7 ms·

Smartphone Sales Are in Freefall, and That’s Okay

77 points by mrzool 7y ago

blakesterz 7y ago
"Smartphone sales will drop 2.5% worldwide by the end of 2019, according to research firm Gartner. In North America, the drop is 4.4% from 2018 levels" I don't know what the actual definition of "freefall" is, but I was surprised to see the actual numbers were low single digits.
- jandrese 7y ago
  It's a bigger delta from the 50% or so growth year over year that they were seeing just 5 or 6 years ago. Again people see exponential growth and they extrapolate it out forever for unlimited profits but then get disappointed when the actual growth is an S curve.
  - nabla9 7y ago
    Norvig's Law: Any technology that surpasses 50% penetration will never double again (in any number of months).
    - jandrese 7y ago
      Well, it could double again if it crashed first. If your growth is purely unidirectional that seems rather obvious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfcTcSbGMmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfcTcSbGMmo
    - david-gpu 7y ago
      It can't double its market share, but the market itself can grow, and that translates to the bottom line as well.
jandrese 7y ago
IMHO some major brands have been pricing themselves out of the market with their newest phones. They've been letting the prices creep up much faster than inflation for several years now and they've hit the point where people can't afford the flagship phones anymore. Combine that with the feature sets leveling off and you have a recipe for not upgrading your phone every two years. The big question we should be asking is "what's the next big thing?" Smartwatches seem to be the answer Apple is going with, but I'm not sure they've broken out of being a niche device yet. They feel more like tablets to me, something that hits its peak way too early and ends up being mostly neglected after a few years.
- Retric 7y ago
  I think Apple is aiming for a cycle of computer, phone, tablet where you get a new one in the sequence every 1-2 years.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    Hmm, now that you bring it up...here I thought I was sticking it to the Apple Man by hanging on to my phone, not buying a new watch every year, let that iPad get a few generations behind; don't have to buy every new thing that comes out. But as you point out, I'm going to be buying something new from Apple every year or so regardless. BTW, isn't AppleTV about due for a refresh?
  - jbverschoor 7y ago
    Tablet -> never got used to them (iPad). Maybe with the new iPad OS Computer -> once every 5/6 years Phone -> every 2.5/3 years I know that tablets last a long time for most people I know. And that’s all fine. Why do we need to buy new hardware? No need. At least not for now. I’d like to buy a new MacBook. One with more disk space than 512gb. Hopefully more than 16gb, but 16 works. Maybe a faster cpu, because things are bloating. But I will wait.. wait until I’m able to get a proper keyboard.
    - sehugg 7y ago
      I'm using a 2011 MacBook Air right now for dev, and the only roadblock is that I can't upgrade the OS past 10.10.5.
JTbane 7y ago
It seems (to me at least) that each new generation of flagships don't have enough incremental advancements to justify the price tag ($1-2k).
- pochamago 7y ago
  This is the biggest reason the Samsung Fold, for all its very big problems right now, is so exciting to me. That seems like a major change with exciting possibilities
  - tomjen3 7y ago
    It is certainly new, but I have a really hard time thinking of a single time I wished my phone could fold out. Better battery? Check. Better handling of notifications? Check. Better one-handed use? Check. Fold out? I appreciate the newnes, but no.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  The price can also be incremental if the previous year’s device is sold to cover some of the new device cost. iPhones, in particular, retain a significant portion of their value after 12 months.
bluedino 7y ago
I thought iPhones used to be cheaper. I paid $599 for my iPhone 4S (my first iPhone) and paid $699 for my iPhone 8 Plus (my current phone)
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  Early iPhones were subsidized by carriers so maybe that's why they appeared cheaper. Its always been expensive for a new unlocked version.
  - umeshunni 7y ago
    4S is hardly an early iPhone. The iPhone 2g (original) and 3g were the only ones sold purely subsidized. In 2010, Apple began selling the iPhone 3GS unsubsidized for $399.
- dangus 7y ago
  $599 in 2011 dollars is $682.09 in 2019 dollars.
dmortin 7y ago
Maybe people realized they didn't need the newest phone. I have a 5 year old phone and I could buy a new faster one with fancy features, but for what? This one can do calendaring, maps, notes, todos, web browsing, apps, so there is no compelling reason to upgrade.
- phil248 7y ago
  For what? My answer was always for the camera! But now I have a 2-year-old phone with a pretty great camera and I'm not sure I need a slightly better one for $1000. All I need is a new battery.
  - dmortin 7y ago
    I don't care about the camera, so I have absolutely no reason to upgrade. Maybe if they come out with a phone where the battery will last for a week or more then I'll upgrade.
    - frabbit 7y ago
