UK (Nokia 6.1 with AndroidOne) that does anything most people would reasonably want.

I have one and it is excellent.

As a software developer, people tend to assume that I’m really into hardware as well. They’re usually surprised when I tell them that I prefer to buy older hardware and keep it running for longer. I often skip multiple generations of devices.

I just bought a new TV with Roku built in. My last TV was a tube TV.

I’m writing this on a iPhone SE, which I upgraded to for $100 when my 5S stopped working. I kept the same phone case. I’ll probably buy another iPhone when they release a new one with the same size screen. I might get a new phone case then, too.

I was playing Zelda on the original Wii earlier. It’s the newest game console that I own.

Don’t get me wrong, I think new stuff is cool, too. I’d just rather go on a trip than have the newest cool thing.

I would gladly buy a new phone if they stopped taking away features. I currently use an iPhone SE, and I treat my phone as an extension of my brain - I use it 5 hours / day. For me, the pros/cons of an upgrade to an iPhone XS are:

Pros: better camera, faster processor, water resistant

Cons: no headphone jack, too large for my hands

It's not obvious that upgrading would make my life better - it's more likely to make things worse, actually. I'm not paying $1000 for that.

When they cost as much as they do, is it really a surprise that a good portion of people don't want to replace them every other year? I would like to be one of the people replacing theirs every year or every other year and while I could afford it, I can't justify the expenditure. Add to that the fact that most phones purchased within the past couple of years remain performant enough for most people.
Cellphones have reached the state of performance surplus that desktops have reached years ago. There's simply no reason to upgrade. I'm still using the desktop I built in 2013 w i7-3770 & 32GB RAM for $600. There's been no reason to get a new one.

As phones are becoming commodities like computers, I wonder if Apple will meet the same fate in mobile as it did in computers: being marginalized as a niche player in the market it pioneered as most people flock to the mainstream choice (Windows for computer, Android for phone)

There’s no point in upgrading anymore aside from ditching the feeling that your phone is slow (which is likely fixed with a factory reset).

Camera is infinitesimally better. Processor is better in a way you can’t measure. Oh now you can push anywhere to use your fingerprint!

There’s no more cash cow cuz phones aren’t getting noticeably better. Get back to me when I can stop using my thumbs to type or when the world becomes my monitor. Maybe I sound entitled but some day the bullions these companies keep expecting has to be justified.

The Jobs-era strategy at Apple was pretty straightforward. From what I recall around 2000-2010 the Apple strategy was:

1) Decided on a minimum acceptable functionality for a device

2) Set up uncompromising logistics chains to support creating a device (eg, famously, touchscreens)

3) Price at a rate that was extremely competitive when considering the device components

4) Crush competitors who could only offer cheap goods that didn't really do what Apple's could, or expensive goods that could match functionality but not price - recall the iPad's original differentiation was it was cheaper than expected, given what it did. It looked very cheap compared to the preemptive tablet releases of the time trying to head its success off at the pass.

They've made a lot of money over the last few years, but that strategy doesn't seem to match the modern Apple's approach. The price gap between an iPod Touch and the cheapest iPhone is not something I'd have expected of 2010 Apple.

EDIT I looked for a source - https://www.videogamesblogger.com/2010/03/29/ipod-touch-vs-i... - initial iPhone was extremely comparable to an expensive iPod.

A proud owner of Nexus-5 for five years waves hi. It's still in top-notch condition; only had to replace the screen protector once, and did a small surgery to replace the "irreplaceable" battery. I keep telling my friends that I am planning to use this for 10 years.

/me hopes that the fine community of LineageOS provides at least security patches for Nexus-5 for the upcoming five years.

