This is a big problem. People should be replacing their devices almost constantly. Clearly work remains to be done to make these devices less resilient and with more aggressive planned obsolescence. Nobody should have a device older than 3 months. Think of the all the lost GDP!

This informed be better if:

1). They broke it down by app vs android.

2). They broke it down by phone cost.

I would expect to see that people replace cheap phones more often than expensive phones, and Android more often than iPhone. But that's just a guess. It would be nice to see it in the data.

New phones are several hundred dollars, and offer very little improvements over models a few years old. With inflation and every other cost of living rising, wages stagnating, unemployment rising, people are making choices. And more often than not, the choice is to pay food and rent instead of a shiny new phone that doesn't do anything new.

My family has phones in the 5 year old range.

Fuck that ridiculous iPhone treadmill.

Apart from devices just being "good enough" for longer and regulators enforcing long support terms, I think there is another big factor at play here.

Enshitification.

People are simply reluctant to change their phones these days because it's easier to live with a bad device you know rather than switch and make things go even worse.

Because they always get worse with each iteration. More bloatware, more notifications, less customisation.

Dire times imprint habits to lower consumption, and create less waste.

I tend to keep using the device until the battery life diminishes to an unusable state.

I'd be willing to replace my 4 year-old iPhone 13 mini if Apple made a new phone that was about that size (5.4 inches diagonal). Unfortunately their smallest sized iPhone is now nearly an inch larger (6.3 inches)

48 months, and I just had Apple put a new battery in. Unless the actual protocols get deprecated, or it flies off my motorcycle to a grisly demise, I expect to have my iPhone 13 for another 4 years.

"The Federal Reserve report shows that if European productivity had matched U.S. investment patterns"

How does the productivity of something match something else's investment pattern ?

That's like saying "Their speed does not match our density" ?

each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent

How is that even measured? Someone needs to tell us how not having the latest and greatest phone reduces productivity. The four basic uses are making/receiving calls, texting, checking email, internet. How can a 2024 model phone possibly be that less "productive" than a 2025 model?

As for PCs, the vast majority of people use Word, Outlook, and a browser (usually the memory hog Chrome followed by Edge). Again, explain how a PC which is three years old reduces productivity in this day and age.

This article almost sounds like an ad to get people to buy things to keep the economy rolling rather than a serious discussion.

I replace when they die, or the battery has an "event."

My Star Tac? Died after I dropped it one too many times... parts.. everywhere. It was done.

My T720? Ok that I replaced almost instantly, easily Motorola's worse effort.

My Razr? (the black Razr from 2004) I got 5 years out of that. Inside LCD just quit one day.

iphone 3GS? Got 3 years out of it. Battery went to shit real fast. Probably 2 years.

Iphone 5? Got 5 years out of it. Battery turned into a spicy pilow

Iphone 8? Ok, that was hot garbage. Replaced after only 2 years with my current phone, a 13 Pro.

That 13 pro should still serve me well. it's almost 4 years old and still working fine.

the 17pro is tempting just on its thermal management vapor chamber thing.

I bet most of you are the same. Replace when it breaks, not because it's "fashionable" to have a new phone.

Canada has carrier whitelists for 4G VoLTE, so devices not on the whitelist have been stuck on 3G, which is being phased out. The devices that are on the whitelist are very few and selected by the carrier based on the handsets they sell.

Nearly everyone who bought their own phone and has been enjoying them is being cut off and forced to buy a phone from the carrier even though their phone likely supports 4G VoLTE. I have had the same phone for 5 years and planned on keeping it but it's not on the whitelist.

> Research released by the Federal Reserve last month concludes that each additional year companies delay upgrading equipment results in a productivity decline of about one-third of a percent

Why does productivity change at all? The equipment remains just as functional and "productive" from day one to 2,000. A computer processes a certain number of MIPS. A widget stamper stamps so many widgets per hour. They don't get slower or weaker, so how does productivity change What is this "research" based on?

#1 - Qualcomm QCP-1900, 1998-2015 (17y)

#2 - Kyocera HydroVIBE, 2015-2021 (6y)

#3 - Google Pixel 5a, 2021 - Present (4y, so far)

The Qualcomm was on nTelos (initially PrimeCo) and had to give it up when nTelos in my area was sold to Sprint and they didn't/wouldn't support the phone's spectrum. The Kyocera was on Ting (Sprint) and gave it up when Sprint was bought by T-Mobile and CDMA was deprecated and VoIP required, also Google Play support EOL for KitKat. The Pixel 5a is on Ting (T-Mobile) and I'll probably keep it until forced to get something newer - works great so far.

I'll note that the Kyocera - from 2015 - was IP57 certified *with* a headphone jack and removable battery (along with 32GB MicroSD and SIM) under the removable back w/gasket.

I think thats what Ryan Seacrest says (toss up round on Wheel of Fortue)

There are probably people still using the same land line handsets that were installed 100+ years ago.*

* granted, the rotary-dial part may or may not work depending on your phone company, but a touch-tone phone from the 1960s works fine on most POTS land-lines or on VOIP with the right adapter or modem.

I got a desktop computer in 1995. It had a 686 Cyrix at 166MHz, 16MB of RAM, an 8x CD-ROM, 1.6 GB hard disk...and it was one of the fastest computers in my circle. By 2001, it was unusable. USB was on its way to replacing serial and parallel peripherals, which Windows 95 didn't support. 166MHz was slow, compared to the 600MHz P3's that were available (and a year later, they'd hit 1GHz). 48MB of RAM was nothing (64MB was common, 256MB was available), and while 1.6GB was a bottomless pit when Word documents was all I was creating, and 50MB installations for video games were considered pigs, 10GB drives were available...and needed for the CDs I was ripping into MP3s. Six years of computer progress was clear, obvious, palpable, and using the old computer had a clear feeling of constraint.

Today, unless you're doing local AI, 8K video rendering, or a handful of other niche applications, a 6-year-old computer will be perfectly usable. Six years ago, SSDs were already the default, 6-core CPUs were the default, and it was right at the cusp of when 16GB became mainstream. A six year old computer is perfectly usable for most tasks. It runs current iterations of OSes (admittedly a 6-year-old Mac might not because of the OSX shelf life on Intel), it *might* need a RAM upgrade, and it *might* benefit from a newer SSD to some extent...but while a 6-year difference was night-and-day in 2000, it's turned into "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

And, so too it is with phones. The difference between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 8 was readily understood and appreciated by most users; the storage capacity increases, camera improvements, FaceID implementation, Apple Wallet/NFC, bidirectional lightning cable, and screen size increase were all understood, palpable, and basically sold themselves. I went through the Wikipedia page to get a feel for what changed between the 13 and the 17...and the answers were the satellite connectivity (that may-or-may-not-work depending on carrier), Apple Intelligence (that they famously are still trying to get off the ground), the dynamic island, a few more camera improvements, and colors...oh, and they are more expensive now.

Samsung is kinda the same deal; the foldable phones are nifty, but at $2,000, one can get a phone, a laptop, *and* a tablet for the same price...and the difference between an S21 and an S25 is similarly uninspiring for a $1,000 upgrade.

So yeah, phones have gotten "good enough" for most people, they've been that way for a while, despite the price tags more frequently involving commas. So...yeah...makes perfect sense that with more money expected for less improvement...that 3-year-old phones are the norm now.