[prosaic-hacker]

I may be a little more "temporally ludditish" than the author. I have bought the cheapest unlocked cellphone that Best Buy, Staples, or Costco had to offer. Most times on Black Friday.

I typically paid 150 to 250 Canadian. They last 2 to 3 years and meet my needs right up to the next purchase. I am due this year for a switch.

As for PCs and Laptops. All are old BF buys or rescued "garbage". I am setting up a Dell Latitude E5420 (2013) for a current need. (Official disposed by my employer and intercepted before sent to electronic recycling.) Other resurrected acquisitions that are operational are from 2013 and 2015. I can do this because "what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career".

I like keeping this systems out of the garbage for a few more years.

[gruez]

>I typically paid 150 to 250 Canadian. They last 2 to 3 years and meet my needs right up to the next purchase. I am due this year for a switch.

Seems penny wise pound foolish compared to getting something like an iPhone SE or a low end pixel (eg. 7a) which have 6-8 years of support, rather than the 1-2 years support you get from low end phones.

[hakfoo]

There could be secondary factors. If you're physically hard on your devices, you might be scuffing up screens and permanently smooshing USB sockets with a couple years of hard use. Yes, they might be repairable, but the breakeven math is getting pretty close.

Replacing every 2-3 years also means replacing the battery every 2-3 years, which you were likely going to want to do eventually anyway.

TBH, I don't get the flagship phone thing at all. When my employer was paying, I got some of them-- a Lumia 1020, a LG V10, and a Samsung GSII-- and I didn't really use any of the performance. The phone that was the biggest upgrade for me was a Umidigi F1, because it really had two-day battery life for the first time.

[gruez]

>TBH, I don't get the flagship phone thing at all. When my employer was paying, I got some of them-- a Lumia 1020, a LG V10, and a Samsung GSII-- and I didn't really use any of the performance.

With the proliferation of javascript heavy SPAs and electron apps, you'll definitely notice the performance difference even if you're not gaming or whatever.