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Comment by ronnier | Hacker News Reader

Largely mobile phones are feature complete. There's very little that can be added that makes it worth upgrading at this point. Unless there's some game changing new feature, expect people to upgrade less as they are completely satisfied with their phones and will keep it until it breaks.

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I think the carriers in the US did a lot to create the 2-year upgrade cycle. Now that some are breaking out the phone subsidy from the monthly service charges, the incentive to upgrade is reduced.

The flip side of that is that with the new monthly phone payment option you are now able to upgrade yearly

I would think it would be the opposite.

My old contract was something like $80 / month. Every two years they would tell me I could upgrade to a new phone for very low cost. It was foolish to not upgrade because the monthly fee stayed at $80 whether I upgraded or not.

When the option is upgrade and keep paying $80 / month or keep your old phone and the rate drops to $60 / month, the incentive to upgrade is reduced.

> and will keep it until it breaks

Or until it becomes too slow after an OS upgrade.

My phones seem to get slower over time independent of any OS upgrades. My last one got so bad that I had to replace it when it started timing out when launching new applications, and I declined major OS updates.

I wonder if that's flash wear.

I feel like phones are slightly larger than optimum at the moment. At least for my preferences. I guess it's tougher to fit high spec hardware into a phone with a smaller footprint.

I bought into Steve Jobs' idea phones should be usable one-handed. I think the sweet-spot for that is 4 inches or less. A premium phone at these dimensions doesn't exist anymore, the last one was probably the iPhone 5S.

I went from iPhone 3GS -> iPhone 5 -> Sony Xperia Z3 Compact and honestly the Z3 Compact is larger than I would like (4.6" screen). I'm honestly considering getting a 5S for my next phone because I don't want a phone as big as the iPhone 6.

I noticed recently that the One Plus 2 Mini is going to have a 5" screen, that seems insane for a "mini" phone.

Moto G is the sweet spot for me and being able to use it one-handed, though I also have small hands.

That's a bigger phone than the Xperia Z3 Compact that I currently have.

Depends a lot on your size. We wouldn't expect Verne Troyer (Mini Me) and Shaq to wear the same size pants, would we? ;)

I'm an average sized male (5'11") with average sized hands.

Even if you have large hands it's difficult to use modern phones one-handed. Try reaching the top left/right corner of your phone (one-handed) without having to adjust your hand position.

I'm the opposite. I have a 6s now and am thinking about moving to the 6s+. I use my phone more like a tablet, plug head phones in to talk and have wireless headphones for the gym.

Yeah, that's cool too. I guess we just have different use cases.

I wonder if the presence in the market of people with your taste in phone size has provoked Apple into the (rumoured) 4" iPhone 6c?

battery life...

True. Battery life keeps on increasing. Li-ion batteries across the entire industry. The trend is ever upwards.

Yet still slow compare to most other technologies. Battery technology has always fascinated me at how it lags so far behind it's related tech.

It fascinates me how important they are. If battery energy density and cost improved by two orders of magnitude, it would completely change the world. We've seen that sort of improvement in integrated circuits in just 15-20 years but the significance of that is microscopic compared to what batteries would do.

Battery life is not only increasing due to improvements in the battery itself but also due to software improvements.

It would be interesting to see precisely who much software and hardware improvements contributed to increased battery life.

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