
People are keeping their cell phones a lot longer - elsewhen
https://www.axios.com/people-are-keeping-their-cell-phones-a-lot-longer-2504972354.html
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ehnto
I am a fairly pragmatic person. I love good design, but it has to be
purposeful and resilient. There is nothing new being offered that doesn't seem
superfluous, so why bother upgrading.

Like with many iterative products, when the next model is just around the
corner, it somewhat undermines all their "Innovative, future is now, be your
best self" fluff marketing. Why pay a premium to be on the bleeding edge when
it only lasts 6 months at best?

Many people I knew just bought a Pixel instead of a Pixel 2. The new one
didn't even offer enough to be a competitor it's own last model, so people
just bought a Pixel 1 and saved themselves some money.

I keep thinking about the concept of peak comfort. Cars, houses, phones,
computers. They're all pretty damn excellent right now. Even if you can't
afford the brand new thing, they've been excellent for so long now that even
the old things are likely to fulfil your needs just fine. Sometimes you can
buy the old thing and it will be better than the budget model new thing.

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dankoss
Similarly, I look at it as "what new thing does this enable me to do?"
Performance increases are great if they can better race to sleep and improve
battery life. But otherwise, better screen / camera / speakers don't enable
anything that I couldn't otherwise do with a 7 year old phone.

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Xunxi
Sometime last year, I had an interaction with someone who was about to
refurbish a two year contract with Sprint and managed to convince the person
to ditch the contract and sign up for a competing service. Well, the person
did, but Sprint wanted their phone back because according to them the customer
had leased the phone for two years.

Until then I didnt know such arrangements existed, even worse was the fact
that this person was paying $100+ for two years for nothing more than a few
emails, sms and phone calls. I recommended a $50 SimpleMobile plan and a
decent phone.

Some people cant justify why they need a new phone or renew their contract
until theres an overriding conviction that its dumb to fall for the flashy ads
and in store sales pitch.

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StudentStuff
Eh, Simple Mobile isn't such a great deal. If your okay with T-Mobile (which
is the network Simple Mobile resells), MintSIM at $25 a month for 10GB is
almost certainly better. If you want better coverage, Total Wireless offers
5GB of LTE on Verizon for $35 a month, add 5GB more for $10 more.

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Xunxi
Thanks I wasnt aware of mint.

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slyall
Talked to a guy who worked for [a large tech company] and he said that the
company doesn't allow phones to connect to the network if they are more than 1
month behind security updates.

Unfortunately of the Android vendors only Google actually guarantees (let
alone actually follows though with) regular security updates for a specific
time (2 years of version updates, plus another year of just security).

So he and many of his workmates had Google (or Apple) phones. Although since
Google phased out their mid-range Nexus line having to pay 3x as much for a
Pixel isn't as appealing.

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rando444
A large tech company allowing cellphones on their internal network sounds
extremely bizarre.

Cellphones should be on an untrusted/guest wireless connection, if they need
access to corporate resources they should access them over the internet or VPN
just like they would if they were anywhere else with their phones.

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2-4-Flinching
That sounds terrible.

That is a crazy amount of bandwidth usage to VPN out and then back into the
the network through the same pipe is a waste. Not counting the licenses and
even the ability to maintain that many connections at a given time. Going off
of the use cases I have actually done.

It not hard to setup WPA2 Enterprise with assigned VLAN access, heck you can
even assign it based on the device, meaning Joe signs in on his laptop and he
gets internal access but when he signs in on his cellphone it goes straight
out. Each connection is assigned based on need and checked by the IT
department.

The OP doesn't even say they are given internal access just network access,
which could be straight out to the internet. The majority of cellphones used
in my company are VLAN straight to the internet but there are cases where
tablets and cellphones need access to server and shares that they are assigned
to a VLAN they are on.

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rando444
I regret mentioning VPN. Most people don't VPN with their phones, it's
possible, but most people don't. They use their phone to access their company
e-mail and sometimes other services which are open on the internet already.
It's a small amount of traffic compared to the cost of trying to maintain an
entire separate network just for some one-off use cases, forcing people to
sign-in, register their devices, maintain the network, etc.

Of course there are special cases for tablets and such, but you'd treat those
differently than someone's personal phone.

If they were given a connection "straight out to the internet" then it's even
more bizarre to require strict regulations about their phones.

I see no advantages to letting people's personal phones on a corporate
network.

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josteink
Innovation in mobile stopped _years_ ago. Buying a new phone today won't bring
you any new features.

So why bother buying a new device when the old one still works?

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8draco8
It's even worse. Buying bleeding edge phone today will bring you less features
than before. No headphone jack, need to use dongles, no home button and very
convenient finger print reader for authentication, awkward gestures instead of
user friendly and self explanatory button click, shorted battery life and the
list goes on and on. Lack of those features will never be equalled with mostly
useless new features like portrait mode or sliminess. I understand that I as a
customer, supposedly, don't know what ,currently, non existing feature I will
want but I think I know exactly what features I don't want to loose.

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mtgx
If only OEMs responded to that and supported their phones for much longer,
too. Even if people didn't "keep their phones" for more than 2 years, those
phones still usually end-up being used by someone else, whether family
members, friends, or someone else purchasing it as a second-hand product. So
the lifecycle of a smartphone should be significantly longer than 1-2 years.

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bradvl
I'm hanging on to the old 6S until Apple bring back the headphone jack...

