this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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I could understand upgrading so frequently at the advent of mainstream smartphones, where two years of progress actually did represent a significant user experience improvement - but the intergenerational improvements for most people's day-to-day use have been marginal for quite some time now.
Once you've got web browsers and website-equivalent mobile apps performing well, software keyboards which keep up with your typing, high-definition video playback working without dropped frames, graphics processing sufficient to render whatever your game of choice is for the train journey to work, batteries which last a day of moderate to intense use, and screen resolutions so high that you can't differentiate the pixels even by pressing your eyeball to the glass - that covers most people's media consumption for the form factor, and there's not much else to offer after that.
Yeah my semi-techie friend still has an S9+ from over 5 years ago and honestly he isn't really missing anything beyond a few iterative improvements.
he's been missing out on 3 years + of security updates kek
*cries in Samsung
If the batteries were easily replaceable, and the software didn't continually get bloated, and companies kept issuing security patches, sure.
I kept my last desktop system for 10 years. Actually I still have it and it performs sort of ok (I was running Mint the whole time). But I upgraded and the performance improvement was actually worth the considerable cost. I've gotten similar life out of my other desktops and laptops over the years.
I think at least 5 years or preferably 10 is reasonable for smart phones.