zlacker

I think it's more likely that if they spaced the releases out to every 5 years, there would just be a 5x reduction in the pace of changes, and you could issue the same complaint "Why do they release every 5 years when hardly anything changes?"

It's not like the incremental physical changes just automatically happen independently of designing, mass manufacturing, and releasing new phone models. The incremental physical changes happen because companies are trying to develop new phone models.