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Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy (cnbc.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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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.

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[–] 37 points 11 months ago (2 children)

At this point my phone from 2022 is way overpowered for every use case I have for it. So why upgrade? It was a bit different years ago, when new phones actually did exciting new things older phones couldn't do. But now the technology has pretty much matured, and upgrades are incremental at best.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    I am typing this on a 5 year old Android phone. It has 128GB of memory and 8GB of RAM, very decent cameras, a beautiful OLED screen and a processor that is more than fast enough for everything I do with it. And even now the battery still lasts two days with normal use. It cost me about €300 at the time.

    Unfortunately the Android version is getting so far behind that some apps are starting to get a few issues, so I have been checking out some black Friday deals for new phones, but they look very disappointing.

    In the current market it seems like I'd have to pay about €500 to effectively just get a side-grade. All €300 offerings look like just a straight up downgrade in any way apart from the more recent android version.

    So I think I'll hold on to this one a while longer. Hardware-wise it's still in perfect condition, and if software support really becomes an issue then perhaps I'll try out a custom ROM.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Also if you keep it for longer, the performance boost from a new one is noticeable. If you replace every 2 years, you get an imperceptible change and have to waste more money for it lol

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