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.
Oh no, we’re being so selfish. Why not buy a 10% performance upgrade every two years for $1000 while wages stagnate? Oh, and carriers don’t subsidize the cost at all anymore. They call it “free” then lock you into their most expensive plan so you spend thousands more on the plan than if you could have afforded to just buy the phone outright.
Fuck this out of touch reporting.
please continue to “device hoard” folks
Why would that hurt the economy? If you want people to spend money, make things affordable and useful. They make things shittier and more expensive and then wonder why people aren’t buying
Whoa, whoa, whoa … expecting utility out of a product? That’s socialism!
capitalist propaganda
Kevin Williams, the author of this article is a very special breed of stupid.
yeah…his previous article just before this one was “Americans are heating their homes with bitcoin this winter”
you’re a couple years late to that hype cycle, Kevin.
Kevin, if thats even a real person at this point in media, is just pushing stories and discourse aligned with corporate speak. Let’s consider it less stupid and more complicit, which I argue, is even worse.
I dislike having the comma of direct address thrown at me. At least close the aside!
Nah they’re referring to a different Kevin Williams.
That at least skips the need to legally change my name.
I am not an economist. I am not an expert on anything consumer. It is, however, plainly obvious that companies are trying to squeeze blood from a stone at this point. They can’t make money anymore with pay to own and innovation like they used to for a variety of reasons. From greed to enshitification. If you look at it with a different view, everyone is poorer because they are greedy, they’ve ruined everyone’s lives but must make numbers go up. So they find new and terrifying ways of screwing you over for diminishing returns. Like this. Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.
Relying on turnover sales and nothing else.
The best way to grow the economy is to develop spaceflight. If you fly to mars, there’s millions of acres of free real estate waiting for you. Time to construct and grow the market.
There’s no more meaningful growth on Earth possible, because the physical limits have been reached. This effect has been predicted as far back as in 1970 with the report: The Limits To Growth. We’re finally seeing the effects of that now.
Oh my bad, I need to consume more to increase shareholder value. Almost forgot
29 months is a long time?
I’ve had this one since 2019
My wife finally upgraded after 5 years, and I’m on year 4 of my Pixel 6 and its still going strong, will probably go another 1-2 years with it.
29 months is too long??? I consider that the absolute minimum.
If my device doesn’t last at least 36 months I look for a new company. I aim for at least 48 months.
I refuse to buy Samsung or Google devices anymore, since they definitely did not meet my 36 month criteria. They didn’t even make it to 24. Google did at first with my Nexus 4 and I loved it but they shit the bed real quick after that.
Either I’ve had weirdly good luck with Samsung, or I’m exceptionally gentle on phones. I expect 6 years minimum out of my Notes, and so far that’s held up.
i had a samsung s4 mini (one of those really old phones, which are closer to a nokia brick than a modern smartphone IMHO) for years and it worked well. it lasted for 5+ years minimum. i bought a new samsung smartphone in 2022 (second hand though) and it shipped broken. randomly shut down, some kind of power issue. i never bothered to return it because it was rather cheap anyways and i had installed a custom OS on it at that point, which voids the warranty.
I bought a motorola afterwards but am only semi-happy with it. everything seems to work well with it, but i don’t feel like it’s a good phone. it feels kinda sleazy, somehow. i’m not sure whether it’s only because of the color scheme it uses or sth else, but it doesn’t feel alright. i’m still looking for a new phone.
I spent $1000 on my Samsung (S6? I can’t even remember anymore) and it’s battery shit the bed after like 12 months and the charging port no longer worked unless the cord was exactly in a specific angle and pressure on order to recharge it. It was a pain in the ass and cheaper to buy a new phone than to fix it.
Bought a OnePlus 5 after that which lasted 4 years, them a OnePlus 9 which lasted another 4 years, and currently on year 2 of my OnePlus 13 with no issues.
Samsung could have had another 2-3 phones from me if they had decent quality but nah they prefer to design to fail.
Man, I must be weirdly lucky or gentle with phones. Note 3, Note 9, and finally whatever the S25 Note equivalent is actually called, and the only reason I updated from the Note 9 is because it was outdated enough that apps started going “dude, you need something more modern.” Everything hardware wise still worked fine on it.
I bought an older Samsung and only use it for doom scrolling, 2FA, and podcasts. Its fine stripped down to nothingness. My next purchase, once the cracks from me dropping it spread, will be an older Pixel so I can run GraphineOS. I’m hopeful that like my Linux experience, it’ll extend the devices life given my use case. Like buying old laptops and kicking windows to the curb in favor of Linux buys you tons of time and product life.
any recommendations for long-lasting phones?
for desktop computers it used to be acer (laptop) for me. i bought one in 2012 and it lasted close to 10 years, which i consider really long. even then, i didn’t buy a new one because of hardware defects, but because the hardware specs were long out of date. i bought a new acer (laptop) in 2021 and it enshittified heavily, lasting only 18 months before i had to buy a new computer.
then i bought a thinkpad (laptop) and have been happy with it ever since. it’s been running for at least 2-3 years by now and shows no signs of aging at all, even though it’s already second-hand. great device.
This is almost a textbook example of the broken window fallacy.
especially if it’s a windows computer :D
The nerve of CNBC to use the word “hoarding” and and not mention the actual cause of the problem being the declining wealth of the median household relative to wealth hoarders.
The big given example was gigabit throughput. Most consumers in the US, businesses included, don’t have access to internet infrastructure capable of multigig because of regulatory capture. Those that do are already using multigig hardware which, unsurprisingly, hasn’t really changed much.
I don’t like to comment twice, but holy fuck … what the hell did I just read?
The framing here puts the Louvre to shame (they’ve currently got their own problems). Perhaps the purest perversion of capitalism is the idea that sufficient is never enough.
Look: Phones are commodities at this point. You only need a new one when the old one breaks. You don’t call a plumber to replace your pipes every two years; it’s generally because something shitty happens. Sometimes literally.
This feels like the pendulum swinging back, to the alarm of capital. I’m old enough to remember appliances being expected to last 20 years. Fridge, oven, TV, washer and dryer: All were expected to be single-time replacements over the course of a 30-year mortgage.
Hence growing up with a fridge in almond and a Kenmore set of laundry machines in mustard yellow. And a console Sony TV that made it through my entire console gaming time.
Edit: Archive of the page
have had my phone for close to 5 years now. it could use a battery replacement, but other than that it’s perfectly fine, so im gonna keep it for as long as i can
and if that makes tim cook cry… so be it lol
