I often wonder if the era of frequent smartphone upgrades is behind us. It seemed like not long ago we had a handful of work-arounds to swap out barely-year-old-phones for whatever was new. Now, though, the lengthy monthly payment plans have locked folks in and phone prices have skyrocketed to $1,000 or more. Phones aren’t cheap, but they are also good enough that they aren’t aging as quickly as they once did. Or maybe the coolness of upgrading all of the time has waned?
As a sort of related point, and not that my wife is the marker for all trends, but I bring her up because she seems less interested than ever to get a shiny new phone. There was a time where she’d upgrade almost as frequently as I did, because there were new phones lying around the house that she could test whenever. But for several years now, she just doesn’t seem to care as much. She kept a Pixel 2 (the small, huge bezel version) for two years and just recently upgraded to a Note 10. She didn’t care about the S20 or OnePlus 8 or Pixel 4 or any of 2019’s other phones, for that matter. I get the feeling that she is going to have this Note 10 for a long, long time.
I don’t know if that’s because phones haven’t changed much recently, if the upgrades that we can’t stop talking about matter less to the average smartphone user, or if the hassle of changing isn’t worth it. I can tell you that while I switch phones because it’s my job to, I can’t remember the last time I switched to something that I truly loved so much that I couldn’t see myself leaving for another phone. It’s all just so much of the same today.
So for today’s poll, let’s see how long you all have owned your current phone and if I’m completely wrong in how often you guys are upgrading. Are you still getting the new-new each year or have you settled in to phones like the Pixel 2 XL (above), which are more than 2 years old.
