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.
[1] https://www.apple.com/mt/iphone-15/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/16h13z3/why_are_the...
I know people who lease a new car every 3 years. And often, if there's no redesign, they're getting a nearly identical vehicle. It's strange. Whereas, I upgrade my car every 10 years, and am thrilled with all the improvements.
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!
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.
Incentives exist on the part of the person who, being human, definitely want the new shiny thing, regardless of the logic behind it.
They exist for the salesperson, who will get a commission for selling the new shiny thing, regardless of whether this makes the customer's life any better or worse.
They exist for the carrier because the customer is on the hook for 2-3 years of service when they buy the shiny thing.
Finally, they exist for the company that made the phone because they make a profit on the sale price of the shiny thing.
1 year from now if you sell it for 2/3 the price, you get back $720. A year's use cost you $360. About $1 a day. This is very worth it for some but not quite as cheap as $200 a year. This is without factoring in time to sell.
You could trade in but that means you are locked in contract with service provider.
I have a Xiaomi 10 or something I bought in 2020 I paid 279$ for, almost 4 years later it comes at 0.18 and I see like 0 reasons to upgrade.
I admit I'm not the most social (media) person out there, I'm not into connecting my phone into every other device on this planet (as Apple people consistently remind how easily they interoperate their devices), but it does everything great: camera, battery, messaging, games.
To me to see people thinking it's normal to spend so much money for a phone is borderline crazy.
People lease for many factors, not just to avoid tear and maintenance.
Somehow that works for clothing vendors, though.
What other reasons do people lease?
Alternatively, you could buy a second-hand iphone 11/12 pro and use it for 5-6 years easily, with proper software support. That’s what I do, and don’t yet plan on updating - maybe the iphone 16 would be worthy for me.