The average American now holds onto their smartphone for 29 months, according to a recent survey by Reviews.org, and that cycle is getting longer. The average was around 22 months in 2016.
While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market, it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations.
Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent, with investment patterns accounting for approximately 55% of productivity gaps between advanced economies. The good news: businesses in the U.S. are generally quicker to reinvest in replacing aging equipment. The Federal Reserve report shows that if European productivity had matched U.S. investment patterns starting in 2000, the productivity gap between the U.S and European economic heavyweights would have been reduced by 29 percent for the U.K., 35 percent for France, and 101% for Germany.
I remember in the 00’s when you’d upgrade your phone every year because the service providers would give you a new phone. And it would be leaps and bounds better than your previous phone with tons of new features.
Now, Samsung wants to kvetch because I won’t spend $1,500 on their new whatever that is functionally identical to the one I have from 2020? Feh! Rot!
Edit: Come to think of it, my old phone has more features than the new one since they got rid of the stylus. Maybe one day they’ll figure out “AI” isn’t a feature, it’s bloatware.
They never “gave” it to you, it was always priced into the contract.
I got a new phone from Visible when they upgraded their network and my old one supposedly wasn’t compatible.
My bill was always the same.