Are consumers rallying against the excess of the smartphone market or is this just a product of the quality of new devices? The yearly improvements feel more incremental than ever, so I'm inclined to think it's a little of both.
I am happy to say that my desktop from 2004 is still alive and kicking. Some websites are a drag, but some on-board replacements have kept the old warrior running. I hope one day we can keep our smartphones on life support for a long time.
The vendors have thrived for a decade just by improving specs. We went from NTSC to 1080p to 4K and TV sizes from 27 inches to 55 inches. But now peoples eyes aren’t good enough and their houses aren’t big enough to need anymore. Same thing with phones. It used to be that an old phone felt slow compared to a new one. But now they’re fine for most uses.

If companies want to sell devices they need new shit to sell. VR, AR is one possible avenue. Smart Home is another. But don’t expect me to just volunteer $1K for a slightly better version of what I already have.

> Optimists (and phonemakers) argue that a new wave of innovation could rejuvenate demand.

Hopefully that innovation is the return of the headphone jack :P

had a samsung galaxy S4 until start of this year. I made a bet with myself and put it in a drawer where it remains until 2020. Then I'll decide if I really must have a mobile phone or not.

I have reduced usage and removed all apps last year then started to leave it at home when going out since past Fall. This way it wasn't a total ice-bucket challenge. I haven't missed it for a moment yet. When I go out and wait for the bus or tram to arrive I look at other people, the clouds and my general environment. I am more calm again and it feels like everyone else glued to their screen is part of some matrix. They almost obsessively dig around their pockets quickly to find their phone as soon as they get on the bus in order to avoid eye-contact with everyone else at all cost. I remember how it was when I too did this it was like some kind of insecurity that my phone allowed me to escape. e.g. I pretend that I'm busy on my phone ... because there is a pretty girl on the other side and the last thing I want is to look at her ... if she'd notice me she would think I am a weirdo because I'm just sitting their without doing anything and even get the impression that I stare ... Or I get an uncomfortable vibe from somebody else on the bus and so quickly get my phone because the pretend-world in there feels just so much safer. It also shows the world that I do have a life and am not just a weirdo. Or does it?

I remember going out w/out a phone last year and I was in a different city (and country). Asking a passerby on the road was the only option and he actually said to me why you don't just check google maps yourself. I told him sorry my battery is flat which seemed the only correct response without looking like a total weirdo.

But these are outliers, in general I do just fine. The reason why I became militant about not having a phone was when I see my gf who is a hell of a lot younger than me and was pushed into using it by her own parents. They would freak out if she wasn't reachable for even a short time and so she always had one on her since the age of twelve. When I was 12 mobile phones didn't even exist and I owned my first phone when I was 22 (it was a Motorola brick phone and my employer gave it to me to stay in touch). I see a lot of the anxiety people complain about every day being rooted in phones and their capability to distract and steal our time (life's too short for this shit ... but then I'm just an old man shouting at the cloud).

Longer lasting devices are strategic for Apple.

It means a larger installed base for the delivery of software, services, and adjunct devices which otherwise wouldn’t be possible when competing against cheap android devices.

A lower TCO is a selling point. Analysts are just failing to understand the evolution of the business model.

Is the lenghtening replacement cycle on mobile phones identical to the lengthening replacement cycle on PC’s from a generation ago?

I recall in the early days of PCs software drove(compelled?) PC hardware upgrades every 2 or so years.

Then hardware upgrades became unnecessary unless you were a hardcore gamer.

Wouldn’t the same hardware/software relationship apply with mobile phone hardware?

What’s the next compelling value proposition?

Will a next generation AI/ML Assistant compel a hardware upgrade in terms of an AI focused chipset or additional sensors for data collection?

Is there anything in the Chinese WeChat ecosystem that compels mobile hardware upgrades?

How else can human vanity in terms of mobile hardware/software be exploited?