      https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/titan-unihertz-rugged-qwerty-smartphone/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/titan-uniher...
      - craftyguy 7y ago
        > come out
        frabbit 7y ago
        It's available for purchase now. Uniherz have a track record of delivering. Two phones now delivered as per promises of their previous Kickstarters. I have one of them (the Jelly Pro) and am completely satisfied with it. If someone wants a rugged, long battery life phone (this has a 6000mAh battery) it would be a reasonable bet. No different from pre-ordering from any other hardware manufacturer.
anbop 7y ago
When the iPhone 6S came out the iPhone 4S seemed like a dinosaur. Now even though the iPhone 10S is out the iPhone 6S works just fine. It happened in PCs and now it's happened in phones -- the annual increase in specs eventually passed the needs of most of the market.
- jseliger 7y ago
  Last year, I replaced an iPhone 6 or 6s with a 7. It works fine and was about half the cost (or less) of the new hotness. Presumably a lot of people are thinking the same.
  - lostgame 7y ago
    Not to mention the environmental benefits! I always encourage the use and re-use of older machines - especially those that can be updated. The trend of soldered RAM is so awful for the environment. :(
- jbob2000 7y ago
  Video games used to push the PC market, I remember when you used to have to pay attention to minimum requirements. The last 10 years of video game development has focused on indie games (Minecraft, pubg, etc), and you can run these games on a potato. Why would anyone run out to get a new machine? Same thing with smartphones. Until a killer app comes along that pushes hardware, there’s no reason to upgrade - any iPhone past the 5 does pretty much everything the XS does.
Havoc 7y ago
Pay 1k+ for the privilege of exchanging one black slab for another black slab with incrementally better specs? Maybe next year Apple...maybe
- throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
  One could argue that it isn't the stabilization of specs but that of appearance that is harming sales. Many consumers purchase an over-priced product/brand because it is over-priced if they can show it off in public. But that only works if it looks different from the lower cost or older models.
  - m1sta_ 7y ago
    Yep. Also, they straight up stopped improving from a user perspective. Better specs doesn't mean more value.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    I have a Nokia 6.1, it’s build quality isn’t differentiator from my partners iPhone and it’s aesthetic is really nice, black and copper. One was 900 the other 169. The market is just weird.
hugh4life 7y ago
I've seen youtube reviews of some pretty nifty game controllers that turn phones into something like the switch/vita/psp... I have to wonder if there's some low hanging fruit in bundling such controllers with the phones.
awareBrah 7y ago
There’s hoards of people out there waiting for a new phone with new specs and camera but without anti-features like removal of headphone jack and faceid
- quantumhobbit 7y ago
  How about multiple day battery life? You probably don’t even need that much more battery, just a smaller screen and slower cpu/gpu.
  - mantap 7y ago
    Battery life used to be an important issue but now people have gotten used to carrying power banks around and it seems less important than it once did.
jjrh 7y ago
From a end user we aren't really seeing drastic changes in quality of life. My midrange Android phone is going on 3 years and is still snappy and fast. Used to be after 3 years you were starting to rethink your app choices, constantly closing stuff, and looking for replacement phones. Also seems I see fewer spiderweb phone screens which is probably a combination of more durable screens and reasonably priced screen replacement services. So folks who like new things are handing down their functional devices to family members, selling used, etc. when they upgrade.
sampleinajar 7y ago
As a single anecdotal datapoint, I haven't bought a new phone since my iPhone SE, and I got that on an installation plan. I also have not upgraded my OS for quite a while either. Ultimately, I can't afford to just buy a new phone in cash without thinking ahead, and I am loathe to add another $30+ a month to my expenses for little perceived benefit. I don't care about the camera. I don't like the bigger phones, and I do not like how each new OS update from apple slowly "breaks" the older phones. I'm pretty much going to hold out until either all my apps no longer work or the phone actually has a hardware failure. I still get a great battery life. I'm pretty sure I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud though.
- tfandango 7y ago
  I think there is a big market for the SE. Aside from people like yourself who like the form factor, I want buy them for my kids. A) They are cheap, B) with an otterbox they are pretty much indestructible, C) I can use the apple ecosystem to do a bunch of stuff like backups, tracking, remote wipe, reuse apple music subscriptions and purchased music, etc. D) if it breaks or gets lost, I only get 50% mad. My son has had one for 3 years, it's still great. I stupidly bought my daughter an iphone 8 because they didn't have the SE in stock anymore, and she dropped it 100 times (with case) and then finally dropped it in the toilet. I have $250 left on the installment plan, so she's sans phone until I buy her the cheapest Android imaginable as that's my only choice these days.
