Which Cell Phone do you own?
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I don't agree with planned obsolescence conspiracy theories. It's entropy and technology limitations. Batteries and flash memory degrade and software gets more complex so hardware requirements get more robust. And there's no reason to spend a bunch of money trying to get advanced preservation technologies into these things because that ignores how technology (let alone phone contracts) works. Unless there's ever a modular platform, phones will always obsolesce in a certain timeframe.
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My cousin is still using an iPhone 3, not 3G or 3GS and 3 !!!!!! This gives me confidence.
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Works differently here dude, as soon as my contract is up I can drop the monthly cost of my tariff dramatically.
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I use my phone as a phone and a modem, I need a 5 like I need a hole in the head. I will replace the 4S I lost in Thailand with a 4 (because we have one lying around). I virtually never leave the house without my iPad or MacBook Air, my phone gives me the connectivity I require to use (what I believe to be a) proper computing device….
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Yeah mega it depends upon utilization. How many times do you charge it? Do you reset the battery regularly? Did you get lucky in terms of the component quality? Are you using the phone all the time? Are you taking lots of photos, adding and removing lots of music?
The more you treat your phone like a feature phone, the longer it's likely to last.
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I have often wondered the necessity to contiue uprgrading, but because of my ignorance I am a sheep and normally fall in line and replace every few years. Just replaced my 4s with a 5s as I had mentioned in apple thread, and honeslty…. dont feel much of a difference, though Im sure there is. For my purposes though, not a tremendously noticeable one. Except the revamped IOS that I still despise.
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I used to upgrade to the latest iPhone every two years. I was addicted to the technology advancements. No more. Honestly I loved my 4 but I cracked the screen a few months back. Not bad at all just annoying. Phone still functions fine. I'm getting ready to be on the to admire for work and I use my phone for everything. I wanted the slightly bigger screen of the 5s instead of buying a Mini and carrying two devices. Apples and oranges I know but the thought of carrying two devices doesn't appeal to me right now. I plan to keep this 5s for at least 3-4yrs.
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Works differently here dude, as soon as my contract is up I can drop the monthly cost of my tariff dramatically.
Then I agree with you 100%!
In the US almost all the big carriers charge you the same in and out of contract.
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I have a bad record with phones. I had a Blackberry that was utter crap (Julie made me buy it), a Samsung phone with a sliding keyboard, which was fine, except it was about 2 inches thick, then an HTC Thunderbolt, which had battery life that measured in minutes, not hours. Now I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, which I bought for its gigantic screen. After using for a few months, I realize it's too big- for practical purposes, it's a phone that requires 2 hands to use.
Needless to say, I'm a bit soured on the whole American system of buying/upgrading your cell phone every two years. Bravo for deciding to opt out, Mega. The way I see it, the longer you can easily keep your old phone, the better off you are.
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I don't agree with planned obsolescence conspiracy theories. It's entropy and technology limitations. Batteries and flash memory degrade and software gets more complex so hardware requirements get more robust. And there's no reason to spend a bunch of money trying to get advanced preservation technologies into these things because that ignores how technology (let alone phone contracts) works. Unless there's ever a modular platform, phones will always obsolesce in a certain timeframe.
That's EXACTLY what I call planned obsolescence
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I think that's a cynical way to parse it though, it carries an implication of them engineering it to fail.
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Yeah, agree. What you've stated is what happens in the real world and engineering developments/evolution/Moore's Law etc. That's different to the definition of planned obsolescence. Progress and evolution has a side effect of technology obsolescence, in that regard, I plan for it's obsolescence…
Probably the day-job hat coming through, I've been planning/scaling/building clouds for many years, always looking into future trends when modeling CAPEX/OPEX costs. EG do we buy 100TB today, or 200TB in a year, and what's the $/GB/Watt measure & $/GB/RackUnit & $/GB/HumanInterfacing....
My wrong use of the term, laziness on my behalf, #mybad.
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Not at all it's a valid way to break it down, semantically you could look at it either way. But my feeling is that for the most part they are trying to align to natural evolutionary cycles in tech, like Moore's Law. I'm just saying that I don't believe they are putting R&D into "how can we make this break after exactly two years?"
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Just ditched my 25 month old galaxy s2 for the new nexus 5 yesterday.
While the s2 was still performing fine for the most part it was starting to slow down and the charging port was getting pretty janky. I like the s2 size better but the n5 sure is fast and sleek. Better response on the touchscreen too.
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From a quick look they are basically the same phone with the nexus 5 having a better battery life and the z1 having a better camera otherwise everything else looks comparable.
I have been waiting for the nexus because it generally receives timelier software updates and it runs a stock android system with no extra bloatware other manufactures put on their phones.
