My phone history, apart from what we now quaintly call “landlines” began in 2009 with a Samsung flip phone and effectively ended in January 2021 when I bought an iPhone 12.
During that 12-year period, I went through 7 phones (get all the juicy details on each in this post):
- Samsung M320 (it cost $40, which seems surreal now)
- iPhone 4
- Samsung Galaxy S3
- iPhone 5c
- iPhone 6
- iPhone 8
- iPhone 12
Other than the dalliance with the S3, you may have noticed an early pattern: I got a new phone pretty much every year. Then after the iPhone 6 I skipped a generation. With the iPhone 8, I skipped two generations (the 10 and 11–the 9 never existed). And now, I have skipped four generations, with the fifth about to launch next month.
The main reason is phone tech improved. They got faster, got much better cameras, and starting around five or so years ago reached a point many would consider “good enough.” Everything since then is iterative, not revolutionary, in the same way computers get better or TVs improve. You only notice the differences if you go a long time between upgrades.
My current phone, which debuted in September 2020 and which I purchased in January 2021, is reporting 83% battery health, yet there are days when I plug it in before bed, and it’s still at 90-95% charge, because most of the time I don’t use the phone at all.
I rarely check social media, which I have largely abandoned save for Mastodon, anyway. I message a few people, take photos here and there, check the weather, make actual phone calls very occasionally and not much else. I never play games on my phone. I don’t read on it, nor write long messages. I may occasionally scan my email. Sometimes I use the calculator. I’ll add food to the grocery list.
I actually stopped using the Photos app after Apple’s misguided1Misguided is apparently now Apple’s north star when it comes to design, especially for software revamp in iOS 18.
Basically, my phone is just a tool I sometimes use for certain things. I’m not one of those people that must breathlessly check the socials every time I get a free nanosecond. I am content to amuse myself with my own thoughts. Since getting my “good enough” iPhone 12, the tech lust to get a newer phone has disappeared.
The cause hasn’t been helped by Apple crawling up its own butt and becoming a terrible company in the past five years, either. I would not buy a new iPhone at this point, even if they scrapped the shockingly misguided2See? UI refresh known as “Liquid Glass”.
Or Liquid ass if you go by Apple’s original YouTube thumbnail:
Anyway, this leads to the question I pose in the title of this post: When am I getting a new phone?
I think it will come down to a combination of things, most likely something like this:
- When Apple stops supporting the iPhone 12 with updates, which will probably happen in a few years, though I have no immediate plans to update to “iOS 26” because of the awful aforementioned Liquid Glass revamp. Even here, security updates would probably extend the life of the phone to 2028 or 2029, years that once existed only in bad near-future science fiction.
- When battery life becomes unacceptably poor. I think this may take a good while to happen, especially with my usage.
- If I find a deal on a new/newish phone that is too good to resist. I have no idea how likely this is, but it ain’t happened yet.
- I decide my iPhone 12 cameras are now potato quality (they already are if you zoom in at all) and can no longer tolerate them. This is actually not very likely. I have an actual mirrorless camera for taking good photos of things.
Looking over the list, it seems I’m likely to keep cracking wise about my iPhone 12 for some time yet. But we’ll see.
