The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016.
While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations.
Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent, with investment patterns accounting for approximately 55% of productivity gaps between advanced economies. The good news: businesses in the U.S. are generally quicker to reinvest in replacing aging equipment. The Federal Reserve report shows that if European productivity had matched U.S. investment patterns starting in 2000, the productivity gap between the U.S and European economic heavyweights would have been reduced by 29 percent for the U.K., 35 percent for France, and 101% for Germany.
Maybe don’t base the economy on e-waste?
Maybe I’m old but it feels like the days of meaningful improvements have passed. Now it’s just a slightly different design for the sake of the annual release schedule. Why change when this 4 year old device is still supported and functions just fine?
I have a 6 year old iphone. And the literal only enticing feature of the new ones is that the base models have 4x the storage space lol
This is it, really. I used to upgrade every year or two and flash the latest and greatest ROM to be on the bleeding edge.
Now, none of that really seems like a huge difference anymore other than GrapheneOS for privacy and security.
It’s just incremental improvements and none of the reparability I want, so I wait until it’s really necessary to upgrade now.
Phones are where PCs were ~20 years ago. We’re getting past the stage where it’s a piece of outdated crap after 6 months and the improvements now are incremental.
What kind of twatwaffle writes this crap. Fuck your planned obsolescence.
…i believe only one country has “planned obsolescence” as an illegal business practice…
Bhutan?
After a quick search, it seems to be France. I wouldn’t have guessed that in a thousand years, judging their car industry…
Lol shots fired.
Accurate, correct shots…
Good old French engineering. Calculations say we need at least a 9mm bolt to hold on this widget, every other bolt on the car is 10mm or 16mm. 9mm bolt it is.
There’s something weirdly seductive about French cars though, they somehow manage to be extremely good at some specific niche feature and look nice and be just quality enough that you seem to talk yourself round to them.
Stellantis in shambles, or at least their manufacturing quality is
Yeah, no shit. No one wants to buy a new $1200 phone that does the exact same shit as the last $1200 phone.
Phones peaked around 2012. Now they are more cameras. If they had user replaceable batteries like 20 years ago no one would need to replace them.
Institutions and businesses need to stop the 2 year cycle on phones.
If they had user replaceable batteries like 20 years ago no one would need to replace them.
I’ve only had 1 without a removable battery and decided never again. Can recommend Fairphone, or maybe Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro.
The Fairphone is particularly repairable and more sustainably and ethically produced than pretty much any other phone FWIW. Almost any component can be replaced in minutes, including the screen and camera($106), as well as microphones, speakers, usb ports, etc ($20~40). It uses de-Googled android and has a variety of built in security and privacy features other phones lack. They’re a good company trying to improve the industry, so I think more people should be aware of them.
The Galaxy XCover Pro is the best of the very limited number of removable battery phones from major well known brands, IMO.
Phones peaked around 2012. Now they are more cameras.
Folding phones only came out about 5 years ago, but I bought it used and true to the article my current folding phone is over 24 months with no plans on it being replaced.
A new phone can cost over $1000 and the old one still works
“6G” will take care of that. The carriers will force you to upgrade and then charge you higher rates because for some reason they have to replace all their infrastructure every few years.
The infra replacement at least makes sense though, the bandwidth they have is limited and consumers want to squeeze more out of it (higher quality video, bigger files, high quality calls) so they need to repurpose the spectrum or use different parts of the spectrum.
You know shit’s bad when US media starts using the ‘China bad’ classic “but at what cost?” byline toward US consumers
Im guessing there’s a sister article somewhere on Forbes reporting lower than anticipated earnings for US phone manufacturers
