To Be a New Smartphone Owner, or Not to Be?

With the latest smartphone models hitting the market for the past decade, tech giants are pulling out all the stops to attract consumers to buy new smartphones.

This quarter, Google launched the new Pixel 9, Apple gave us the iPhone 16, and Samsung unmasked its new foldable models back in July. On the other side of the globe, we have Chinese giant, Huawei, introducing the Mate XT in its home market, with its three-fold design.

It’s fair to say that smartphone upgrades became a trend, but it questions the smartphone addiction that people started having in this generation.

Smartphone Upgrades

Nowadays, upgrading to a new smartphone became the latest trend in the industry to capture users’ attention by putting on the market a new “shiny upgrade toy” with distinctive, avant garde, smartphone designs, with each executive believing in the success of their company’s smartphone upgrades. So, the best thing that happed was when a technology company release a new style of smartphone, both for the consumer and manufacturer.

Apple CEO, Tim Cook, believes the iPhone 16 will “redefine what a smartphone can do,” while Google’s Brian Rakowski praised the “stunning” design of the Pixel 9 with its sleek black rectangle.

One company, however, is taking a different route. Huawei in 2024 decided that be approach would be a full-scale promotion of its Mate XT, focused on consumer brand song that accentuate the company’s commitment to break innovative grounds.

One of both Apple’s and Google’s strong focuses in their new devices has to do with AI in smartphones. This includes Google having Magic Editor, enabling users to edit photos with AI-generated content, while Apple has integrated OpenAI into Siri.

The Benefits of smartphone upgrade are many, tech companies provide users with new advanced features that will simplify their lives, and this is how they convince them to buy new smartphone, however some experts question whether that is what consumers really want.

 “Consumers know what they want from their smartphones, and camera quality is now top of the list. But even outstanding cameras on new models would no longer guarantee sales, as consumers increasingly hold onto their devices lengthily,” according to Ben Wood, mobile expert at CCS Insight.

Sales in the UK have fallen from 30 million phones annually in 2013 to an expected 13.5 million this year.

While concerns are increasing over environmental damage caused by smartphone production, consumer spending is also being hit by a cost-of-living crisis.

Some parents and young people started rethinking smartphone addiction when they want to buy a new smartphone. Some schools across the UK are reconsidering their regulations on smartphones, putting the possibilities of a complete ban on it. A state in the UK gave new students this year feature smartphones, raising one aspect of debate as to whether these kinds of smartphones were necessary for young users.

“I think the thing we always forget is that there’s a tremendous amount of benefits from using smartphones, we tend to focus a lot more on the negatives. It’s always worth bearing in mind that these are technologies of convenience. They help us. There are some good aspects to them as well,” commented a psychology professor on digital sobriety.

“Our philosophy is not against technology. It’s for a healthy childhood,” says Nova East, who leads the Smartphone Childhood campaign.

On the other hand, CCS Insight predicts 400,000 feature phones will be sold in the UK this year and that’s probably not enough but it does at least show that more and more people are less willingly to buy new smartphone with advanced features.

Final Thoughts

Some experts like Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology at Bath Spa University, are supporting the idea that smartphone upgrades provide unique benefits-aside from the damage of too much screen time. Benefits of smartphone upgrades are to facilitate life, assist in daily tasks, and offer services that prove useful entertainment.

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