Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever before, and while it may be consumer smart, it comes at a cost to work productivity and the U.S. economy.
15 years ago phones got 2X CPU speed, 2X RAM size, and 2X storage size every single year, for the same price.
10 years ago phones got like 20% faster CPU every year, and 1.5X storage size every three years, and you can still find barely usable phones with only 2GB RAM manufactured in 2025.
Now even 5% faster CPU per year is an achievement, and it costs battery life.
Do you need to buy a new phone each year? Only if you smashed your old one. Don’t expect any performance improvement in games, and your CPU speed does not matter if you only send emails and read news.
Exactly. The only thing that’s had me replacing phones is that they go out of support and at this point since it looks like I’ll have to switch to graphene, fuck it. I’ll just replace batteries and be done with buying new phones.
15 years ago phones got 2X CPU speed, 2X RAM size, and 2X storage size every single year, for the same price.
10 years ago phones got like 20% faster CPU every year, and 1.5X storage size every three years, and you can still find barely usable phones with only 2GB RAM manufactured in 2025.
Now even 5% faster CPU per year is an achievement, and it costs battery life.
Do you need to buy a new phone each year? Only if you smashed your old one. Don’t expect any performance improvement in games, and your CPU speed does not matter if you only send emails and read news.
Exactly. The only thing that’s had me replacing phones is that they go out of support and at this point since it looks like I’ll have to switch to graphene, fuck it. I’ll just replace batteries and be done with buying new phones.