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Smartphones have come a long way over the last decade like never before. All smartphones have become powerful and fast enough to run heavy apps and handle multitasking very easily. They also provide high-quality photos and professional videos as if you were using a DSLR Camera. Mobile phones’ life is remarkably long thanks to their great batteries. Furthermore, they have amazing screens with high resolution that makes you enjoy watching videos and movies exactly as screens of computers or modern TV ones.
However, many of us remain conservative about the necessity of upgrading our phones each year, believing it is a dire need for new developments that have occurred in the smartphones of the new year. Therefore, this article comes in to draw your attention to some reasons why you do not need to buy a new phone every year as long as your phone is no more than two years old, it works without problems, and no damage forces you to buy a new one.
1- Smartphones Are Getting Few Improvements Today
In the early days of smartphones, there has been significant feature improvements year by year. Bigger, higher resolution screens, generational camera improvements, noticeable speed and performance improvements, much-needed features in cameras, and so on.
While today, the wheel of upgrades is so slow, you can hardly find any distinguishable difference between last year’s phone and this year’s. Manufacturers continue to claim that they have developed the battery efficiency or camera. The changes, however, aren’t very noticeable in real-world use.
Most mid to high-end Smartphones nowadays take so good videos and photos. To notice the subtle differences, you need a keen eye for detail. Although wireless technologies like 5G and Wi-Fi 6 are great to have on a smartphone, they’re not a must.
2. Smartphone Battery Stays Good, Minimum Two Years
The lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones are known to deteriorate over time. No matter how hard you use them wisely, they lose their ability to keep their full charge capacity over time. However, if you make use of your phone properly, the battery will work at its optimal level for at least two years from purchase.
For example, many users manage to maintain 80% of the maximum battery capacity after an average of two to three years of use. Now, even if you don’t care about the correct approach to charging your device and spend all day playing games, then it turns out that the battery condition has deteriorated after one year of use, it’s not as bad as you might think, as you can replace the battery by paying a nominal fee instead of replacing the whole device. You should know that a lithium-ion battery’s estimated life is two to three years of optimal work.
3- Your Smartphone May Get Software Updates for Years
Most Android phone corporations provide a basic OS update for two to three years. There are current studies to extend this period up to 4 years. Popular brands like Samsung promise Android OS updates for two to three years, along with an additional two years of security updates.
The iPhone gets OS updates five to six years after its release sometimes. For example, the iPhone 6S officially launched in 2015 is still getting support with the latest version of iOS.
Thus, if you are planning to upgrade your smartphone to bring some software features, keep in mind that you do not have to buy the latest model every year or two. You will likely receive the same features through a software update as if you had bought the phone this year.
4- The New Features You Get Are Not Getting Your Money’s Worth
To put things into this financial perspective, in recent years, the price of Smartphones has gone up year after year, despite the rare to notice any remarkable difference worth the money you pay. Unless you change the category of your smartphone itself, you won’t feel any noticeable difference in performance.
If you bought a mid-range phone last year and plan to buy a new one this year, it should be from the latest flagship to feel a distinctive variation. On the other hand, if you purchase a phone of the same category that you have (mid-range), you absolutely will not find any distinction except perhaps in the external appearance only.
5- You Won’t See Any Performance Difference
Manufacturers sometimes like to brag about their new flagship as if they can time-travel, but that is not true. Smartphone chips improve every year in terms of efficiency and speed, but in reality, the performance difference is just like a mere little additional dose. Mostly, you will not gain more effective performance than 1- 5% at most when you use your phone normally. Currently, some devices have 12 and 16 GB RAM; however, you only need 8 GB Max to run games and multitask at the same time.
Thus, if you own a mid-range phone and plan to buy a new one after one year, you should move to high-end smartphones. Otherwise, you will not get any noticeable difference in the mid-range phones from what you actually get from your current phone. If you already have a high-end phone, you should have at least wait two to three years before you consider replacing your current phone to bring in the distinctive performance between your old and new phone.