  - snazz 7y ago
    How did it not survive the toilet? Unless the screen was badly cracked or something, it shouldn’t admit any water for a very long time at that depth.
    - tfandango 7y ago
      She previously dropped it so many times that the glass was cracked and chipped off in places, so water just rushed in I'm sure. Not blaming the phone at all, it was amazing it lasted long enough to take a swim in the toilet.
kapnobatairza 7y ago
Echoing some of the other comments on this story, we've reached a point where the marginal return on value for upgrading your phone is very low at the moment. From a design perspective, the thin bezelless/buttonless slate makes it difficult to differentiate your product. The apps you use will be the same and will more or less run the same, since mobile applications are rarely bottlenecked by the CPU. Any improvements in camera quality are almost imperceptible. Same with screen/display quality. What is the incentive to upgrade? It is possible that the "smartphone" form factor has become a commodity and the market is overly saturated with products. I think we won't see another consumer electronics explosion until other form factors start to become more ubiquitous (smartwatch, smart AR/VR HMDs, actually smart TVs, smart speakers, smart automobile infotainment, etc.). Specifically, I think smart HMDs are going to be the future once chipset and battery technology are advanced enough to make them sexy.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  A few month ago the foldable screens were hyped like crazy. Maybe it was too soon but it could be another differentiator if done well.
- clairity 7y ago
  > "From a design perspective, the thin bezelless/buttonless slate makes it difficult to differentiate your product." this plays directly into apple's strengths (build quality, UX, etc.), and i'd be very impressed if it had been a conscious strategy employed by apple over the years (apple still captures the majority of industry profits). by collapsing the feature space along (roughly) one dimension, it's easier for consumers to recognize the premium positioning of apple's iphones.
m1sta_ 7y ago
There are so many features I want in a phone, and can't get. It's very frustrating.
_bxg1 7y ago
I bought an iPhone XS last year. I don't know if I've ever been this completely, holistically content with a digital device before. Literally the only hardware improvement I can think of that might convince me to upgrade before it breaks is a smaller screen, for easier one-handed use. I'm sure they'll come up with something eventually. But as a gadget enthusiast, it's weird not to be clamoring for details about the next model. My phone is like my car now.
- guitarbill 7y ago
  agreed. i was a big fan of the SE, but finally took the plunge when i realized that because of the smaller screen, i was being shorter with my replies, which had an effect on convos. the price is of course killer, but i haven't dropped a phone, and it should be fairly future proof, so in the end i think it made sense. that said, i still dream about a world where android isn't controlled by an adtech company. hardware-wise, the oneplus x was perfection, but the software and lack of timely updates let it down.
- iamnotacrook 7y ago
  "Literally the only hardware improvement I can think of that might convince me to upgrade before it breaks is a smaller screen, for easier one-handed use." Out of interest, why didn't you go for the XR?
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    The XR is bigger, has a worse screen, and is generally uglier. I'm not saying those things don't matter; it's just that incremental improvement is no longer enough for me to buy a whole replacement device. I wouldn't retire the phone I have just because an even-sleeker one with an even-better screen came out.
stcredzero 7y ago
A 2.5% yearly decline while sales are sky-high isn't a freefall, yet.
vladojsem 7y ago
> About 1.46 billion smartphones were produced in 2018, while 1.56 billion were sold. If production drops back to match lower sales, that could mean 38.44 million fewer phones made. And if all those phones were about the size of an iPhone X, that would mean about 400 pounds each of mined ore, water, and other resources were conserved, a total of 15 billion pounds. The problem is that capitalism is running on selling always the latest products. The product, in general, shouldn't last long. So even if you don't need a new phone, they are going to force it to you. I don't think this latest trend is going to last. After all, "Smartphone sales will drop 2.5% worldwide by the end of 2019" as it is stated in the article. Not a huge drop.
gioscarab 7y ago
For privacy reasons I have never had a smartphone and tend to use cash for real life expenses. My friends 10 years ago were joking at me, now they understand.
segmondy 7y ago
Who wants to spend a $1000 on a phone every year or every other year? My smartphone is 6yrs old, I have rebuilt and rebuilt it many times. It's pretty much EOL. When I replace it, I don't want to spend more than $300. They need to figure out ways to make them cheaper.

