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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.
It's an absolutely welcome development as the amount of e-waste the humanity is producing is staggering. Now, let's increase the average duration of smartphone ownership to at least five years and make smartphones upgradable.
I don't think this is a new issue. I've always replaced my phones when they stop being useful rather than when a new phone/feature comes out. Generally this puts me on track to get a different phone once every four years, give or take a little. I can't imagine shelling out a grand for a phone that is almost identical to the one I had last year.
For many people their phone _is_ their camera, and just visit anywhere people go for entertainment or tourism to see the extent to which they use them. Cameras on phones matter.
Then again, my phone is over two years old and its camera is still perfectly adequate. A camera isn't a good reason to upgrade, but may be a differentiator when the time to upgrade comes.
Same here. I have tried using Bluetooth but it isn't reliable and when it fails, you are just out of luck until you have time to troubleshoot/charge/spend$$ on another. With regular headphones, they almost never fail, when they do it is gradual (one ear stops working) and a replacement is fairly cheap and widely available from many outlets (even a drug store in a pinch). (of course, there is a dongle but they are a hassle and the location of the lightning port is not as good as the headphone port is on my current phone)
Until you offer something in a new phone that my phone can't do and I can't live without and am willing to sacrifice convenient headphone performance to do without, I am sticking with my current phone.
No matter where you go, there you are.
I'm happy with my Galaxy S5, with removable batteries :D
The thing is, cameras can only get so good before you run into physical limits and adding pixels doesn't help anymore. If you want a better image, you will need a camera with a better lens.
I actually pressed reply to correct your thinking on bluetooth, then I realized your correct. I use bluetooth 90% of the time but nothing beats wired headphones for reliability. When I'm doing a live show I have my track preview on the headphone channel. With Muxxx you can send it out over bluetooth but its a pain in the ass to do. An if your bluetooth fails, which happened to me, in the middle of a live show you are fucked. Never had my wired phones fail in a show but if they do I keep a spare set on hand. Just plug them and keep going.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
When phone manufacturers (or the bluetooth spec) manage to eliminate audio / video sync issues I will move to primarily Bluetooth. At this time both my android and iphone seem unable to achieve this.