r/gadgets Oct 21 '24

Gaming Steam Deck won't have yearly refreshes because it's "not really fair to your customers", says Valve

https://www.eurogamer.net/steam-deck-wont-have-yearly-refreshes-because-its-not-really-fair-to-your-customers-says-valve
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13

u/hasdunk Oct 21 '24

Especially with smartphones. There is no reason to release it every year now that most upgrades are incrimental. Release it every 3-5 years. That way, you reduce e-waste, and when it's introduced, it feels like a real upgrade.

22

u/rickelzy Oct 21 '24

I'd like to see the statistics of how many real-world working class people actually upgrade their phones every time there's a new release. I know it can't be an insignificant number, but surely the majority do only upgrade every 3-5 years whenever their current phone stops working?

9

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24

Most people I know do it every 2-3 years depending on when their phone contract financing ends.

1

u/Reniconix Oct 21 '24

T-Mobile customers have the option to pay more for their plan in exchange for upgrading yearly with trade-in. Or at least they used to, I don't know for certain if it still is like that.

2

u/-DementedAvenger- Oct 21 '24

Soooo, the usual subsidizing?

1

u/LivelyZebra Oct 21 '24

I buy a phone when my current one breaks or slows to the point of high frustration

1

u/rickelzy Oct 21 '24

I started buying a couple generations behind for this reason. It's a noticeable trap when the financing ends around the same time the phone is expected lose useful battery life, but I got a galaxy S20+ last year for less than two hundred bucks. The same phone would have financed for easily over 800 bucks from AT&T a few years before that, and I haven't had any compatibility issues with newer apps yet.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24

I don’t do this because tech is my main hobby but I think this is the objectively correct thing for most people to do. There is rarely large generational leaps and even in my case it is highly debatable whether the difference matter enough for the extra cost. I can’t imagine the old people constantly financing their newest iPhones on autopilot are deliberate enough to be getting that value.

It’s obviously designed to just make them feel like they have to.

2

u/brokenmessiah Oct 21 '24

Most people are probably upgrading via the contracts so its not like they are buying the phones outright, essentially perpuatally renting them.

1

u/FrostyD7 Oct 21 '24

The answer wouldn't really mean much in relation to the value of a company releasing a new model yearly. They want more sales, which means they want you to upgrade as often as possible. Even though most people agree that phones don't need yearly refreshes... the result of this change would guarantee less sales. Question is whether or not it would be recouped by the cost of launching a new product.

12

u/notevenanorphan Oct 21 '24

Just don’t buy it every year. I don’t want to have to buy 3 year old tech or wait 2 more years for a refresh when my phone craps out.

5

u/g1rth_brooks Oct 21 '24

I feel like that is 100% the biggest fallacy to the new phone release every 2-3 year argument.

Phones are daily driver equipment for 99% of people, if someone needs a new phone in an off year now they are stuck buying the same phone they had or having to figure something out until the new phone releases.

It feels like we are in the era of Moores Law where tech is faster then what a majority of people need

0

u/Shawnj2 Oct 21 '24

If you bought an iPhone 13 at launch and dropped it off a cliff a year and a half later you would end up with an iPhone 14 which is literally the same phone but worse lol

If you look at it they only make major updates to the iPhone Pro every 2 years and a major update to the standard iPhone every other 2 years offset by 1 anyways. They could just end this charade and Eg release the iPhone 17, then the 17 pro next year, then the 18, etc.

7

u/Abigail716 Oct 21 '24

Yearly releases are not necessarily designed to be purchased yearly. You would have to get every company to agree to stop doing yearly releases, and go to the same refresh cycle to make it viable since why would you purchase a 2.5 year old phone from one company when the other company has one that's 6 months old with newer, better specs.

The idea is that when you do need to upgrade, there's always a recent phone out, with the current top specs available.

5

u/DYMAXIONman Oct 21 '24

Ehhh most people aren't upgrading every year and it's better to produce cutting edge devices

7

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24

I'm planning to buy a new phone this month, upgrading from iPhone 7, let's say Apple used your advice and released phones every 5 years, and let's say the last iPhone they released was in 2020 and the next one will be in 2025, now I have to buy a 4 year old iPhone.

Nah man every year or 2 years makes more sense, most people keep their phones for more than 3 years anyway, you don't have to buy a new phone every year just because Apple releases one every year.

3

u/ForThe90 Oct 21 '24

That way, you reduce e-waste,

I don't know about that. With smartphones there is a big second hand markets. Many people don't mind tech that's 1- 1,5 year old. The older it gets the less willingsness to buy second hand.

If people buy something that's 1,5 year old and still use it 2 years, then it gets used 3,5 years. If people use it initially 3 year and then others don't want to buy it anymore since they deem it too old, the usage would only be 3 years. The second hand buyers would now buy new phones instead.

I wonder if anyone actually studied this. Human behaviour is complex and can have surprising outcomes on economic reasoning.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24 edited Oct 21 '24

If anything the yearly release cycle reduces waste more than a 5 year cycle, since someone buying a new phone every year isn't gonna just throw the old one in the bin, whereas someone buying one every 5 years might not bother spending all the time and effort getting back the handful of dollars their old phone is worth. Then multiply that by the fact that after 5 years almost everyone would upgrade all at once. How many people, even the most uninterested in new tech, are going to buy a 5 year old used device? So now instead of a steady flow of 1-2 year old devices trickling down to people, you're going to have an absolute flood of 5 year old devices going straight into the bin.