I'm surprised that the comments don't focus much on security patches. Manufacturers are trying very hard to have built-in obsolescence: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/31/dutch_court_says_sa... Unless this fundamentally changes, most non-techy users will have to needlessly upgrade perfectly good devices, run insecure software or become much more savvy about which manufacturers are better in this regard.
Repost from a month ago;

Very true, I'd say a downgrade is the trend. I saw like 10+ people deciding to switch from "superphones" down to mid-range models, and even dumbphones for their new phones. People who had ultrabooks, often try Atom based notebooks and sufraces. The key deciding factor for such people, I think, is having a good screen and bearable ergonomics (no microscopic keyboards, or batteries.) The data I have access to tell that the "big screen, small CPU," is the category with the biggest year on year growth. Atom based 14 and 15 inchers are selling like hot cookies.

As a person working in the industry, I can say that's a very visible trend. People switch their devices more due to battery and physical wear than actual need for more features.

In that respect, things got very "Japanised" in respect that Japanese cellphone makers are often making new models every season with no real changes other than cosmetic.

Japan is also the only developed market where "dumbphones" ever saw few upwards trends in last 5 years.

I keep seeing article after article talking about to slow down of buying phones, but I’ve never seen any mention of the main reason I stopped buying phones every year:

They stopped subsidizing them.

For a while, most carriers (at least AT&T with iPhones) would include a phone with a two year contract as part of your monthly bill. But about 3 or 4 years ago, they stopped doing this. And so people had no incentive to renew every time they were eligible.

Everybody I’m close to stopped for this reason. Now they only renew now when they have to, or when there’s a really compelling reason to. And any more, both of these are becoming less and less of a need.

Why has nobody talked about this?

One factor I haven't seen mentioned is that moving everything to a new phone is a bit of a risk and a pain. Reinstalling apps, reestablishing connections and credentials, manually moving the stuff that inevitably got missed, getting a new case. Bleh. If I have to spend my money and my time, there has to be more than a sliver of payback, but a sliver is usually all that's offered. Forget it. In another few months my work phone will be up for replacement, and TBH I'm not looking forward to it. Just another damn forced "upgrade" to steal away my time for no real gain.
Smartphones are so refined these days that upgrading yearly or even every two years just doesn’t seem worth it to me if I’m paying full retail price for it.

However, if the carrier companies still offered subsidized phones I’d be more than happy to upgrade for the subsidized price. It wasn’t until NEXT and all the similar “pay the full price over N months” plans came along that I stopped upgrading regularly.

Seems like the burden of not upgrading has fallen back on the smartphone manufacturer, no? If I’m paying full price I’m either going to buy less often or look for a cheaper option.

Same thing happened with desktop PC's around when the Core 2 Duo came out and 1080p lcd displays became standard. The machines can do most of the stuff we want them to do.
There's no next big thing in the pipeline. And everybody already has a smartphone.
I've had my Nexus 6p for close to 3.5 years. The battery has started dying early recently, so I considered replacing the phone. But it's still plenty fast for me, and there's nothing I'd possibly get from an upgrade besides a better camera, so I just replaced the battery for $20. Works like new again, and hopefully lasts a couple more years.
The rate of perceivable changes has decreased over recent years while the price of flagships has increased substantially. I have a Galaxy S7 and it still works perfectly well for everything I need. The only issue with it is that I know Samsung won't be releasing Android Pie for this model, so I'll be forced into an upgrade if I want to stay on a current version.
I owned a samsung s8 for a while, purchased it for about $700 brand new just when it came out. Since it followed the new trend of having everything be glass, and I am a clumsy person, it ended up breaking.

Repairing it would have cost be about $400, and second hand s8s go for around that rate. It simply didn't make sense to repair it and sell it, or even to repair it at all really.

I ended up purchasing a second hand Pixel XL (1st version) for $180. It has lasted me incredibly well, and I've had hardly any problems. The phone is durable, has a headphone jack, and a fantastic camera.

It seems that most phone hardware now has reached the point of being more than good enough. The only real bottle neck for many devices is software. My Samsung phones, with their bloated skins, always seemed to age quite quickly. When the software experience is finely tuned and bloat removed, then phones seem to last indefinitely.

