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People Are Keeping Their Phones Longer Because There's Not Much Reason To Upgrade, Study Finds (vice.com)
According to a recent study by Hyla Mobile as reported by the Wall Street Journal, a mobile-device trade-in company, the average age of an iPhone at trade-in is now 2.92 years. That's up from 2.38 years in 2016, and 2.59 in 2017, according to the company. From a report: Part of this, according to Biju Nair, chief executive of Hyla Mobile, is because phone plan carriers moved from a subsidized payment model for new phones, to payment plans, as smartphones got more expensive over the years. Now, if you purchase it from a big carrier like Verizon or T-Mobile as part of a plan package, your phone is basically on loan to you from the carrier, while you make smaller monthly payments until it's paid off and you own it outright.
It can take years to pay off a new smartphone (the iPhone XS Max costs almost $1,100), and once you've done it, there's not much incentive to give up that investment -- especially when the newest models aren't much different in terms of specs and performance than the one you already have. Add to this the efforts by right-to-repair groups to raise awareness about the fact that your phone actually doesn't need to go in the garbage every time you crack the screen, and you've got people keeping their phones longer. The way we view new technology has also changed in recent years.
It can take years to pay off a new smartphone (the iPhone XS Max costs almost $1,100), and once you've done it, there's not much incentive to give up that investment -- especially when the newest models aren't much different in terms of specs and performance than the one you already have. Add to this the efforts by right-to-repair groups to raise awareness about the fact that your phone actually doesn't need to go in the garbage every time you crack the screen, and you've got people keeping their phones longer. The way we view new technology has also changed in recent years.
I want my darn headphone jack. And I'm keeping it until my phone is unrepairable.
Or do like the rest of us and buy a USB battery pack. You can get one for under $20 that fits in your pocket and can provide a full charge to a phone 4+ times. No need to turn your phone off and take it apart, and it works with all your USB devices.
there is a good reason for the update.
My last update was from Samsung Galaxy S3 to the S7. The reasons being much better camera and wanting to try the Samsung/Occolus VR googles.
And my two requirements are:
1. Headphone jack
2. Support for secondary SD-Card storage so that I can have 256GB+ storage for video, audio and pictures without extortionist prices (Internal storage for apps only)
So the way things are going now, it seems my S7 will have to last for a long, long time.
Samsung is the one vendor still keeping most of these features around.
IR blasting, removable batteries, physical/reprogrammable buttons, and unlocked bootloaders would like to have a word with you.