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Almost any $200+ phone made since 2015 has a pretty good camera, screen, speed for most people. Why upgrade when what you have is good enough? One used to chec
by bruceb 8y ago
Almost any $200+ phone made since 2015 has a pretty good camera, screen, speed for most people.
Why upgrade when what you have is good enough? One used to check out gizmodo/engadget when a new phone came out but seems not anymore as "the new" is only incremental.
- Eyght 8y agoI've been using the same phone for almost 4 years now (oneplus one). It came with 3gb ram and 64gb storage and cost about $300, vat included. There are two tells that I'm using an old phone. The camera is really bad compared to the current ones, and it doesn't have any biometric unlock.
- ddalex 8y agoI am still rocking the original OnePlus one, too. I appreciate the lack of a biometric sensor, and camera is actually better than a lot of newer phone cameras - the only cameras that outshine it are iPhones, top of the line Samsung's and OP5T. So pretty decent for a 4 year old phone?
- distances 8y ago> camera is actually better than a lot of newer phone cameras I had OPO too. The camera was perhaps better than some of the current new phone cameras. In today's terms the camera is really, really bad though, and clearly loses to most new models.
- larkeith 8y agoI'm still running my Galaxy S5 from when it first came out, and I've not found any problems with it yet - the camera is good enough for anything I need it for, and the battery can still run a good 4-6 hours active use. While it doesn't have biometric unlock, I would avoid any new phone that did like the plague regardless - I like having a minimal amount of security, thank you very much.
- wilsonnb 8y agoI don't understand why you avoid a phone with biometric unlock. It's an optional feature that you don't have to enable.
- bilbo0s 8y agoIt's interesting because, even though I make the conscious effort to keep my iPhone 5, I thought MOST people upgraded? Reading through a lot of these comments, it seems that's not the case. That's surprising but comforting. Having teenage daughters I really started to get a kind of inferiority complex. Thinking, "Man, am I being unreasonably stubborn here?" But it always just seemed like the phone worked, so why upgrade? It does make me wonder, however, what's next for Samsung and Apple? Is it that there are still more than enough people upgrading to make plenty of money? Or will they have to come up with new non-smartphone products in the future?
- fpoling 8y agoFriend of mine and his wife also keep their iPhone 5 from 2012. Fro my impression going to few random sites they work nicely. They changed battery only once. So I am really consider getting iPhone SE as my next phone when the current 2 years old Nexus 5 breaks or will not be supported...
- StudentStuff 8y agoThe iPhone SE is a solid device, perhaps the only reason to stick with Android is if you need faster speeds or notably better coverage on T-Mobile (which requires Band 71) as Apple's LTE modems aren't great right now.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y agoIn the past, new phones had great improvement, now it's more of a small incremental improvement.
- graeme 8y agoI personally went from original in 2008, to iphone 4 in 2010, to iphone 6 in 2015, to iphone 8 in 2017. I would have kept using the old phone in every case, but: they each became too slow with os updates. In the case of the 6 I think it was exacerbated by battery issued. So probably you've taken better care of your battery? (Or stayed off ios 11) But, if you look at that record, it is: 1. Not an upgrade every to every model 2. Still a fair number of sales for apple I skipped the 3g, 4s, 5, 5s, 6s, 7
- klodolph 8y agoPeople upgrade because what they have becomes worse as time goes on. Maybe you don't get OS updates any more and you can't run apps you want, maybe you do get OS updates and your phone is now slower. Maybe your battery charge lasts less than a day and you don't know you can replace your battery or don't want to. Some people I know almost always end up with cracked screens and upgrade rather than repair, and some other people play Ingress or Pokemon Go so heavily that their batteries don't even last a full day.
- gd2 8y agoAlso apps do get updated, and when they do they sometimes grow by almost a 100 MB. Repeat that X times, and the RAM on the phone turns out to be insufficient for larger apps of the new now.
- nostalgeek 8y agoFacebook app was 600MB on my girlfriend's phone. Unbelievable. What the hell does Facebook need 600MB for? (granted it was the mostly the data but it made her phone run like crap because the data is stored in internal storage, not on SD card). I cleared the data and it was back to 150MB in less that an hour. So off course people feel like their phones run like crap with apps like that. I mean even a $50 phone today is extremely powerful for its price, but developers have no consideration for mobile constraints (then blame web techs...).
- loser777 8y agoThis anecdote is hard to believe (the slows the phone down part) because unless the app is constantly hammering the storage system with I/Os even as a background process, storage usage doesn't mean it's actively slowing the Phone down. Also it turns out that caching people's photos, etc., will save a lot of bandwidth and improve loading times (especially precious on mobile). Those JPEGs add up quickly...
- MekaiGS 8y ago
- akhilcacharya 8y agoI’m due for an upgrade but I’m refusing on account of new flagships not having 3.5 headphone jack.
- Afforess 8y agoSamsung flagship phones (Galaxy / Note) still have the 3.5mm jack.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Samsung flagship phones (Galaxy / Note) Pedantically, the Samsung flagships are the Galaxy S and Galaxy Note series; there are a lot of other Galaxy series.
