zlacker

>>alphab+(OP)
It's starting to feel silly, having a yearly release cycle for smartphones. So much of this product page is focused on new software functions that may have some vague relationship with the slightly upgraded hardware, but that could mostly be released to existing phones. Every new iPhone, Pixel, or Samsung phone basically claims the camera is marginally better and hey, look at these software features that have very little to do with the hardware and should not fundamentally be a reason to upgrade to this phone.

There is so much time, effort, and physical waste that is generated by slightly redesigning phones every year purely for the sake of making sales (as opposed to meaningful improvement upon the existing design or introduction of a new hardware feature). Think not only of people upgrading for the sake of it, but all of the cases, screen protectors, and other assorted accessories cast in plastic for previous models that are garbage now.

It would be nice if we could just space these things out to 5 years or so now, because that's probably how long it takes for anything to change enough to justify a new model.

>>kimber+T71
Not everyone lives on the same upgrade cycle, you can, but you're not supposed to change your phone every year. With iPhone 15, the majority of people upgrading would be 12 and older device owners.

>>karoli+t91
That is technically true. However, I do find that a lot of people I know tend to get new phones well before they actually have a need for them.

I don't entirely blame peoples' consumerism; As somebody who once worked in cell phone sales, the mere act of visiting a carrier store is likely to land you in front of a salesperson who is incentivized to sell new phones and lines indiscriminately. Not to mention the incredible amount of advertising that goes into phones - if people only upgraded when they needed new phones, I don't think Apple, Samsung, or Google would feel the need to advertise the new ones so aggressively.

HN is likely a much more tech-literate crowd than the average person, so I think to a lot of us it seems silly to buy new phones every year. But I know that every time Apple releases a new iPhone, I get a call from my dad asking if it's worth upgrading from last year's model. I say no, nothing has changed, but the next time I see him he has it. Why? Because the salesperson made such a convincing case, not only about the merit of the new phone, but the fact that they could give him such a "deal" on it.

>>kimber+ic1
> lot of people I know tend to get new phones well before they actually have a need for them

It might just be your “bubble”, but even if not, is it really that bad of a deal? If you resell your previous phone at 2/3 the original price each year, you can use the latest phone for like 200 bucks for a year, or $17 monthly. For a device that is with you 0-24, and is probably the most often used item a typical person owns — they have it on them more often than even their shoes!

>>kaba0+Wo1
Yeah, but in the end they are those who fuel the waste machine. They start it, and they are the reason why there are new phones every year. For no sane reason.

Somewhere along the way, you pass a threshold where it's uncool to have a certain version of phone and judging from what you hear about the waste problem with phones, it's above the reasonable moment to get rid of it because it's broken or not usable.

I mean, sure it's a nice lie you can tell to yourself, but in the end, it's not good.

>>Krasno+Cr1
It's not always about being uncool. Sometimes it's about your current device getting slow enough to be annoying, so you want to replace to avoid paying the daily mental tax, "death through thousand papercuts", coming from the single piece of electronics you use most of, day in, day out. And that is caused mostly by software bloat - as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, between OS updates and app updates, a year is about how long a flagship phone has before it starts to become annoying to use. And then it only gets worse.