How Many Phone Years Is Your Phone?
If 1 dog year equals 7 human years, then a 14-year-old dog would be 98. That’s a very good, long life, and it wouldn’t be a shock (though it would be very sad) if it died. An 8-year-old dog, on the other hand, would be 56. That’s middle-aged, and you would expect (though may not always be lucky) that dog to live many more years.
I’ve been trying to figure out my phone’s age in mobile years. If most iPhones are unusable or dead within 8 years, we can set 1 mobile year to equal 14 human years. A 6-year-old mobile device would be 84. A 7-year-old device would be 98.
Our phones are not that old. Mine is about 4.5 years old, and Josh’s is about 5.5 years old. That would be 63 and 77 in human years. Not that old. Though it’s 63 and 77 years of rough, daily living. Like those devices are workhorses, whereas we have another device that is 98 years old in human years, though we use it less often, so maybe it will live longer?
The point: We are going back and forth on replacing our mobile devices. In the past, I was a run-that-device-into-the-ground kind of girl and only replaced things when they stopped working. But in recent years, I’ve become a replace-things-when-they-no-longer-help-you-do-a-task kind of girl. Our mobile devices are entering that era. Josh does not have a working home button anymore. My emails take 30 seconds to a minute to load. Our devices still have life in them, but they’re struggling. And part of me wants to get every last bit of use out of them, and part of me wants to replace them and have things be easy again. Part of me wants something that works exactly as I want it to work, and part of me doesn’t want to regret spending money on something unnecessary (and then not have that money for something necessary in the future).
It’s hard to know how much my decision is being influenced by the constant capitalist messaging that surrounds us, telling us that we need need need things that are new new new and better better better. And it’s hard to know how much my decision is annoying myself to push back against that messaging.
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Our kids have been pretty hard on our phones, so we’ve been getting new ones and handing ours down. Though they both have terrible looking fully cracked screens right now and refuse to let us replace them. We thought we were going to have to replace DC1’s recently, but fortunately security’s lost and found had it. DH really does need more storage on his, even though it’s otherwise in great shape.
I can’t remember how long we had our original phones (brick & flip models), but we kept them quite a while… I remember the young store clerk being absolutely agog when I brought one in to see if I could get a new battery. (They did eventually hunt one up in the back room.) We’ve had smartphones for 10 years. Initially, we were able to get our phones for free if I we signed a two-year contract — so when the two years ended, they offered to upgrade our phones and of course we took them up on it. Third time, though, they’d stopped offering free phones, so we wound up buying. I think I’ve had my current phone almost five years now. It’s a bit beaten up (screen cracked in a couple of places, etc.), but I regularly download my photos to my laptop, so there’s still plenty of room on there and I think the battery is still OK. So I’ll probably keep it for a while yet.
In more recent years, I have changed phones more frequently. It’s all about functionality – I decided to get a new phone some years ago because I really needed more storage. I kept that phone for four years. It was a mid-range phone – about 1/4 the price of high end phones at the time – and was perfectly adequate. Then I decided to get a new phone only because of its superduper camera. I justified the purchase because it was cheaper than getting a new lens for my camera, and I used it exclusively on recent overseas trips. The convenience was worth it. It’s now about three years old, but still has enough storage and is working well, so I’m keeping it for a while yet. (Fingers crossed.)
Other than for the camera, I really don’t need a high end phone. (Though I love the pencil that is included with it). My other mid-level phones were perfectly adequate for browsing, navigation, etc. Note: my phones have all been android.
If my emails took 30 seconds to load (per email? Or total? In digital terms, 30 secs is an age!) I might get frustrated and consider a new phone though. Oh, and in terms of phone life times and technology, phones really are the workhorses – they do a lot of manual labour therefore may need to retire earlier, and are “bred” to only have a limited working life. Your phones are past retirement age! Time to put them out to pasture with thanks, and get some new ones. 😉
My iPhone would be about 91 using that scale. I’ve had it since late 2019. Yet it works fine. In the past I would get a new iPhone about every three years starting in the year 2010 when I got my first one one the main reason was storage. I kept having to delete videos and photos (ones I had already copied to my computer) in order to take new videos and photos of my kids. Also, the batteries would start to die pretty quickly. Also, back then, we would essentially get the phone for “free” for extending our contract.
But with this phone I still have oodles and oodles of storage that I’m not even close to exceeding. And while my battery dies quicker than it did when I first got the phone, it’s not incapacitating. My DH and I used to get our phones at the same time, but he dropped and smashed his a few years ago, so he got a new one.
I’m still salty that the universal headphone jack is no longer there on my iPhone.
I replaced my phone recently and when I was struggling to decide between the newest version for more money or an older but still available version for less money, my husband pointed out that if I got the newest one, I would have even more years before I ran that one down into the ground. And it is lovely to have a new phone with a really nice battery life.
I am all about usefulness and annoyance. When something stops being useful and/or starts annoying me, it’s time to replace it with something else (or nothing, as the case may be). I had my previous phone for only 2 years, but I was retiring and the storage was so much better that I went forward with a new one. I hope this will last me a long time, but we shall see. I am definitely not on the “pay your provider an eternal fee” train.
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