A new smartphone again? Rethink unhealthy culture of frequent upgrades

fne8w2ah@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 601 points –
A new smartphone again? Rethink unhealthy culture of frequent upgrades
straitstimes.com

SO. MUCH. THIS.

262

You are viewing a single comment

maybe it's my personality or i'm old but i keep my things (including tech) until they become unusable. i've never thought about upgrading my phone every couple of years. i kept my last phone for 6 years (it became a brick), my current phone is from 2018.

I intentionally buy things that I know I can use until they are unusable. I do not often buy anything from apple.

Me too. My phone is 10 years old, my microwave is 40 yrs old, my car is 24, my home theater amp is 25.

I take pride in taking care of my stuff and making it last as long as possible. It's something I got from my grandmother who wouldn't let anything go to waste. (She was a refugee from ww2, so she knew a thing or two about making things last and making due.) Obviously not everything can last that long, but if you get good quality things chances are it'll be around a lot longer than if you just buy cheap or flashy stuff.

In the era when everyone seem to be taking out expensive contracts for new phones every year I have had just 4 smart phones in the past 20 ish years. They all reach the stage where they are just too slow for modern apps but I think we might finally be in the stage where compute power progress has slowed that the current phone might get an open source Lineage et el on it for a decent period of time with multiple battery swaps.

Me too. my phone is from 2017 and I'm fine with it. It's part of your personality, to preserve things. Associating personality traits to being "old" or to any stigmatized aspect in our society is a dirty trick to manipulate people (in this case, used to force people into consumerism). Just be yourself, and don't feel bad about it.