Why do we change our smartphones so often?
Our obsession with the new has killed the art of maintenance and makes us change smartphones on average every three and a half years, without even worrying about saving money and reducing consumption. Here are some tips for changing your mindset in the New York Times article
A smartphone is not all that different from a car. When parents feel their children are old enough and responsible, they can leave them one. There are several ways to pay for it: installment purchase, financing or leasing. And like cars, phone models have become nearly indistinguishable from one year to the next. writes the New York Times .
However, there's a major difference between cars and phones, or at least how people treat them. Car owners take their vehicle to the repair shop for necessary maintenance and repairs. But when something as basic — and inexpensive — as a phone's battery starts to degrade, you usually replace the entire device.
“Everyone knows that car tires wear out and need to be replaced,” said Kyle Wiens, chief executive officer of iFixit, a site that publishes instructions for repairing electronic components. "There is a psychological illusion that you don't have to maintain electronics like you do with cars."
As a result, the average length of time you own a car before replacing it, about eight years, exceeds the length of time it takes before you upgrade a phone, about three and a half years. But with a little care, the life of a good phone can be extended up to six years.
Frequently replacing phones is costly for our wallets, but even more so for the environment. Manufacturing a phone made from at least 70 materials is energy-intensive, according to industrial design experts, and often takes place in countries where electricity generation involves high carbon emissions.
We should stop and ask ourselves why we change our phones before we need to.
It turns out that there is a great deal of research in this area. Some elements, such as the high cost of some repairs, are beyond our control. But one important reason is purely behavioral. Understanding the psychology of the reasons that drive us to replace phones can help change our habits to save money and reduce consumption, scholars argue.
A 2021 study by Delft University of Technology surveyed 617 people in Western Europe who had recently replaced their smartphones and other products. They were asked how long they kept their last phone before replacing it and the reason for the upgrade; people with broken or malfunctioning phones were asked if they had considered fixing it.
The most commonly given reason for replacing a phone has been a loss of performance, such as slower software or a degraded battery. Only 30% of those who said they had a partially malfunctioning phone (such as a rapidly depleting battery) said they had considered getting it fixed.
The second most commonly cited reason for replacing a phone was the simple feeling that it was time to buy a new one.
Ruth Mugge, a design lecturer in Delft and author of the study, said people have the misperception that three-and-a-half years is the longest life a phone has, even among people whose phones still work beyond that period.
This belief, according to the author, is influenced by an environment that triggers the impulse to update. One of them is the marketing push by telephone providers, who send out emails reminding you to exchange your old phone to get credit for a new one. Another is peer pressure, as friends and colleagues replace their phones every few years.
"If you keep it for a long time, people might find you a little strange," said Dr Mugge.
The other factor driving upgrading is more difficult to address: there are few incentives for people to do the repairs. That's because phones, tightly sealed with glue and tiny screws, are difficult for the average person to repair, and replacement parts can be expensive.
A Consumer Reports study found that people want to fix their phones when they break, but run into obstacles. Of people who said their phone started breaking in the past five years, 25% tried to get it fixed but ended up having to replace it, while only 16% got it fixed. The rest continued to use the phone without trying to fix it or just replaced it.
What to do? For starters, you can treat your phone as if it were a car. If the phone is still working fine, you can take care of its basic maintenance, such as battery replacement.
Phones don't have the helpful reminders that mechanics give car owners, like the sticker that tells you when the next oil change is due, but you can do it yourself. Set an event on your calendar to take your phone to a repair shop for a new battery every three years, when usually the battery loses its life, causing the phone to shut down after a few hours (and, perhaps not surprisingly, when the people think their phones are running out of power).
You can also create an annual calendar reminder to check up on your phone. This could involve simple tasks such as deleting apps and photos you no longer need to free up digital storage space.
Another motivation could be to do the math. For around $70, you can get your phone's battery replaced at a repair center, which makes this solution relatively affordable. Suppose you return your $800 phone in two years to get a $300 credit towards the new $800 model. That way you spend $500 on a phone every two years; over eight years, $2,800 was spent on phones. Conversely, if you keep an $800 phone and replace two batteries for $70 each, you spend $940 in the same period. For many, especially multi-phone households, that's a significant savings.
You can also remind yourself to self-check when ads for new phones roll on TV or appear in your e-mail inbox, said Lee Vinsel, author of The Innovation Delusion , a book about how our obsession with new has killed the art of maintenance. This also means resisting the urge to judge others who don't have the latest gadgets.
“Culture shift is needed,” Vinsel said. “We have to stop being seduced by the hype and think about the big picture, including the environment”.
It's worth noting, however, that some common phone problems can be fiddly to fix. An example above all: when I broke the screen of my iPhone 12, an Apple replacement cost about 300 dollars. If the cost of the repair is close to the price of a new device, buying a replacement may not make sense. (That said, I paid to have it fixed as I am fond of the phone).
But the phone repair situation is improving. Last year the Federal Trade Commission announced it would crack down on companies that prevent them from repairing their products. And a New York state law, passed in June, that would require tech companies to open access to electronics repair and diagnostic tools awaits Gov. Kathy Hochul's signature.
Thanks to all this regulatory movement, repair is gradually getting easier. What needs to change is our mentality.
(Excerpt from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-cambiamo-cosi-spesso-i-nostri-smartphone/ on Sat, 17 Dec 2022 06:41:08 +0000.