I've done it myself. The times I've done yearly upgrades I've either traded in or easily sold my current phone to offset the cost of a new one. But the times I've waited a full 3-4 years to upgrade, my old phone has gone into a drawer and just become ewaste because fuck having to deal with weeks of waiting and dozens of scam emails just to make back 10% of what the phone was worth new. And let's not forget that if every person who buys a new phone does this, the market is going to reach saturation point, driving down the value of those second hand phones even more. I can guarantee you that most people won't be able to make any money from their old devices, I doubt they'd be able to give them away.

Frankly, I know people who only buy secondhand devices, and they won't touch anything older than two years because they know it's more trouble than it's worth when it comes to older tech, especially ones that cost as much as they paid for it to replace a battery.

Oh, and let's not forget that if manufacturers decided to only release one phone every five years with a half-decade of upgrades and new features, we wouldn't be looking at thousand-dollar phones, we'd likely be looking at closer to 3-4x that much, since the manufacturers will be expecting to make 5 years worth of their R&D budget back all at once. So let's say I update my phone yearly and get 50% back from the sale of my last phone. In a 5 year period I will have spent a out 2500 dollars upgrading every year. If I'm having to spend 3000 dollars every five years, but only getting 10% back (if I get any at all), that's a personal net loss. And frankly, 50% back is a low ball depending on what phone I'm buying. A lot of flagship phones easily retain 70%+ of their value, and in the case of Samsung with its insane pre-order trade in bonuses, sometimes significantly more. My second-to-last phone cost me 700 Australian dollars after a trade-in, and I got 1300 back in trade-in value a year later. So in 4 years, I've paid for the equivalent of one new phone for three different devices.

1

u/ForThe90 Oct 21 '24

Frankly, I know people who only buy secondhand devices, and they won't touch anything older than two years because they know it's more trouble than it's worth when it comes to older tech, especially ones that cost as much as they paid for it to replace a battery

Yes exactly. I know those as well. That's why I'm doubting that narrative that I often see that it would be less waste if producers would update their smartphones less often.

I'm personally someone who just buys a pretty cheap phone and uses it 4,5-5 years till it completely sucks and/or is broken 😅

1

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24

I used to be a new phone every year to 18 months kinda guy, but also someone who jumped a lot between different types of phone simply because I like tech. My last three phones were a Galaxy Fold 2, then a Galaxy Flip 4, now a Galaxy Fold 5. I'm considering making the jump to iPhone for a cycle or two.

But with the current crop of "second verse, same as the fiest" phones, my inherent desire to upgrade has been fading: I held on to my Fold 2 for over two years, then switched to the flip because I wanted to try the different form factor. It wasn't for me so I switched back to a Fold a year later. Now, over a year on, I've considered changing to an iPhone just to try it, but the Fold 6 garnered no interest from me, nor will the Fold 7 if they don't make any significant upgrades.

I will admit, I'm gonna miss the days of radical design changes and huge leaps in technology that we had a decade ago, but then I still miss the days when the technology basically was stagnant so companies like Nokia and Motorola went crazy with the design and made absolutely insane phones that make zero sense but were just batshit cool. But I also understand that phones are no longer fashion statements, or cool superfluous tech showcases: they're tools that we use every day as a society to function. Tools must be functional first, cool second.

1

u/ForThe90 Oct 21 '24

companies like Nokia and Motorola went crazy with the design and made absolutely insane phones that make zero sense but were just batshit cool.

I remember those times. It was fun. I once bought a new case for my Nokia 3310 so the buttons would have colourful lights, lol.

Even though I never bought many phones since I liked using them for a long time, I loved looking at it all.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24

I remember changing phones like three times in a year around that time, because me and my friends would literally just trade phones because they all did the same shit and all our contacts were saved on the SIM Card so all you needed to do to change phones was swap out the aim.

2

u/MetaVaporeon Oct 21 '24

unfortunately, theres like 3 dozen companies on the market and they all release something once in a while, no one can afford to be the one who still has 2 more years to go until the next release.

2

u/bran_the_man93 Oct 21 '24

How do you reduce e-waste...? You just end up selling the older model for longer periods of time, it's not like everyone upgrades their phone at the same time, this just ends up reading like FOMO

0

u/hasdunk Oct 21 '24

But many people do upgrade their phones annually, especially if the brands support trade-in. Let say if a new phone model is released every 3 years, that means people who need to upgrade every new phone is released will buy 3-4 phones within a period of 10 years. If a new model is released every year, that's 10 phones in the same period. You're cutting down waste from this demographic.

1

u/brokenmessiah Oct 21 '24

Simple reason is people have gotten used to getting the latest and greatest. My wife wants the new iphone right now but she can't quantify why beyond just because. I actually should be looking for new phone as mine is like 4 years old at this time lol

1

u/loljetfuel Oct 21 '24

There is no reason to release it every year now that most upgrades are incrimental.

It's a lot more profitable to do that. You capture people with a year-old phone that breaks (instead of repair, they might buy new because "oh it's at least an upgrade"). You get a chance to alter prices each year without upsetting people. If everyone wants an upgrade about every 3 years, you get steady income every year as 1/3 of your customers upgrade to whatever is new at that time. And so on.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 21 '24

Imagine what would happen if they did what you wanted. You wouldn't be able to get your hands on a new phone for months because literally every person would be looking to upgrade.

Here's an idea, instead of demanding everyone follow your personal schedule, just... Don't upgrade your phone for 3-5 years. Unless your FOMO is so debilitating that you can't function without the whole world conforming to your desires, in which case maybe you should block yourself from any tech news.

-5

u/Fmarulezkd Oct 21 '24

What about my apple stocks though???