How often to you upgrade Cell phones

Hi guys, just got myself a new Moto G play phone. Replaced my essential phone PH-1 that I've had for the last 5+ years.

How often do you change your phones?
Still on my iPhone 6 after five years, after changing battery last spring. I figure I can get another two years out of it.

Replaceable batteries are key. Two years extra life for $70.
 
As others have said, when they stop updating the OS. I‘ve got an XR as my personal phone and a 7 as my work phone. The 7, which is many years old, still receives the latest iOS updates.

I like the screen size of my XR and the screen resolution, while not OLED good, is still quite pleasing to look at. The battery is only down to 91% after three years of daily use and still lasts all day, so that’s good. The 7, like all of the non plus-sized and later small iPhones, was never know for its battery life.
 
I honestly wait till new "new" generation of phone gets released then buy the now "last" generation at a great discount.

then keep it till I feel like I want something better, so every 4ish years.

Got a really bad taste (pun intended) when apple did the whole "we slow down your phones after 6 months so you buy a new one" as well as "we will purposely FORCE you to use OUR parts and OUR repair facilities or else we BRICK your phone entirely if you even DARE to try to fix YOUR phone that YOU bought)

Andriod for lyfe!

I agree with your first two paragraphs, but you’re wrong (Likely exaggerating for effect) iPhone claims.

Apple was limiting the performance of older phones (years old, not months) with older, weaker batteries to prevent unwanted phone reboots due to the phone drawing more power than the battery could provide. Apple was called out and admitted to the practice. The very next iOS update displayed the battery health percentage and, if your phone then experienced a reboot due to a weak battery, it would, upon next boot up, ask if you wanted to reduce performance to mitigate the risk of further reboots or take the risk of running at full power.

Furthermore, Apple offered battery replacements for all devices for something like $25 for a long while after.

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I was once an avid Blackberry user due to its great physical keyboard (once you got used to it) and indicator lights and security. I was sad to see them fall behind so badly in the smart phone realm. Everyone at work was also also sad when we turned our BBs in for iPhone 7s. Most of us have gotten used to and now prefer the iPhones, but not me. We now have to run a BB program on our iPhones to get the same secure email. I need to memorize yet another password that gets changed every six months instead of it being baked into the BB itself.
 
We usually upgrade every two years. Because that’s when our plan goes too.

We just got new phones back in May I got a iPhone 12 Pro in Pacific Blue. My parents got Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultras in silver. They want to go to Apple the next go around they just aren’t satisfied at all with the layout of the phones they have. I upgraded from an iPhone XR it was getting slow and it was out of storage too so my parents wanted to get me a new one and they also wanted new ones too. I was originally going to settle for the iPhone 12 regular mainly because I liked the blue on it better but my parents wanted me to get the 12 Pro so I compromised on the color and got it. I’m glad I did for the extra camera and pro features. Yes it was $1000 but well worth it in my opinion. I got $588 trade in on the XR we hate trading in but they paid us premium price for all our phones because they said they needed the chips so… yeah lol.

My sister hasn’t upgraded in 4 years because she is rough on phones she wants us to get her a new one but she broke the Google Pixel 2 that she has and has broken every phone she has had. The Pixel still works we just don’t want to put out a lot of money for a new one to break again.

I just know that I was happy in 2019 when I got my iPhone XR that I was happy to leave Android behind. I realized when I switched how much better Apple was. Now I’m saving up for a Apple laptop. Only reason my parents don’t have iPhones yet is because when we upgraded to smartphones the guy at Verizon insured us that Apple was garbage so they formed a bias towards them but I always liked them then when I switched I realized my projection was right.
 
1/2014: iPhone 5s
9/2016: iPhone 7+
9/2019: iPhone 11

I might get a new one next month. But the new features haven’t been all that revolutionary, so we’ll see.
 
Going through this right now. My Moto G3 of 5.5 years has run out of space (8GB version) and is getting to be impossible to update. This was my first cell phone that was used daily (use home phone, mostly, with Ooma). Looking at Motos again.