Maybe they should offer more variety in design, usability, features and colours?

There are no small new smartphones, there are no QWERTY phones, soon there will be no phones with headphone jacks...I'd love to have a QWERTY for business + small phone with nice camera and durable battery for travel combo.

They don't offer any new features that are desirable.

The voice assistants are a flop, not nearly good enogh. I miss my headphone jack a little. I wish I could get a blackberry style physical keyboard.

As much as the iPhone vs Android debate continues to rage, they basically do the same things.

Cycles go up and down. Good luck trying to prevent that. Best to plan for downturns and upturns.
TBH i m surprised it lasted that long. The diminishing returns started long time ago, and practically it is the OS upgrades slowing down old phones, and drained batteries that drive the upgrades. Apart from the tech crowd, ppl don't care if their phone makes marginally better photos , as long as it makes them good enough to post to facebook. Same thing with laptops. I ve been wanting to give myself a new thinkpad as christmas gift , but i just couldnt justify upgrading from an i7-5600 .

Which means, a lot of people are setting aside money that they would spend for their yearly phone upgrade, for the next seductive product. This could be a good opportunity for novel stuff.

I'm not surprised.

Until I'm gonna a get a new model that is compact and has a headphone jack, fingerprint reader and SD card slot I'm not planning to ever change my device.

The whole market went crazy in completely opposite direction than what the consumers want.

Been using Nexus 5x. $210. It does everything. Plays all videos. Charges fast.

Id buy new phone if did one of the followings...

A) had a battery that lasted a month.

B) had free unlimited data.

C) can 3d scan objects

I'll not buy it if it has

A) NSA 2.0 Alexa or ok Google always turned on

B) reliance on Bluetooth. I've concerns about radiation effects.

C) battery lasts one day

Got a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 a few months ago for around $180 and couldn't be happier. Big screen, crazy battery that lasts 2 days on heavy use, fingerprint unlock, fast and quite sleek look. I've even dropped it quite a bit (not cover, no screen protector) and not a scratch on the screen.

What do people actually get for getting something at 5x the price? Notchless design, maybe better camera, and can't really think of anything else.

Phones IMO are transitioning from a functional item to a status item (maybe similar to watches). At least that's the angle I'd be taking if I was a high end phone manufacturer...

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but is this the reason for the huge push towards non-user-servicable phones?

My phone (LG V20) is one of the last made with an easily removable battery.

I’d love to update my 2012 MacBook Air as it is getting a little slow on some of the scripts I’d like to run. Unfortunately the 2018 MacBook Air is only 1/3rd faster for CPU (it dropped a power category), so there’s little point just yet. Maybe Apple will use their own CPUs in the near future which should give a nice boost, but for the time being I’ve just been hand-optimising the scripts instead.
My company pays for my phone. I can upgrade every 18 months. My latest upgrade date has come and gone, but I haven't bothered to do it since my current phone (iPhone 7 plus) still works as well as it did the first day I got it. The only reason I can foresee getting a new phone is if next year's iPhone includes a headphone jack. Now that would be an improvement worth getting.
Yup my latest upgrade from a SAMSUNG S5 (Great phone) was a ~$200 Xiaomi Redmi 5 Plus. Which i plan to keep for another 5 years or so.
The Original telephone company bell telephone, didn’t sell phones they rented them. Wiki says it was crucial to their survival in the early days. Not saying I want to lease my phone but it seems a lot of people are willing to lease cars and shop at rent to own stores. Include service as an mvno and might be viable as a business.
Agreed, bought mine 2 years ago, top of the line, extended warranty, etc. instead I’ve been thinking about replacing my iPad...
Well this is great news for the environment!
I could use a windows phone that could Remote Desktop into my PC and be an extension of my PC experience. Could probably give me a mini tablet sized screen, just enough to fit in my jeans pocket but large enough to not require a new UI operating system, just a tweak to make icons and fonts larger.