For the first couple of days after my new Samsung Galaxy S3 arrived we were inseparable. I sat at my computer with my phone tapping the screen back to life every time it died. I insisted my irritated wife ask it questions. I was unable to make it through a TV show or even a meal without checking my email or scanning Facebook updates. I watched movies I didn’t even want to watch on Netflix simply because I could. In bed, in the car, even on the toilet, the S3 was my ever present companion, my beautiful, high-tech window on the world.
The honeymoon period is now over. The features I didn’t instantly fall in love with will now go unused for long periods. I’ll play with my phone and needlessly check things less and less often as the weeks roll by. Eventually my S3 will be handed down as a cast-off, or sold off to some stranger. Within two years I will have found a new phone to fawn over. I’ll no longer be impressed by what my S3 can do. It will have become an amalgamation of tiny flaws that have gradually grown into an overwhelming urge to ditch it and get something new. That something new will offer a few tiny improvements that a complete newcomer to smartphones would be unable to explain or understand.
Slight improvements
With each new wave of smartphones, the jump in quality gets exponentially smaller. Manufacturers have to create reasons for us to upgrade. Consumerism and the capitalist system rely on it.
Samsung only released the Galaxy S3 in May, but has already sold more than 10 million of them. Apple sold 26 million iPhones between April and June of this year. Considering that over 50 percent of mobile subscribers in the US have smartphones now (comScore is estimating 110 million people in the US own smartphones) you might expect a downturn in demand.
It’s not just about placing a smartphone in the hands of those who don’t have one yet (although feature phone owners are still upgrading in droves). The two-year subsidized contract cycle encourages smartphone owners to get a new model every two years. It’s inevitable that the growth of smartphones will slow down and reach saturation at some point. The tech industry has to work hard to get people excited about new releases.
How do manufacturers create demand?
The iPhone 5 is already being touted as the must-have device of the year, and we don’t even know anything about it. That’s largely because it’s expected to represent a major improvement over the last iteration, but it probably won’t really.
The iPhone 4S was identical to the iPhone 4 in terms of aesthetic. It offered slight improvements in terms of storage, speed, camera, and a few other things. It also boasted the much-publicized Siri feature. It sold faster than any previous release.
A few people suspected that Siri could probably work on the iPhone 4, and some developers even ported it to prove the theory. It works. Apple didn’t roll it out to the iPhone 4 because it served as an extra incentive to upgrade.
The Galaxy S3 offers a bigger and better screen than the S2 but, much like the iPhone update, the rest of the improvements are fairly minor. It’s faster, it has more storage, and the battery life has been improved.
The carrot of 4G is only tempting if you do a lot of downloading, and you live in the right area. Features like NFC for contactless payment have yet to really take off with consumers.
Ask yourself why you’re upgrading
Realistically, the urge to upgrade is only partly because of the new features and performance improvements on offer. In effect, I can do almost everything I can do on my Galaxy S3 with my old HTC Desire, and it’s more than two years old. I’m talking about the core features you use daily here like checking email, browsing the Web, messages and calls, playing games, and even watching TV shows and movies.
Yes, the S3 will do everything faster and it looks nicer, but it’s more a matter of want than need.
If we’re really honest, the tech industry is also driven by fashion. The latest devices serve as status symbols. Specific brands project lifestyle choices and reflect personalities. We are bombarded by advertising that reinforces these ideas.
What do people actually use them for?
Despite a list of great features as long as your arm, many people only use their smartphones for a limited set of things. Recent research from O2 revealed that on average people spend most time each day browsing the Web (25 minutes), checking Facebook and other social networks (17 minutes), and playing games (14 minutes). The main things they are replacing in our lives are alarm clocks and watches. 54 percent of people said they use their smartphone instead of an alarm clock and 46 percent said they use their smartphone instead of a watch.
It seems likely that a lot of people are paying a premium to own a fancy watch that makes phone calls. If I observe my own parents using their smartphones, it’s clear they never play games, watch TV or movies, browse the Web, use GPS navigation, or record videos. No matter how many times I tell them, they tend to have their mobile data switched on all the time even when they are in Wi-Fi range, but then since they pretty much only use their phones as phones it doesn’t really matter.
The tech industry has mastered the art of upselling. The tech press and the stores combine to convince people to buy devices that they definitely don’t need. Why is someone who only uses their computer to browse the Web, write up documents, and send emails coming home with a device sporting a 2.4GHz quad-core processor, 8GB of RAM and a graphics card capable of running the latest FPS release?
Equally, if you only send text messages, make calls, and check the time on your phone then you really don’t need a Galaxy S3. However, that won’t stop me and every other tech writer out there from telling you that it’s the phone to have, and it definitely won’t stop carriers and stores from selling you one.
Do you need to upgrade?
The answer is probably no, but strictly speaking we don’t “need” most of the things we buy. The real question is do you want to upgrade?
Incidentally, as I explained to my wife, as a tech writer I actually do “need” to upgrade all my gadgets frequently.
I use my nokia 2600 to make phone calls and that is all I use a cell phone for and it does the job it is made for,phone calls…
Yes I agree wz Arron..