77 points by mrzool 7y ago

"Smartphone sales will drop 2.5% worldwide by the end of 2019, according to research firm Gartner. In North America, the drop is 4.4% from 2018 levels" I don't know what the actual definition of "freefall" is, but I was surprised to see the actual numbers were low single digits.

jandrese 7y ago
It's a bigger delta from the 50% or so growth year over year that they were seeing just 5 or 6 years ago. Again people see exponential growth and they extrapolate it out forever for unlimited profits but then get disappointed when the actual growth is an S curve.
- nabla9 7y ago
  Norvig's Law: Any technology that surpasses 50% penetration will never double again (in any number of months).
  - jandrese 7y ago
    Well, it could double again if it crashed first. If your growth is purely unidirectional that seems rather obvious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfcTcSbGMmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfcTcSbGMmo
  - david-gpu 7y ago
    It can't double its market share, but the market itself can grow, and that translates to the bottom line as well.

jandrese 7y ago

IMHO some major brands have been pricing themselves out of the market with their newest phones. They've been letting the prices creep up much faster than inflation for several years now and they've hit the point where people can't afford the flagship phones anymore. Combine that with the feature sets leveling off and you have a recipe for not upgrading your phone every two years. The big question we should be asking is "what's the next big thing?" Smartwatches seem to be the answer Apple is going with, but I'm not sure they've broken out of being a niche device yet. They feel more like tablets to me, something that hits its peak way too early and ends up being mostly neglected after a few years.

Retric 7y ago
I think Apple is aiming for a cycle of computer, phone, tablet where you get a new one in the sequence every 1-2 years.
- mikestew 7y ago
  Hmm, now that you bring it up...here I thought I was sticking it to the Apple Man by hanging on to my phone, not buying a new watch every year, let that iPad get a few generations behind; don't have to buy every new thing that comes out. But as you point out, I'm going to be buying something new from Apple every year or so regardless. BTW, isn't AppleTV about due for a refresh?
- jbverschoor 7y ago
  Tablet -> never got used to them (iPad). Maybe with the new iPad OS Computer -> once every 5/6 years Phone -> every 2.5/3 years I know that tablets last a long time for most people I know. And that’s all fine. Why do we need to buy new hardware? No need. At least not for now. I’d like to buy a new MacBook. One with more disk space than 512gb. Hopefully more than 16gb, but 16 works. Maybe a faster cpu, because things are bloating. But I will wait.. wait until I’m able to get a proper keyboard.
  - sehugg 7y ago
    I'm using a 2011 MacBook Air right now for dev, and the only roadblock is that I can't upgrade the OS past 10.10.5.

JTbane 7y ago

It seems (to me at least) that each new generation of flagships don't have enough incremental advancements to justify the price tag ($1-2k).

pochamago 7y ago
This is the biggest reason the Samsung Fold, for all its very big problems right now, is so exciting to me. That seems like a major change with exciting possibilities
- tomjen3 7y ago
  It is certainly new, but I have a really hard time thinking of a single time I wished my phone could fold out. Better battery? Check. Better handling of notifications? Check. Better one-handed use? Check. Fold out? I appreciate the newnes, but no.
1123581321 7y ago
The price can also be incremental if the previous year’s device is sold to cover some of the new device cost. iPhones, in particular, retain a significant portion of their value after 12 months.

bluedino 7y ago

I thought iPhones used to be cheaper. I paid $599 for my iPhone 4S (my first iPhone) and paid $699 for my iPhone 8 Plus (my current phone)

blackflame7000 7y ago
Early iPhones were subsidized by carriers so maybe that's why they appeared cheaper. Its always been expensive for a new unlocked version.
- umeshunni 7y ago
  4S is hardly an early iPhone. The iPhone 2g (original) and 3g were the only ones sold purely subsidized. In 2010, Apple began selling the iPhone 3GS unsubsidized for $399.
dangus 7y ago
$599 in 2011 dollars is $682.09 in 2019 dollars.

dmortin 7y ago

Maybe people realized they didn't need the newest phone. I have a 5 year old phone and I could buy a new faster one with fancy features, but for what? This one can do calendaring, maps, notes, todos, web browsing, apps, so there is no compelling reason to upgrade.