Phones are so HUGE now. There are only a few choices for smaller options. Some of these things are almost on the way to be considered tablets! Any big company that makes a quality smaller phone would make a killing from those of us who still like them smaller.
 
It's a big part of my day to day life, and my line of work

I also used to sell/set them up for a living, so I'm very much a mobile person

I'm averaging every 2-3 years, although that might tighten up with 5G

I've got this Pixel 5 now, and it's fine, but the upcoming Pixel 6 has my interest, if I can get a fair trade in deal I might have it
 
I don’t see 5G working out here in the sticks, not when whatever G has lousy coverage as it is. Not a selling point for me. Maybe when stores stop having free wifi.
 
My old Vietnamese Nokia Lumia 640 LTE - my first smart phone - is running windows phone 8.1 update 2. from 2015.

AOL wont even work on this now, so time to upgrade. Still works good, battery life is still good.

I have avoided android as it was clunky at the time with Ice cream sandwich, so I might go there.
I am a MS guy not a Apple guy. But I might go with an apple if IoS has good file management to clean the junk files out.
I have read you can get apps to keep your Andriod phone free of junk.

I hesitate as my wife ran android in the past and the verizon phone center couldn't or wouldnt do anything to help her when her phone got jammed up with partially downloaded software and other stuff happening that caused it to not function.
 
I was doing leases with Sprint and I'd wait for an early upgrade offer that was a good deal and jump on it. Over the last 4-5 years, that amounted to getting a new phone every 12-16 months or so. And I got some great deals that way, for example my lease on the Galaxy S10 cost me $0 over the 16 months that I had it - Sprint was offering a free deal on the S10 in December 2019 so that's what I got. Over the history of my leasing experience I always took the best deal over a specific Android phone. Took a lease one get one on an iPhone once but I could not live with it, had to go back and get an Android a few months later. So there's an even shorter upgrade cycle there - haha.

But with this latest phone, I got a deal on a Galaxy A71 5G for $250 paid over 24 months right as they were being phased out, so I jumped on that. I would have just paid outright if there had been interest, but since it's zero interest, why bother? I did give up some features vis a vis the S10, no wireless charging and not waterproof, but otherwise it's an excellent phone for a good price. I wanted a bigger screen than the S10 and the A71 5G fits the bill, the screen is 6.7 and it's UUGE. I'm not sure how long I will keep this one, but I do have a line in the sand about software updates. I won't keep any device that isn't getting updated any longer. The A series is supposed to get updates for 3 or 4 years, I forget which. I'll probably get bored with it though and upgrade after it's paid off, haha.

The camera on the A71 5G is not quite as good as the flagship S series or other flagship phones and that's important to me, so that will probably be the trigger after this one is paid off. I've started using my wife's iPhone12 ProMax to take pictures instead of my phone for now. I have a work iPhone XR also so I've been using that for personal pics more as well. It's rumored we'll get new iPhones at work soon so maybe that will satisfy my itch to upgrade my personal phone after the A71 5G is paid off. I guess it depends on what kind of carrot they dangle to get me to jump. I like getting last year's flagship on closeout, so we'll see!
 
Never had a phone in that era, still don’t have a “personal “ phone
What benefit does participating in this thread bring, in that case? You're not going to change any hearts and minds of any technologists who like the latest phones and other tech gadgets, so why bother?
 
What benefit does participating in this thread bring, in that case? You're not going to change any hearts and minds of any technologists who like the latest phones and other tech gadgets, so why bother?
At least he said he never had a phone in the prior era so we know what to make of this.
 
I got a Nokia 2.1 a couple of years ago to replace my outdated Microsoft Nokia...I had liked that tough phone. The Nokia 2.1 was a feature packed budget phone, and worked well...until it updated to Android 10, and then just fell over. I had to delete or disable most apps to make it run, sometimes the phone part wouldn't work, unable to answer calls and stuff....and the camera was really slow too. My daughters didn't think I should be having these problems, so on saturday they took me out and bought a new phone for my birthday. I got a Samsung A12, still a budget phone I guess, but pretty flash for me ! I'm going to enjoy the 48 megapixel camera, and the macro too.
 
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