- downrightmike 8y agoAnd as a bonus feature they sometimes light fires.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoI prefer pure Android. I honestly like iOS more now, an iPhone X with a headphone jack would be perfect for me. I'd easily pay a premium for it.
- PeterSmit 8y agoCheck out the Nokia 8
- amthewiz 8y agoI'd recommend OnePlus 5T or the upcoming 6. Switched from iPhone a few months ago and happy.
- joncrane 8y agoDid the Pixel 2 get rid of the headphone jack?
- tlholaday 8y ago
- melling 8y agoBecause I want a great camera in my pocket. It’s only a few dollars more a month.
- bruceb 8y agoThere will always be people who want the best, but good enough solution serves most people. Smart phones have reached a point where most are at least good enough. A flagship Samsung is say $700. That is $500 more which is more than a couple bucks a month. Clearly well worth for you but probably not for a good portion of society.
- melling 8y agoYou’re talking in generalizations. Got any data to back up your claims? The average selling price for iPhones keeps increasing, and it’s over $700. If you’re talking about global markets then of course, $200 phones have always been more common. That’s why Android has 80% market share.
- bluGill 8y agoThe article backs them up. People in China are no longer seeing phone upgrades as worth it. At one time new hardware made your experience better. My last phone is a downgrade from the previous one (I physically broke my flagship just after the warranty expired so I got a mid range phone to save money), and I can't tell the difference.
- melling 8y agoThere are 1.4 billion people in China with completely different income levels. The world is made up of many different markets.
- digi_owl 8y agoIt really makes this "old" guy miss the days when Nokia et al would bring out all kinds of wacky attempts at phones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3650 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3650 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_SX1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_SX1 These days they all seems to be some variant of a glass slab. Damn it, the most used apps are "variants" of SMS and MMS in HD...
- jstarfish 8y agoI miss my Sidekick...
- kalleboo 8y agoI think this was my favorite "weird" Nokia phone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7600 That and Sony Ericssons crazy "transparent" phone https://i2.wp.com/techpatio.com/wp-content/uploads/sony_ericsson_xperia_pureness.jpg https://i2.wp.com/techpatio.com/wp-content/uploads/sony_eric... The mobile market back then was just so much more interesting than now
- larkeith 8y agoIt's rather remarkable how well the PalmPilot [1] proved the design for touchscreen devices to come. If only modern phone keyboards had any input methods approaching the quality of Graffiti. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot
- digi_owl 8y agoCould have sworn i have seen a Graffiti keyboard for Android on Play. Not sure how well it works compared to the original.
- ggg9990 8y agoI’ll upgrade my phone as long as the camera keeps getting better which it does. I want the pictures of my kids to be at the highest quality, since 30 years from now they’ll be compared against really sophisticated imagery.
- segmondy 8y agoWell said, I've rebuilt my nexus 5 (3 times) It was once driven over by a car and I swapped the innards. The motherboard died and I swapped that out. Then I replaced the battery. I've a backup nexus 5 and spare battery waiting. I want to get my money's worth. Upgrading every 2/3 yrs is nuts with how much these cost. I'm pushing for every 6 yrs unless a device truly revolutionary is released. No such device has been released.
- bufferoverflow 8y agoYou should look into Nexus 5X. The camera is fantastic, if you care about that.
- detritus 8y agoOne of my mini projects for this bank holiday weekend is to replace the heavily-cracked screen and the battery of my Nexus 5. I bought the replacement components before realising that I'd have to go 'through the back' to replace the screen - I'm assuming that's going to add on at least an hour to the task! I'm only replacing the screen now as the digitizer suddenly stopped working the other week - I'd been 'happy' to tolerate its [again, heavily] cracked screen for a good 4 years already! - ed I'm back using an old Nokia soapbar phone in the meantime. If it weren't for the lousy camera and mp3 as well as a lack of practical email and the tedious text-inputting, I'm not really missing much else from my 'smart'phone.
- ksec 8y ago$200+? 2015? Well it kind of depends what you mean by good enough. Out of all the Phone I tried, including latest Android, only the iPhone X came close to being fast enough, as in super responsive. I think iOS 11 actually slows things down for everyone, the whole OS is slower then iOS 10, even on iPhone X, which we can't test with iOS 10. I really wish we could start to focus on Latency Computing. I want things to have a responsive output, or reaction to my input in less then 16ms.
- megaman22 8y agoRun Android then. If you need an iPhoneX to run your mobile operating system, then it's an unforgivably bloated pig. An iPhone X is beefier than some workstations I've used as my main gaming and development rigs in the not so distant past.
- danieldk 8y agoI am an iPhone user, but did a detour into Android a couple of years ago. Among other phones I had a Moto G (first or second generation) that was probably around 160 Euro. It was very fast and responsive. I didn't feel/see much difference outside games, compared to the Nexus 4/5 and Moto X 2013/14 that were released at the same time.