phil248 7y ago
For what? My answer was always for the camera! But now I have a 2-year-old phone with a pretty great camera and I'm not sure I need a slightly better one for $1000. All I need is a new battery.
- dmortin 7y ago
  I don't care about the camera, so I have absolutely no reason to upgrade. Maybe if they come out with a phone where the battery will last for a week or more then I'll upgrade.
  - frabbit 7y ago
    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/titan-unihertz-rugged-qwerty-smartphone/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/titan-uniher...
    - craftyguy 7y ago
      > come out
      - frabbit 7y ago
        It's available for purchase now. Uniherz have a track record of delivering. Two phones now delivered as per promises of their previous Kickstarters. I have one of them (the Jelly Pro) and am completely satisfied with it. If someone wants a rugged, long battery life phone (this has a 6000mAh battery) it would be a reasonable bet. No different from pre-ordering from any other hardware manufacturer.

anbop 7y ago

When the iPhone 6S came out the iPhone 4S seemed like a dinosaur. Now even though the iPhone 10S is out the iPhone 6S works just fine. It happened in PCs and now it's happened in phones -- the annual increase in specs eventually passed the needs of most of the market.

jseliger 7y ago
Last year, I replaced an iPhone 6 or 6s with a 7. It works fine and was about half the cost (or less) of the new hotness. Presumably a lot of people are thinking the same.
- lostgame 7y ago
  Not to mention the environmental benefits! I always encourage the use and re-use of older machines - especially those that can be updated. The trend of soldered RAM is so awful for the environment. :(
jbob2000 7y ago
Video games used to push the PC market, I remember when you used to have to pay attention to minimum requirements. The last 10 years of video game development has focused on indie games (Minecraft, pubg, etc), and you can run these games on a potato. Why would anyone run out to get a new machine? Same thing with smartphones. Until a killer app comes along that pushes hardware, there’s no reason to upgrade - any iPhone past the 5 does pretty much everything the XS does.

Havoc 7y ago

Pay 1k+ for the privilege of exchanging one black slab for another black slab with incrementally better specs? Maybe next year Apple...maybe

throwaway07Ju19 7y ago
One could argue that it isn't the stabilization of specs but that of appearance that is harming sales. Many consumers purchase an over-priced product/brand because it is over-priced if they can show it off in public. But that only works if it looks different from the lower cost or older models.
- m1sta_ 7y ago
  Yep. Also, they straight up stopped improving from a user perspective. Better specs doesn't mean more value.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  I have a Nokia 6.1, it’s build quality isn’t differentiator from my partners iPhone and it’s aesthetic is really nice, black and copper. One was 900 the other 169. The market is just weird.

hugh4life 7y ago

I've seen youtube reviews of some pretty nifty game controllers that turn phones into something like the switch/vita/psp... I have to wonder if there's some low hanging fruit in bundling such controllers with the phones.

awareBrah 7y ago

There’s hoards of people out there waiting for a new phone with new specs and camera but without anti-features like removal of headphone jack and faceid

quantumhobbit 7y ago
How about multiple day battery life? You probably don’t even need that much more battery, just a smaller screen and slower cpu/gpu.
- mantap 7y ago
  Battery life used to be an important issue but now people have gotten used to carrying power banks around and it seems less important than it once did.

jjrh 7y ago

From a end user we aren't really seeing drastic changes in quality of life. My midrange Android phone is going on 3 years and is still snappy and fast. Used to be after 3 years you were starting to rethink your app choices, constantly closing stuff, and looking for replacement phones. Also seems I see fewer spiderweb phone screens which is probably a combination of more durable screens and reasonably priced screen replacement services. So folks who like new things are handing down their functional devices to family members, selling used, etc. when they upgrade.

sampleinajar 7y ago

As a single anecdotal datapoint, I haven't bought a new phone since my iPhone SE, and I got that on an installation plan. I also have not upgraded my OS for quite a while either. Ultimately, I can't afford to just buy a new phone in cash without thinking ahead, and I am loathe to add another $30+ a month to my expenses for little perceived benefit. I don't care about the camera. I don't like the bigger phones, and I do not like how each new OS update from apple slowly "breaks" the older phones. I'm pretty much going to hold out until either all my apps no longer work or the phone actually has a hardware failure. I still get a great battery life. I'm pretty sure I'm just an old man yelling at a cloud though.

