Three years is a long time?
I usually have mine for at least five years, and only replace them when the battery won't hold a charge and there is some kind of massive discount.
I usually keep mine for as long as it is getting security updates (plus a few months). This currently means 5-7 years.
And quite frankly, I would like to keep it longer. New phones just aren't that much better anymore.
Yeah, my last phone's battery was starting to go and I was able to get a last gen flagship for a riddiculous £400 with a £200 cashback from Samusng just for buying it and I got £75 for my old phone in trade-in so it ended up being not that much more expensive than changing the battery. I'd had the last one for almost 5 years before trading it in.
Battery replacement is $50-100, don't replace the whole phone for battery performance.
While good advice, the replacements have been between zero and $100 but I wouldn't have bothered switching for free if the battery wasn't going dead.
Thinking more about it, the increase in memory for the new one made the minor effort to replace the battery less appealing as well.
Companies stopped innovating. Phones are getting worse each year, yet they cost more and more.
There's innovation! What are you even talking about‽
I just upgraded my phone two months ago and now two of the four cameras (which is the same number as my old phone that I bought four years ago) have something like 20% more pixels!
Also—now that I have the latest chip—I can talk to my phone in like three more languages. I don't speak any of them, but... Innovation!
My new phone is also significantly heavier than the old one and the battery life is like 10% better than my old phone when it was new! Also, my display has a few extra lines of resolution on the top and bottom!
No innovation? Hah!
Don't forget all of the stupid AI bullshit that you need to disable manually
Adorable to think you can even disable it in first place.
You can turn a lot of it off, but yeah I'm sure there's shit in there that you can't
Consumers behave somewhat rationally despite capitalist dipshits hoping they wouldn't.
Cool headline bro.
Every time I bought a new phone, I considered it a downgrade. There is literally no phone I am in any way interested in purchasing.
I want a phone small enough to fit in a normal pocket, and has physical buttons for basic navigation, that supports current wireless standards. No such thing seems to exist.
iPhone 12 mini here. I don't know when or what my next phone will be, but I want to get as far away from Apple and Google as possible. I seriously considered just going back to a landline, but I discovered Century Link no longer offers POTS, it's only VOIP now, which surprised me.
There are dozens of us 
I need to know more about this
It was briefly available as a kit but there were issues bringing it to production. Justine did her best and got the kits out to people that waited. It’s all available a open source though so the hardware, boards and firmware are available to be improved upon.
I signed up for the Jolla phone. It's an eu based company that moves away from Android.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/15/jolla_sailfish_5_hands_on/
Same phone here. I just want a small phone man. I don't want to carry around half a tablet every day
Fun fact: the S24U and S25U pictured in the preview have the same camera sensor set, despite marketing materials boasting camera improvements.
My previous phone I had for almost a decade I think, it was an s5 galaxy I think. I used it until it refused to turn on.
The previous three phones I replaced were because:
I had a s5 for nearly that long. It stopped charging and a replacement charging port didn't work. bought a s10+ 1tb dirt cheap and its been nearly three years.
Lol.
The adhesive has pretty much come entirely off the back panel. My camera lens literally fell off the other day. My usb port has been unusable for years. There's more than a reasonable chance it will eventually blow up in my pocket.
Still using it, though I probably actually should upgrade or get a quote for repair or something. But I've been saying that for like 15 months now. Apparently I've had it for just over 5 years at this point.
Longest I made it was 7 years on a galaxy s9. Nowhere near the amount of damage you have, just a cracked back. Battery replaced every 2 years, but I made it last.
Upgraded to an S23 renewed from Amazon for $400 and hopefully will get another 5 years from it. Upgraded nowadays are just too expensive for any performance or features.
I buy my phones second hand and I keeps em until something starts to fail.
Same, always. I've had good luck on eBay, but I've done swappa once or twice and they're not bad either
They're the most incremental upgrades ever now, with very little innovation outside the foldable space.
I'm going to use this Pixel 8a until it drops dead. I'm not sure how other people feel, but smart phones have largely plateaued to me. It feels more like my PC. Like I only upgrade when something fries or I can no longer run the latest applications I need.
I have a Galaxy Note 20 Ultra from 2020. Phenomenal device. The folding phones intrigued me, though, so I looked into it.
The specs are meaninglessly better, anything you get today is bundled with AI bloatware, I'd lose my stylus and any choice, even the Chinese ones (which are tricky to get and use in the US grrr) cost at least $1,700 for the privilege.
No thanks. I cracked the screen on this device and paid $250 to get pretty much the entire phone besides the main board replaced (another bitter grr, I used to swap digitizers off smart phones myself for $20) so I don't see any reason to swap for another few years.
In this economy? It just doesn't make sense.
Still rockin a pixel 6 here. I upgrade when security patches stop and/or when one of the apps is artificially made to no longer work, always have
Only reason to get a new phone these days is if your current phone dies. Currently have an iPhone13, and it just keeps trucking. And when I do replace it, it will be a phone a couple generations old.
thats what mine did, pixel 5a screen just died from a small drop.
Phone manufactures - noted: Not enough to just lose battery life and performance. In new economy it really needs to be built to fail hard.
Yes, the cameras are marginally better and the CPUs faster, but that's about it. I don't need, and certainly don't want, AI features, which is often the rationale for a new phone now. A user-replaceable battery would be nice, though.
Some older phones will not allow you to get the latest OS. So you get stuck with an older one that no longer get security patches. This leaves you vulnerable to hacking. That’s why I eventually get a new one. This takes many years obviously.
A salesperson asked what iphone I had and recoiled when I said 13 🤣
Shit I just upgraded to a iphone 12
I'm rebuilding a iphone XR right now. Charging port screen and battery. Who wants or can afford to keep buying their over priced crap.
Just like with PCs. There were times when you needed a faster computer whenever possible just to work without falling asleep. Now any computer you can buy off the shelf can run all the tasks you usually need without problems (gaming excepted).
My first smartphone as an S8 that I got late 2017. I used that for 5.5 years before finally upgrading.
I would have gone longer but the battery could not go a simple workday without needing a charge. Samsung also stopped security updates, so I had to upgrade.
I fully intend to use my current one for as long, if not longer.
The business I work for which does refurbishment has been doing extremely well. People are buying second hand more often as well which I think is good. We're at the point where most people don't need the newest hardware, and can easily do everything they need with a device that was released 5 years ago.
I am still on an iPhone 12 Mini, I bought it in 2021, and have finally resigned myself to buying an iPhone 16 this winter.
My Galaxy S22+ is over 3 years old and I expect to get at least two more years out of it. I can afford to get a new smartphone every year if I want but there's no longer any compelling reason to do so.
You have to keep it for two more years! Because even Samsung can't get Samsung to sell Samsung DRAM for new phones!
Incremental upgrades has been mentioned, but biggest is likely price creep over the years turning it into a purchase that hurts the wallet more and more.