[josteink]

3% faster is just going to be 3% faster, and nowhere near bringing me actual joy.

Having to pay $100 a month for a difference barely measurable in real world performance however... That will cause me real-world dissatisfaction.

[Dylan16807]

You're kidding about those numbers, right?

An optimistic but realistic scenario is something like 40% faster and $20 a month, where the phone is used a lot and the speed translates into saving multiple hours a month. Definitely worth it there.

[mdorazio]

40% faster at what? Games that you aren't going to play? The vast majority of users aren't going to notice a speed increase in their daily tasks. It's like claiming the latest Intel desktop processor is X% faster than last year's when the bottleneck outside of a few applications is not the processor.

[Dylan16807]

You never wait for your phone's processor? I certainly do. It doesn't benefit all the time, but it definitely benefits outside of games.

I regret not elaborating on how X% processor benefit would only be Y% real life benefit, but I thought my point was clear enough. I would have been making a much stronger claim about hours saved if I actually thought the total use of the phone would go 40% faster...

[mdorazio]

I run a 3 year old phone and no, I have never waited due to the phone's processor. Any lags have typically been the result of memory shuffling or lengthy app bootup times that have noting to do with processor speed. I'm fairly confident saying phone processors haven't been a bottleneck for most people since probably 2015.

[josteink]

If the phone is a flagship or Apple-priced that’s at least $1200. $100 a month if you buy a new one every year.

If the webpages I browse today load fast on my existing phone, network being the speed barrier... will I actually experience a 40% speed-up on a new phone? No way.

The value is just not there. And that’s not my opinion. That’s the market speaking. Figures are down for phones everywhere.

[Dylan16807]

Every other year. $2400. And that's if you throw your old phone in the garbage.

$20-25 a month lets you trade up to a new $700-900 phone every other year.

You won't benefit from that 40% all the time, sure. But if you get 8%, and you use your phone two hours a day, that's almost five hours saved! Processing is not a negligible amount of waiting. Plus new phones tend to have better radios.

[saltcured]

What's interesting about these numbers is that few people seem to apply the same analysis to the $50/month or more they are giving to the mobile network provider. I use a prepaid SIM without any data plan and spending about $50/year for phone calls and SMS. I currently pay my home cable-modem ISP about $70/month, and it provides a service that I don't think can be effectively replaced by mobile network plans at this time (perhaps with coming 5G services, that might change).

My smartphone only sees data via wifi, and it is definitely not at the center of my life. I get more than enough internet exposure through my home and office computers and wifi networks. Being disconnected outside is one of my guilty pleasures. My main use of my phone outside work is for offline GPS and casual camera use in the wilderness, where there is no phone service even if I wanted it. As a result, I value a small and light phone since it is mostly a passive burden in my pocket. But, the battery needs to last a whole camping trip away from the electrical grid.

My current phone is an aging Moto G4 Play which can still go 5+ days with many hours per day GPS logging. I am starting to see reduced GPS reliability that I think may be physical antenna damage. So, I may replace it with a fresh mid-range phone, rather than replacing its user-serviceable battery and looking into non-OEM firmware updates to extend its life.

[josteink]

I don’t care. The value is just not there for me.

There’s a million things I’d rather spend $1000+ on that will get me real joy, rather than incremental improvements to a yet another generic product in an increasingly stale (and increasingly locked down) product-line.

Smartphones is just not a “it thing” anymore. Get over it. The market certainly says. (As in it’s not just my opinion.)

[Dylan16807]

It's not all about you. You can't get any major benefit from a new phone. That's fine. Don't pretend that nobody can so you can lord your better decision making over the world.

The market says that somewhat fewer people are seeing the need to buy new phones. It hasn't dropped to nearly zero.

[josteink]

To be more specific the market says an increasing amount of people (as in a trend) has decided that new phones are not worth it year after year for a good while now.

Project that trend into the future and you’ll see just what happened in the PC market: ever decreasing sales.

Unless you’re prepared, that’s going to get ugly.