Yesterday, I was reading a thread that asked what’s the point of buying a new phone as often as as people do. In the comments there were a variety of answers, but what interested me is that there were a wide variety of answers for how long each person liked to go before upgrading. So I’ve attempted to come up with justifications for a bunch of different intervals. Let me know what you think.

Every….

Year: You spend multiple hours a day on this device, it’s worth having the most up to date. You can sell your old phone for a pretty good price so it’s not as expensive as it seems

2 years: If you like getting your service from one of the major providers then getting a new phone with a new contract can be a cost effective way of getting new tech often.

3 years: With this interval there’s often a noticeable hardware upgrade when you get your new phone and a 3 year old phone still has some resale value.

4 years: Samsung and Google both guarantee 4 years of support, so this is a natural interval for these phones.

For the rest of these, I’m going to focus on iPhones because I use an iPhone and it’s what I’m familiar with. I suspect that a lot of this also applies to android phones. Perhaps push all of these milestones 1 year forward since apple guarantees 5 years of support instead of 4 like Samsung or Google.

5 years: For iPhones this is the interval you’d want if you always want to have the newest iOS. Most phones get compatibility with 6ish iOS’s including the one that comes installed. For example the iPhone X (2017) -> iPhone 14 (2022) since it’s not going to get iOS 17

6 years: For iPhone X again, this is basically the same as 5 years, but you stretch it another year because it’s not a big deal to go without iOS 17 between it’s release and when you buy an iPhone 15 a little while later.

7 years: Let’s continue with the iPhone X example. iOS 15 has continued to get security updates this year so it’s likely that iOS 16 will receive them next year. It’s security, not software features, that are truly important and it’s the last year that apple guarantees having parts, so 2024 is the best year to trade in an iPhone X on from an economy/function trade off point of view

8, 9 and 10 years: you dislike change, you are incredibly broke or you only have a smartphone in the first place because it’s basically necessary to function in modern society. Plus you get to be smug about being green. Most major apps to support back to iOS 12, which makes 2023 a good year to upgrade from your iphone 5s before all your apps start to break, and your aunt starts to wonder why she can’t contact you on whatsapp.

10 years I’m not sure what you’re doing, but you do you, keep up the good work 🫡

One final note, if your phone is too old to have a resell value worth the hassle, still go through the effort of finding an electronics recycling drop off. The plastics won’t be recycled but the metals, especially the rare earth metals will be!