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this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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If you're upgrading your device every single time a new device comes along, you're just chasing clout and status. They rarely, if ever, have significant performance upgrades or new features that make sense in upgrading when your current device is perfectly fine.
Phones also aren't special anymore. Like the days where phones were flashy and people needed the best/newest phones are gone. Everyone knows everyone has a phone, nobody cares what phone it is. It reminds me of like 2004-2008 when laptops were a big deal and then everyone had one and it became a tool and people stopped caring what you had.
To be fair the vast majority of people don't do that and just buy a new phone after a few years when theirs is becoming too old, has issues or lacks useful features
Most people upgrade when their battery is shot.
Planned Obsolescence / E-Waste Entropy seems to have been the main reason I upgraded to a new phone for like the last three phones I've owned. Eventually the phone just devours all the processing power and makes it feel bad to use, or the battery stops charging or depletes in hours even while idle.
That's why I miss the days when you could just take the old battery out and put a new one in.
Hopefully EU legislation should bring that back in the coming years, I believe they're working on such law at the moment
already enacted, vote went through in July. However the "come to force" of the earliest part of the regulation is 2025 and the replaceable battery mandate come to force date is 2027. However I would assume stuff starts going with replaceable battery 2025-2026, since by 2027 it's illegal to not have that for on sale item. So one would transition year or two early to have ones retail and supply chains empty of the old non-replaceable stuff to avoid having unsold stock or get hit with punishment for being caught selling non regulation items*. So you want the replaceable battery products designed and in production before 2027.
Also one key I would point out, that is often left out. It doesn't only cover phones. It covers pretty much all battery powered electronics. SO lots of those other small electronic gadget with built in Li-ions will start sprouting battery covers or possibly moving back to their old power of choice, banks of AAs. Since those are inherently replaceable. Well plus non-recycleables aren't covered by the regulation. However also the maker can argue their green credibility with "well customer can put rechargeable AAs in it. Then it's a replaceable battery product."
* Well in reality one's retail partners would refuse to accept the stuff for sale, since upon it being on sale at their shelf it's now their ass on the firing line by regulators.
This. The sealed phone is the #1 reason why people are getting new phones and contributing to the eco waste.
It should have never been allowed to happen. I promise you there is a way to make a phone with a removable back waterproof. They just don't make it because they want you to replace the phone every two years.
They also haven't rushed to make longer lasting batteries, say 4 years, for the same reason.
You don't even need a hardware change to make batteries last long, capping charging at 80% and slowing the fast-charging will do that, both of which can be done in OS software. They just need a "battery protection mode" option for people who keep their phones plugged in a lot.
I just buy refurbished or "New-Old-Stock" 2-year-old flagship phones off ebay for $100 or so bucks every other year.
In fact I think smart phones peaked 3 or 4 years ago and we're going downhill now. The manufacturers remove features that people like in favor of objectively worse ones (lots of people loved having the fingerprint reader on the back, now it's either gone entirely or under the screen for some stupid reason?, then of course headphone jacks are going extinct).
When is the last time a smart phone had a major improvement over it's predecessor? And I mean like, "This one didn't have a camera, this one does." Especially since they're converging on the same 5.7" black rectangle.
I like the finger print reader under the screen