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US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

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Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#211

Post by p_j_w »

Glyptodon wrote: post #197
huytersd wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They cost about 20% more, for now. That’s not a ton considering you can break even on gas alone in 2-3 years, depending on how you drive.

I can't see how. New to new, a cheap ICE economy car can still run low $20s and your total fuel costs over 3 years will probably be under $2k. And even a cheaper EV like a Chevy Bolt won't make up the difference. It seems like the gap only gets worse when comparing higher up the price curve hybrids to their EV cousins.

They also have vastly lower maintenance and repair costs. Real analyses of this stuff has been done and EVs win every time.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#212

Post by adocomplete »

Since 2019 I've done an upgrade every 2 years, and even that is becoming hard to justify. Not from a financial perspective, but from a technology/innovation perspective. Recently I upgraded from an iPhone 13 Pro Max to an iPhone 15 Pro Max. The day to day difference is almost indistinguishable. Dynamic Island is cool I guess and USB-C is great. But for 99% of my day to day use, the 13 would have worked just fine.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#213

Post by NickC25 »

I have an iPhone 11. I've had it for a while. I have no need to upgrade. Every feature I want in a phone, I have in my current phone.

I miss the days of old, when phone lifecycles were similar to video game consoles - a new model was released every 3-4 years, with a massive leap in technological power. Even if you factor in Moore's law, there's little reason to release a new slew of phones every year, especially since the differences under the hood seem to be less and less significant.

Rather than giving everyone a significant reason to switch every few years, the industry seems to think that releasing new models with incremental differences every 9-14 months is the best way forward. It's dumb IMO.

What's also dumb is Apple switching form factors every few years, going from curved edges to hard edges and back again, yet calling each switch "innovative" or whatever bullshit their marketing team comes up with.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#214

Post by CSMastermind »

huytersd wrote: post #183
ronnier wrote: post #13

Phones are feature complete. No huge compelling reason to upgrade. If you work for a living then it makes no sense to spend money on upgrading if you already have a relatively newish phone

It would be nice to have full LIDAR based 3D scanning on phones, one for better imaging and two to provide datasets for 2D to 3D LLMs.

Yeah Apple's Lidar sensor is one of the most compelling features on their phones. I'm seriously considering switching from Android to iPhone for the first time in my life in part because of it.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#215

Post by major505 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #73

It's hard to feel positive about upgrading my phone when every new phone seems to remove things I want while adding stuff I don't care about. My S10e is a reasonable size in my pocket. It has a headphone jack. It has an SD card slot. Any new Samsung phone I buy will be missing these things, and I'll be forced to pay hundreds of dollars extra to increase the on-board storage that will still be far less than the 512GB…

And new phots are super expensive. You are paying more in the phone than your work notebook, something is terrible wrong with that.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#216

Post by gfv »

chx wrote: post #155
parl_match wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an iPhone 13 mini, the last <5" flagship phone you can buy. I'm not particularly tied to the iPhone ecosystem, but when this dies, I don't know what I'm going to do.

The smallest current vaguely mainstream phone IMO is the Asus Zenfone 10 at 146.5 x 68.1 x 9.4 mm. The iPhone 13 mini is 131.5 x 64.2 x 7.65mm. Then you have weird stuff: https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2022&fDisplay... so perhaps by the time your phone dies the Cubot Pocket 4 or 5 will be your answer. Here's the Pocket 3: https://www.gsmarena.com/cubot_pocket_3-12314.php

Zenfone 10 is only marketed as a compact phone. In reality, it is just slightly narrower than a Samsung S23 (146.3 x 70.9 x 7.6).

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#217

Post by nolongerthere »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #2

I'm one of those individuals. My iPhone 12 Pro is working well. I can't see a reason to upgrade to the 15 Pro. My eyesight is going down the drain with age, so the only thing that might make me jump is getting a phone with a bigger screen.

Which iphone 12 pro do you have, I also have the 12 Pro and I'm ready to upgrade just based on the lack of storage and other oddities that I feel would be addressed by getting a faster phone.

WhatsApp can become unusably slow for minutes at a time, apps I just used will close due to limited RAM; mind you I don't have a single game on my phone, I have bank apps, store apps, and messaging apps mostly, along with various utilities apps, like PW manager, smart home stuff, and various productivity apps (MS, Google suites). Nothing feels like it should be this terrible, and yet somehow its become a little too slow and jittery.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#218

Post by yorwba »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #87
ravenstine wrote: post #7

Not surprising. Phone upgrades in the last 5 years have been barely worth it. I'll be to first to criticize and mock The Google, but I've been plenty happy with my refurbished Pixel 5 that I not only plan on running it into the ground but getting another one if it finally croaks or loses too much battery capacity. Yes, I could just get the latest Pixel when that happens, but why switch from a phone that I know intima…

One issue is that your Pixel 5 won't get any more security updates (past October 2023). My wife's Pixel 4A is in the same boat - perfectly fine except no more security updates. Doesn't matter much right now, but will gradually start to matter over time.

The first Pixel is still getting updates if you install LineageOS https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/sailfish/ and I'd expect the Pixel 5 to similarly live on past Google's official end of life.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#219

Post by warner25 »

mydriasis wrote: post #163

Not only will I not be upgrading to another smartphone, I'm two months in on my dumb phone. It's been an incredible and liberating experience. Not only am I not glued to the smartphone anymore, my phone bill is now $15 / month, haha. If you're thinking about ditching your smartphone, now is a great time. There are lots of options out there.

You should be able to do a lot better than $15/month for a dumb phone. I have a smartphone that I mostly use like a dumb phone, and my cost is $5/month for 500 minutes and 500 MB of data. The provider is Red Pocket, and it's an annual ($60/year) GSMA (i.e. AT&T) plan.

Re: US Smartphone Shipments Decline 19% in Q3 2023 as More Americans Delay Upgrade

#220

Post by nolongerthere »

marcosdumay wrote: post #150
lopis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term phablet has been pretty much obsolete since 2015 or so. Better accept that we're not going back.

Well, the phone manufacturers are not entitled into a sale for a product people do not want. They better accept those declines.

The people have spoken they want big phones, I assure you that's not the reason they're not upgrading. Apple tried making a small phone, and there just wasn't enough interest to justify it. The trade offs, mainly battery life, just aren't worth the smaller screen, not to mention most OSs and apps are made with larger screens in mind.
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