tfandango 7y ago
I think there is a big market for the SE. Aside from people like yourself who like the form factor, I want buy them for my kids. A) They are cheap, B) with an otterbox they are pretty much indestructible, C) I can use the apple ecosystem to do a bunch of stuff like backups, tracking, remote wipe, reuse apple music subscriptions and purchased music, etc. D) if it breaks or gets lost, I only get 50% mad. My son has had one for 3 years, it's still great. I stupidly bought my daughter an iphone 8 because they didn't have the SE in stock anymore, and she dropped it 100 times (with case) and then finally dropped it in the toilet. I have $250 left on the installment plan, so she's sans phone until I buy her the cheapest Android imaginable as that's my only choice these days.
- snazz 7y ago
  How did it not survive the toilet? Unless the screen was badly cracked or something, it shouldn’t admit any water for a very long time at that depth.
  - tfandango 7y ago
    She previously dropped it so many times that the glass was cracked and chipped off in places, so water just rushed in I'm sure. Not blaming the phone at all, it was amazing it lasted long enough to take a swim in the toilet.

kapnobatairza 7y ago

Echoing some of the other comments on this story, we've reached a point where the marginal return on value for upgrading your phone is very low at the moment. From a design perspective, the thin bezelless/buttonless slate makes it difficult to differentiate your product. The apps you use will be the same and will more or less run the same, since mobile applications are rarely bottlenecked by the CPU. Any improvements in camera quality are almost imperceptible. Same with screen/display quality. What is the incentive to upgrade? It is possible that the "smartphone" form factor has become a commodity and the market is overly saturated with products. I think we won't see another consumer electronics explosion until other form factors start to become more ubiquitous (smartwatch, smart AR/VR HMDs, actually smart TVs, smart speakers, smart automobile infotainment, etc.). Specifically, I think smart HMDs are going to be the future once chipset and battery technology are advanced enough to make them sexy.

jobigoud 7y ago
A few month ago the foldable screens were hyped like crazy. Maybe it was too soon but it could be another differentiator if done well.
clairity 7y ago
> "From a design perspective, the thin bezelless/buttonless slate makes it difficult to differentiate your product." this plays directly into apple's strengths (build quality, UX, etc.), and i'd be very impressed if it had been a conscious strategy employed by apple over the years (apple still captures the majority of industry profits). by collapsing the feature space along (roughly) one dimension, it's easier for consumers to recognize the premium positioning of apple's iphones.

m1sta_ 7y ago

There are so many features I want in a phone, and can't get. It's very frustrating.

_bxg1 7y ago

I bought an iPhone XS last year. I don't know if I've ever been this completely, holistically content with a digital device before. Literally the only hardware improvement I can think of that might convince me to upgrade before it breaks is a smaller screen, for easier one-handed use. I'm sure they'll come up with something eventually. But as a gadget enthusiast, it's weird not to be clamoring for details about the next model. My phone is like my car now.

guitarbill 7y ago
agreed. i was a big fan of the SE, but finally took the plunge when i realized that because of the smaller screen, i was being shorter with my replies, which had an effect on convos. the price is of course killer, but i haven't dropped a phone, and it should be fairly future proof, so in the end i think it made sense. that said, i still dream about a world where android isn't controlled by an adtech company. hardware-wise, the oneplus x was perfection, but the software and lack of timely updates let it down.
iamnotacrook 7y ago
"Literally the only hardware improvement I can think of that might convince me to upgrade before it breaks is a smaller screen, for easier one-handed use." Out of interest, why didn't you go for the XR?
- _bxg1 7y ago
  The XR is bigger, has a worse screen, and is generally uglier. I'm not saying those things don't matter; it's just that incremental improvement is no longer enough for me to buy a whole replacement device. I wouldn't retire the phone I have just because an even-sleeker one with an even-better screen came out.

stcredzero 7y ago

A 2.5% yearly decline while sales are sky-high isn't a freefall, yet.

vladojsem 7y ago

> About 1.46 billion smartphones were produced in 2018, while 1.56 billion were sold. If production drops back to match lower sales, that could mean 38.44 million fewer phones made. And if all those phones were about the size of an iPhone X, that would mean about 400 pounds each of mined ore, water, and other resources were conserved, a total of 15 billion pounds. The problem is that capitalism is running on selling always the latest products. The product, in general, shouldn't last long. So even if you don't need a new phone, they are going to force it to you. I don't think this latest trend is going to last. After all, "Smartphone sales will drop 2.5% worldwide by the end of 2019" as it is stated in the article. Not a huge drop.

gioscarab 7y ago

For privacy reasons I have never had a smartphone and tend to use cash for real life expenses. My friends 10 years ago were joking at me, now they understand.

segmondy 7y ago

Who wants to spend a $1000 on a phone every year or every other year? My smartphone is 6yrs old, I have rebuilt and rebuilt it many times. It's pretty much EOL. When I replace it, I don't want to spend more than $300. They need to figure out ways to make them cheaper.