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I’ve been using an iPhone XR for almost 8 years now. It’s crazy to think about as I bought it back when it first came out, and somehow it’s still chugging along. The battery isn’t great anymore and the camera definitely shows its age, but it still does the job.
With Apple dropping their newest iPhone, I’m finally thinking about upgrading. Part of me feels like I’ve squeezed every drop of life out of this XR, but I’m also not someone who likes upgrading just to have the latest thing.
So I’m curious, how do you handle your phone upgrades? How long do you usually keep your phones?
I’ve always bought unlocked phones, but my wife’s family has been doing Costco’s AT&T deals since they get a lot of money for trade ins.
Feels like I’ve pushed mine longer than most people, but maybe I’m not the only one out here still hanging onto an old device.
I think I have owned four phones, possibly five, starting around 2008. All unlocked Android, like Mark. I want a phone that fits my hand, which limits my choices. I use them almost exclusively for calls, texts and maps. My current phone is a Google Pixel 5a (a year old when I bought it) and I have turned off everything I can find to turn off to limit tracking. At home I use an iPad or a ten year old desktop (past time to replace that). I did make a “tariff buy” back in February and bought a new iPad. The Apple store rejected the old one for trade in, so I now have two. The older one is lighter so I am keeping it for travel.
My old flip-phone was dying and I replaced it in late 2013 with an iPhone 5s. In late 2019 I had the battery replaced. That gave the six-year-old iPhone new life, but it started showing its age in other ways.
I wanted newer technology but was unwilling to pay for a brand new phone, so I bought a used unlocked iPhone 11 Pro with 256 GB of memory in early 2022 (it was a bargain from a reputable online dealer). It was approximately 2-1/2 years old when I bought it, so it’s about six years old right now.
Now the battery life for the 11 Pro is waning. I’m debating (internally) what to do. I might have the battery replaced, but the lightning cable socket is flaky and doesn’t always connect.
Earlier this year my wife purchased an iPhone 16e to replace her very old iPhone 6s – and she’s quite happy with it. I’m thinking I will start checking the prices for used unlocked iPhones (15/16) soon.
We usually keep phones for 3-5 years. Being more frugal than that has diminishing returns and adds risk and usability issues. There are at times chip-level security vulnerabilities found in CPUs, including ARM architecture which Apple uses. These are often mitigated with firmware changes that can cause performance to degrade.
My 8 year-old phone battery is basically cooked, so totally get the usability issues!
With yesterday’s IOS 26 update, a new group of phones have been made obsolete from new features. This would include the XR, that a few of us seem to have. A promise of continuing security updates for