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What's the point of buying new phones every years? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Other than your carrier give it for free or cheap, I don't really see the reason why should you buy new phone. I've been using Redmi Note 9 for past 3 years and recently got my had on Poco F5. I don't see the point of my 'upgrade'. I sold it and come back to my Note 9. Gaming? Most of them are p2w or microtransaction garbage or just gimped version of its PC/Console counterpart. I mean, $400 still get you PS4, TV and Switch if you don't mind buying used. At least here where I live. Storage? Dude, newer phone wont even let you have SD Card. Features? Well, all I see is newer phones take more features than it adds. Headphone jack, more ads, and repairability are to name a few. Battery? Just replace them. However, my Note 9 still get through day with one 80% charge in the dawn. Which takes 1 hour.

I am genuinely curious why newer phone always selling like hot cakes. Since there's virtually no difference between 4gb of RAM and 12gb of RAM, or 12mp camera and 100mp camera on phone.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There are OS updates and there are security updates. Check with your manufacturer as these periods may be quite short, and considering how tied our finances and porivate info are to our phones, it could be a huge hazard. Most android manufacturers, for example, I think offer 2 years of OS updates and 3 or 4 years of security updates. Apples does 6 and 8 - which is wild to me for all the talk of Android users about FOSS and privacy and security. Samsung does 4 and 5, which IIRC, is one of the highest in the android world.

I'm certain someone will mention GrapheneOS, so let me get ahead of that: You can completely de-google your android phone and get as many years of OS upgrades as your hardware can physically support... but is the average person really going to do that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Apple doing software updates for such an extended period of time is wild, considering how anti-consumer they are in the first place (bad repairability, walled garden, bizarre prices).

Google does 5 years updates for the pixel phones, which is to be expected since they own android lol.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean...the software updates usually help people end up upgrading as new features do not work on certain models or are slower etc...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Reminds me of the occasions when iphone customers complained about their battery draining faster / their phones lagging after a software update for years, and just recently apple responded: "you can have battery or features not both lol".

Regarding features: Usually good software development makes the software more performant over time, not less. But customers are expected to react to excessive DRM measures (like denuvo) or the uprising telemetry hell (like windows 11) with buying more performant hardware. Yields the question what is a (desired) feature and what is a bug, AND what is a cash cow for companies milking their customers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

development makes the software more performant over time, not less

Yeah but they will focus on the newer hardware. And new features might based on new hardware capabilities that might not be on the older hardware or requires workarounds that are worse.