For my part: a new $650 dollar phone every two years? OK. A new $1100 dollar phone every two years? No thanks!
To be fair, pretty good promotions from Samsung make it a 150 dollar upgrade.
Not this year on the S23 Ultra. At least on Verizon. In fact, the only deals are on the S22
Why bother upgrading when:
- There’s no need to
- Doing so costs so much these days if you want the top end (that OEMs push)
- Very few changes are made, and they are often very minor
Plus, the novelty of a smartphone has probably worn off for many after around a decade. Now it’s more of a tool that you need rather than something you lust for.
If they weren’t so greedy and trying to get and expecting people to upgrade every year, perhaps the industry would be in a better place.
I have always kept my phones as long as I could. The only limitation is the # of OS upgrades the OEMs will permit and the security update cut off. I am reaching that with my Note 10. Unfortunately, Samsung and Verizon have stopped with the great deals on thier flagships. My trade-in on an S23 Ultra is about $150. Other than storage upgrades, which I really don’t need, that’s about it for discounts. Currently, Verizon is promoting the S22 U as an upgrade. When I purchased my Note 10, the discounts were running about 50%. The only phone that Samsung is discounting near that level is the Flip. So, I am less inclined to “upgrade” my Note 10 until the last of the security updates are ended. By then, maybe there will be something better on the market to consider.
In a good samsung discount, paying 150-200 was enough for me to make an upgrade. A few weeks ago there was a killer deal for tablet + phone trade up, I ended up paying 220 per device after tax. Probably the last for awhile though. Before that, due to a BB/SS oversight, i upgraded my S21U to an S22U for free, in fact they paid me 70 dollars in BB credit.
But yeah I agree with your sentiment about greed. A lot of it has been pushed by Apple, Samsung just followed suit.
If there’s this downturn in the US with your, frankly, incomparable trade-in deals, then elsewhere may well be worse.
But hey, maybe this might force some manufacturers onto a more sustainable long-term strategy…
Interesting article and I like that in the article they for once fairly explicitly called out some of the shall we say lower tier vendors. 
Taking it a step further, why bother ever having the latest and greatest? I really don’t feel any loss staying a model or two behind the latest when it comes to phones. And there are plenty of great new or almost new open box flagship phones on eBay for ~50-75% off if you are willing to be a step or two behind the current gen.
I’ve been upgrading every ~2 years still, but I’m upgrading a 4-5 year-old model for a 2-3 year-old model =P
I actually think this is a hell of a strategy. I’m leaning in this direction myself. I can get a brand new (open box)Verizon-compatable S22 Ultra for approximately $600. It will get two years of Android updates and an additional year of security updates. It comes with the original one year warranty. Plus, there is no need to “upgrade” my plan, so I’ll save a few $$ more a month.
TBH, I would keep my Note 10, which I loved but the Android updates stopped last year and the security updates should stop at the end of this year. I actually prefer the standard sized phone over the larger S22 size.