Do you really need to buy a new smartphone every year?
Probably not. If you bought a decent one in the first place, chances are your smartphone is still doing a perfectly fine job. Ditto for getting that latest tablet, or upgrading your gaming rig with slightly faster sticks of ludicrously overpriced RAM.
While companies ranging from tech firms to automakers like to release slightly different iterations of their same product every new year to drum up hype and boost their bottom line, the reality is that most of us can more than get by with older versions of whatever’s being touted as the shiny new toy. Upgrade when it really matters.
But stop right there, cheapskate. Have you considered that by being such a miserly hoarder, you’re actually hurting the entire economy, which demands constant consumption to flourish? That’s the pressing question raised in a new article from CNBC.
“While squeezing as much life out of your device as possible may save money in the short run, especially amid widespread fears about the strength of the consumer and job market,” it frets, “it might cost the economy in the long run, especially when device hoarding occurs at the level of corporations.”
The average American does seem to be holding onto their smartphone for longer: 29 months as of 2025, based on a recent survey by Reviews.org cited by CNBC, which is seven months longer than it was back in 2016. Shamefully, we’re failing to do our part to prop up an economy already propped up by the vague promises and overbearing hype of AI.
It’s easy to understand the reluctance to upgrade. Phones can do loads more than they could a decade ago, and their price tag reflects that. Their cameras are absurdly good, their screens run at buttery smooth framerates, and their hardware is powerful enough to let you play games just as easily as they let you edit video, join conference calls — or, let’s be real, doomscroll. How much more juice do they really need with each generation?
Nonetheless, shareholder-beholden corporations need you to splurge to keep the wheels turning. It’s not as profitable in the short-term to make something that lasts long. Instant Pot, the company that sells what were once widely beloved slow-cookers, filed for bankruptcy in 2023 after collapsing sales. Experts’ postmortem listed an obvious cause of death: the Instant Pots worked too well and lasted too long, so once its customers bought one, they never bought another. (The company was subsequently taken over by a private equity firm, which later tried to appease the Trump administration amid an anti-trust suit by planning to release a “MAGA” themed Instant Pot.)
Of course, aging devices like smartphones need to be repaired, and that demand has an entire sector of companies offering repair services to meet it. But many corporations, Apple being one of the most notorious examples, want to make it as hard as possible to get your device repaired, whether you’re doing it by yourself or through a third party, by using tricks like having the device’s software refuse to recognize aftermarket parts. If only if someone could do something about that.
“If governments and big tech supported refurbishment properly, aging devices could become part of a sustainable circular economy,” Steven Athwal, CEO of The Big Phone Store, which specializes in refurbished phones, told CNBC. “That’s how you disable constant replacement. No need to constantly push upgrades, which financially strains both small and large businesses alike.”
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