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It sometimes amazes me that people switch their phones so often. I tend to have a phone for 3 years. Many of my friends change every year ! One step to towards

It sometimes amazes me that people switch their phones so often. I tend to have a phone for 3 years. Many of my friends change every year ! One step to towards reducing global warming is reducing consumption.

GFischer 8y ago
I have a Xiaomi phone. It costs less than 200 dollars after taxes in my country, and it's great. My cell phone company basically gives them for free in exchange for the 2 year contract, so after my 2 years are up, I'm definitely switching it for a newer model, or I'm leaving money on the table. Many people are way more careless than I am, or heavier users, and definitely switch every year (or even less!). Chinese phones make it much more feasible. OTOH, if you care about environment, these are no good - no user-swappable batteries for instance.
- ZeroGravitas 8y ago
  They don't give them away free, they build the cost into your contract. If there's sufficient competition in your local market you'll be able to buy a sim-only deal that costs less and returns that money to you and let's you upgrade on your own schedule to a phone of your own choosing.
  - tboughen 8y ago
    I thought that too. However last Black Friday I found the best deal on an iPhone X was to pay £450 up front and then pay £29 per month for 2 years (totalling £1147 or £6.13 per month above the phone’s list price). The data and minutes I get would cost me at least £15 per month, making my deal absurdly good value!
    - distances 8y ago
      In UK? My expectation nowadays for a phone bill is 10€ per month, with data, calls and SMS included. Doesn't leave much room for subsidied phones
  - GFischer 8y ago
    It's the local state company. So no "sufficient competition" there (there are 2 other companies, but neither gives significant advantages, and you can't keep your phone number, which is a huge disadvantage). Even if I went to China and bought the phone there I'd still be behind, no way to get a data-only contract for less than phone+data. I'm not happy about it, it's just the way things are, and the reason I'll be switching phones next year (just because I'm basically forced to by the carrier).
- matwood 8y ago
  That's not free, and is basically back to the subsidized plans that were so terrible. With TMO I know exactly what I pay for service and for the phone. I could pay the 0% loan off on the phone today and my bill will down accordingly. When the 2 years is up, my bill will go down accordingly. I could pay off the phone and leave TMO today if I wanted to.
sebasmurphy 8y ago
Same here. They only reason that I upgraded to the nexus 5x from the nexus 5 was that the modem in the 5x supported additional LTE bands. If there's no signficiant changes in the modem hardware you're just paying more money for a slightly better version of the phone you already have.
- tigershark 8y ago
  You went from the slowest and more bugged phone that I ever had to one that it’s even slightly slower... it’s not really a good upgrade choice to do after 3 years.
  - ahelwer 8y ago
    Yep, I just switched from the Nexus 5X to Moto X4. Nexus 5X only has 2 GB of RAM, which on recent versions of Android means apps are swapped out and shut down constantly. If you were browsing the internet and switched to a different app, you were guaranteed to have to reload the webpage from scratch if you didn't switch back to your browser within 5-10 seconds. Plus Snapchat was unusable due to camera lag and high memory requirements.
    - asddddd 8y ago
      I'm still using a Nexus 4 with 2gb of RAM, running android 7. 6 was terrible performance, but it's been running well with 7; no issues with constant swapping or the like. The camera is absolutely atrocious, and the 8gb internal storage is really showing it's age, but it still runs everything really well for me - probably since I've never used apps like Facebook. The biggest issue so far has been a flash sector failure or a cosmic ray or something that forced me to wipe everything and reinstall from scratch. I would have upgraded it in the last year or two but I can't find a phone I really want, nearly everything produced these days is a much larger form factor.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sattoshi 8y ago
All of my "techy" friends except myself are guilty. They buy a phone at most every year and often times within 6 months. What gets me is that on top of that, they exclusively get the top phones (pixel 2, Samsung s9+, and the latest iPhone were the main purchases this year). Yet here I am, with my one plus 2 and cannot imagine changing it within the next 3 years as the improvements are negligieable for me at this point. The only thing I can consider switching to is either an iPhone or the Librem 5.
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
Well the average replacement rate is approaching 3 years, so you shouldn't be too amazed. But you should also consider that those who switch don't throw their product in the garbage. The resale value of flagship phones, particularly Apple, is really solid. For example, Apple today sells a 3 year old model (6s) for 65% of the price of its latest model. Even if you sell it second hand, you can usually get >30% on a 3y old Apple model. You can usually get like 75% on a 1 year old model. I know a guy who buys a new phone every year and sells his old one. Say he buys every year the latest and greatest flagship for say $1000, sells it for around $750 a year later and buys a new phone. He consistently spends about $20 a month on the latest phone. It's not as crazy as you'd think, $20 a month for the very best tech in your pocket is pretty trivial to most people on HN. The numbers may be a bit different for everyone.

