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.
Isn't this why we're struggling to build nuclear in some countries because they weren't building it regularly, and now it's difficult to scale, let alone build new ones?
I understand that it's wasteful, but maybe it's necessary to sustain itself? Especially from a feedback perspective from consumers?
Some waste is the cost of resiliency. But with phones (and other electronics and appliances), we're talking about extreme amounts of waste. Way more than is needed to keep around and develop the capacity and know-how.
> Especially from a feedback perspective from consumers?
What feedback? Unless they screw things really badly, they're just listening to the echoes of their own marketing departments. This is a supply-driven market with high natural barriers to entry. Customers buy what they're told to, and are happy about it as they're told to.