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M4v3R
Well, you’ll probably have to hang on to it for a long time then, because
Apple will not bring the headphone jack back. They never did that before for
any port/hardware feature they removed afaik.

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josteink
> Well, you’ll probably have to hang on to it for a long time then, because
> Apple will not bring the headphone jack back.

In the meantime the iPhone SE is a good phone, has a good form-factor and
still has a headphone jack.

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w00kie
I'm always surprised when I go back to Europe and see so many people walking
around with iPhone 4.

In Japan, where I live, a vast majority of people get their phones on a 24
months payment plan with a 2 years contract. The carrier gives you a generous
discount of about 50% on the price of the phone but applies that discount not
on the phone payments but on the data plan. So when the 24 months are done and
you've finished paying for the phone, the discount goes away and you pay full
price on the data plan and your total bill barely decreases.

In such a system, there is no advantage to keeping your old phone, you might
as well just get the latest iPhone every 2 years and that's what 95% of people
do.

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Drakim
All you gotta do is ensure that this 50% discount is tuned to be the actual
realistic price, while the full price is secretly just a 200% cost of the real
market rate.

That way, the customers pay exactly the same as they normally would, except
now they are compelled to buy a new expensive product every 2 years.

~~~
w00kie
And ensure that all 3 major carriers agree behind closed do to have the exact
same prices, just obscured with a bunch of different discounts and mandatory
options that makes them look wildly different until you get the bill in the
mail and the totals are the same...

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chrismorgan
The same happens with other aspects of phone plans. Comparing two providers in
Australia:

One provider’s plan (typical of the model adhered to by most providers):
$10/month including $200 of value, with phone calls 99¢/minute plus 40¢
flagfall.

Another provider (with a less common model): an “as you go” plan, with phone
calls 15¢/minute. (Actually it’s still 12¢/minute, but the increase kicks in
next week.)

My phone bill has been well under $1 every month except for last month where
it got to $3.84 because of phone calls associated with buying a house and a
couple of other things. Meanwhile, most providers would have been trying to
charge me at least $10, more likely $30–$50 per month, or more on a long plan
with an expensive phone included when I simply don’t need anything more than
what a $150 phone provides.

Look me in the face and tell me that the first pricing model isn’t
deliberately deceptive. They’re essentially using a different currency which
for their own purposes of misdirection they call dollars. (And if you _do_ get
over that 200 units of their magic currency… oh, boy. You’re in for a massive
bill.)

I’m inclined to believe that mobile telcos’ advertising practices are probably
illegal, as deliberately misleading, and that the only reason they get away
with it is because _everyone_ does it and so customer expectations have been
ruined.

Most providers wind up leading with “unlimited” plans; I suspect that a
substantial fraction of their users would actually fare better with simple
cost-per-call plans, but giving you that isn’t in the telcos’ best interests,
and almost no providers even _offer_ such a scheme—and the main one that I
know of that does, doesn’t exactly advertise it obviously.

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hacker_9
I don't find this, people around always need to have the latest phone it
seems, but for myself I bought the Note 4 back in 2014 and still have it today
3 years later. It's got a crack in the screen and apps open maybe a
millisecond slower than I'd like, but otherwise it does everything I need. I
look at newer models and it just seems like the law of diminishing returns in
effect; higher cost for smaller amount of noticeable changes. I've yet to see
anything groundbreaking that'll make me upgrade.

~~~
jononor
People that always have the latest phone seems to have a higher need to talk
about what phone they got. Part of what they paid for, social recognition

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thisisit
While shorter upgrade cycles seems to the go to answer, it is mostly because
people now have to pay full prices for upgrades. During the 2 year contract
era it was possible to pay fraction of costs to upgrade to the next iteration.

Though I wonder how does this compare to the pre-2007, pre-smartphone era?
Longer upgrade time should be true for most consumer electronics as they
mature, isnt it?

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Macha
A lot of these same companies abandoned/deprioritised the tablet market when
it became clear it had a more PC-esque (replace it when it's useless) upgrade
cycle than the phone (replace it when the contract expires) cycle, so it will
be interesting how they react to the same in their primary market.

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pjmlp
Maybe they will finally learn to provide updates, because people won't get new
handsets anyway.

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ComputerGuru
Why, what would they get out of it?

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pjmlp
Nothing beyond some consumer happiness towards their brand, just some wishful
thinking from my side, as I hardly believe it will ever change.

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flatfilefan
there’s virtually no visible difference between iphone 6 and 8. Apart from
dropping the jack and getting a waterproof design in return, which will
increase the probable lifespan of the device if anything. So why upgrade?

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zelos
While I agree there isn't a huge difference any more, the iPhone 6s is
noticeably faster than a 6. The gap from the 6 to the 8 is presumably even
larger.

I find it kind of depressing* , but people do use their phones constantly, so
things like performance do make a difference.

* Yes, ok, I've been a mobile app developer most of my working life, so I shouldn't really complain.

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celerrimus
This is quite surprising, I tought that people would be much more susceptible
to marketing. Reason for that trend is obvious, innovation now is very slow,
most changes in iPhones for example are cosmetic, the only thing that get real
upgrade is a price.

Also, i suspect people now are more aware how much they pay for "cheap" phone
in contract.

So maybe simply people are now smarter.

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kennu
It's interesting that the curve shown in the article started to grow right
after Steve Jobs died in 2011. (Too bad the previous years are not shown.)