GFischer 8y ago

I have a Xiaomi phone. It costs less than 200 dollars after taxes in my country, and it's great. My cell phone company basically gives them for free in exchange for the 2 year contract, so after my 2 years are up, I'm definitely switching it for a newer model, or I'm leaving money on the table. Many people are way more careless than I am, or heavier users, and definitely switch every year (or even less!). Chinese phones make it much more feasible. OTOH, if you care about environment, these are no good - no user-swappable batteries for instance.

ZeroGravitas 8y ago
They don't give them away free, they build the cost into your contract. If there's sufficient competition in your local market you'll be able to buy a sim-only deal that costs less and returns that money to you and let's you upgrade on your own schedule to a phone of your own choosing.
- tboughen 8y ago
  I thought that too. However last Black Friday I found the best deal on an iPhone X was to pay £450 up front and then pay £29 per month for 2 years (totalling £1147 or £6.13 per month above the phone’s list price). The data and minutes I get would cost me at least £15 per month, making my deal absurdly good value!
  - distances 8y ago
    In UK? My expectation nowadays for a phone bill is 10€ per month, with data, calls and SMS included. Doesn't leave much room for subsidied phones
- GFischer 8y ago
  It's the local state company. So no "sufficient competition" there (there are 2 other companies, but neither gives significant advantages, and you can't keep your phone number, which is a huge disadvantage). Even if I went to China and bought the phone there I'd still be behind, no way to get a data-only contract for less than phone+data. I'm not happy about it, it's just the way things are, and the reason I'll be switching phones next year (just because I'm basically forced to by the carrier).
matwood 8y ago
That's not free, and is basically back to the subsidized plans that were so terrible. With TMO I know exactly what I pay for service and for the phone. I could pay the 0% loan off on the phone today and my bill will down accordingly. When the 2 years is up, my bill will go down accordingly. I could pay off the phone and leave TMO today if I wanted to.

sebasmurphy 8y ago

Same here. They only reason that I upgraded to the nexus 5x from the nexus 5 was that the modem in the 5x supported additional LTE bands. If there's no signficiant changes in the modem hardware you're just paying more money for a slightly better version of the phone you already have.

tigershark 8y ago
You went from the slowest and more bugged phone that I ever had to one that it’s even slightly slower... it’s not really a good upgrade choice to do after 3 years.
- ahelwer 8y ago
  Yep, I just switched from the Nexus 5X to Moto X4. Nexus 5X only has 2 GB of RAM, which on recent versions of Android means apps are swapped out and shut down constantly. If you were browsing the internet and switched to a different app, you were guaranteed to have to reload the webpage from scratch if you didn't switch back to your browser within 5-10 seconds. Plus Snapchat was unusable due to camera lag and high memory requirements.
  - asddddd 8y ago
    I'm still using a Nexus 4 with 2gb of RAM, running android 7. 6 was terrible performance, but it's been running well with 7; no issues with constant swapping or the like. The camera is absolutely atrocious, and the 8gb internal storage is really showing it's age, but it still runs everything really well for me - probably since I've never used apps like Facebook. The biggest issue so far has been a flash sector failure or a cosmic ray or something that forced me to wipe everything and reinstall from scratch. I would have upgraded it in the last year or two but I can't find a phone I really want, nearly everything produced these days is a much larger form factor.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sattoshi 8y ago

All of my "techy" friends except myself are guilty. They buy a phone at most every year and often times within 6 months. What gets me is that on top of that, they exclusively get the top phones (pixel 2, Samsung s9+, and the latest iPhone were the main purchases this year). Yet here I am, with my one plus 2 and cannot imagine changing it within the next 3 years as the improvements are negligieable for me at this point. The only thing I can consider switching to is either an iPhone or the Librem 5.

IkmoIkmo 8y ago

Well the average replacement rate is approaching 3 years, so you shouldn't be too amazed. But you should also consider that those who switch don't throw their product in the garbage. The resale value of flagship phones, particularly Apple, is really solid. For example, Apple today sells a 3 year old model (6s) for 65% of the price of its latest model. Even if you sell it second hand, you can usually get >30% on a 3y old Apple model. You can usually get like 75% on a 1 year old model. I know a guy who buys a new phone every year and sells his old one. Say he buys every year the latest and greatest flagship for say $1000, sells it for around $750 a year later and buys a new phone. He consistently spends about $20 a month on the latest phone. It's not as crazy as you'd think, $20 a month for the very best tech in your pocket is pretty trivial to most people on HN. The numbers may be a bit different for everyone.