This whole article was written based on the theory that everyone who owns a phone goes on a 2 year upgrade trend and has the same basic ‘core’ uses for a phone. Well, the writer should consider many of us are upgrading now because we were on a much longer cycle. I owned the original iphone 3g for the last 4 years before upgrading to the s3. I did it because my battery was dying on the iphone and it could no longer run the latest apps. The s3 expanded what I can do with a mobile exponentially. I now have the ability to use turn by turn navigation, take high quality photos and videos, run multiple apps at the same time, swap batteries when my charge is low, stream movies, voice type my txt messages, remote control my cable box, check when my next bus/train comes, load flash based websites, and play the latest games, all on an LTE network. None of this was possible on my old phone. I find myself doing things on the S3 that I used to do on my home computer, and feel liberated from not having to sit at a chair all the time to do these things. Do I use s-voice or some of the other gimmic features of the S3? No. But that would be missing the point. This new phone gives me the freedom to do things where I want, when I want, and how I want. It’s not a trend accessory for me, or overpriced alarm clock, or expensive facebook gadget – it’s a desktop replacement and personal assistant that I can carry everywhere. So to answer the original question – Will the latest superphone save you time, organize your days, etc? The answer is a resounding yes
That’s awesome, I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t upgrade if you’re going to get good use out of the device. There’s no denying the major jump from a feature phone to a smartphone, for example. I’m just saying the tech industry wants to sell you devices whether you need them or not and it seems that as time goes on the advances with each upgrade are smaller. I also think a lot of people are persuaded to upgrade to something like the S3 but never use all the great features you mention. The two year upgrade cycle is pretty standard simply because the carrier contracts tend to last two years.
Well Mr. Hill, being a Tech Writer, maybe you can help. I’ve had the GSII since January 2012, and had it changed out four times; about to be a fifth time. I’ve been a loyal Sprint customer for over 20 years. I can’t get any assistance from them to just upgrade to the GSIII. I travel between jobs and need a phone that won’t let me down. Can you think of any suggestions. Sprint really sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, you’ve had to get it replaced 5 times? What was the fault? That’s really excessive.
I guess you’ve tried customer care https://mysprint.sprint.com/mysprint/jsp/landingPage/contactus.jsp
If you threaten to leave they might put you through to a retentions department who are more likely to do something for you.
I have also had success in the past with other companies by complaining directly to the CEO. You’ll probably have to write an actual letter because they don’t tend to publish email addresses. Make sure you detail the facts of your case and you might get a positive outcome.
One last thing to try which has also worked for me is to complain publicly – try talking about your problems on Twitter and adding @sprint
Companies are quick to react because they want to be seen to be doing something when the complaint is public.
Good luck.
I had the exact same choice. Keep paying £30 a month and get the s3, or keep my HTC desire and pay less. I chose to keep my old phone. I also tightened up my free minutes and internet usage. Now I’m paying £14 a month with my old phone and I never go over my usage limits.
Always upgrade. If you already own a smart phone you have bought into the upgrade new, bigger, better capabilities of the newest technology.
I sold my iPhone 3GS & upgraded to iPhone 4S and made money. Once your old phone is out of contract it will typically sell for more than the subsidized $200 price through AT&T. The earlier the better since the demand of out of contract smartphones are highest during the latest launch. I sold mine on EBay which someone referred to as “feebay”.
On the flip side don’t upgrade for upgrade sake. The value proposition is best when the upgrade is a few models later. The upgrades are always incremental until a re-design takes place making it less cost effective or “valuable” to the consumer.
Upgrade early & sell your pre-owned phone to a late adopter. Upgrade late if you are lazy and don’t sell your old devices. After all it’s your money $$$. The reason they are called “smart phone” is they were “smart designed” to get your money on a regular basis.
Yeah you’re right if you time it well you can make a decent return on your old smartphone and a lot of contracts do offer heavily subsidized phones so that’s a big incentive to upgrade
I use my nokia 2600 to make phone calls and that is all I use a cell phone for and it does the job it is made for,phone calls…
The problem with smart phones is that you have to upgrade – at some point of time…reason – the apps that you need, the games that u wanted to play etc – will run on the newer OS and processor… hence it is like out PC…
My Pentium III has to go cos it cannot support the newer version of whatever software…
and by not upgrading – your phone will loose the trade in value as time goes by… so it pays to upgrade
Yes I agree wz Arron..
My S3 is a significant upgrade from my HTC Evo. All about what the consumer wants.
yeah, when the S3 came out, I was kinda regretting getting the Galaxy Nexus just back in March. But a couple weeks ago, I got to play with a S3 at a store and realized that it really doesn’t have “that” much more to offer than my GNex. So, I’m good for now.
I agree with the article, obviously we don’t always *need* to upgrade and smartphone releases are becoming less and less extreme so the pay off isn’t as good.
However, where I disagree with you is that the next iPhone won’t be a big upgrade. We don’t know anything about it for sure, but my guess is that the next iPhone will be a huge upgrade from any other iPhone and be on par or better than any Android device already out or released within the next year.
There’s always a chance it won’t be and if that’s the case then I’d suggest not buying it, but I’d bet money that it will absolutely be worth it when all is said and done.
You might be right, it will have to be a fairly significant upgrade you would think but then I won’t be shocked if it isn’t