Is my phone “old”? – Numerama

Our smartphones rarely stay more than a few years in our hands before ending up in the closet. However, the lifespan of a phone can far exceed the 2 to 3 years that they are granted. A phone is not necessarily old after a few dozen months.

Small miracle in the world of Android smartphones: the Dutch company Fairphone began, at the end of November 2021, the deployment of an update on his Fairphone 2, a 6 year old phone. Sad to say, but in the world of smartphones (and especially Android smartphones), 6 years of updates is a real luxury.

In general, Android smartphone manufacturers offer between 2 to 4 years of major updates (from one version of Android to another) and little more for security updates. Same Google only offers 5 years of security updates on his Pixel 6. Fairphone therefore does better than all Android manufacturers.

Granted, the Fairphone 2 is only going to receive Android 10 (a two-year-old version of the operating system), but this allows the phone to continue receiving security patches for some time to come, extending its life. Only downside, the phone will not be able to benefit immediately new features in Android 12, as a result. The exceptional longevity of the Fairphone still poses an interesting question: when is a phone considered “old”?

The old age of a technological object is quite relative. It is very likely that your TV is older than your telephone or that your portable speaker is already a few good years old on the clock. But when it comes to phones, that’s another story. According to an Arcep report published in July 2021, in France ” theThe duration of individual use of smartphones is estimated between 23 months and 37 “, between two and three years. The rate of renewal of our smartphones has certainly tended to slow down in recent years, but mathematically a phone that is more than three years old (since it was put on the market) could therefore be considered as ” old “. In any case, old enough for the first buyers to get rid of it.

But what do we mean by old age, exactly? And is it possible to fight against this frantic pace of renewal?

The first useful question to ask yourself, to determine if your phone is old, is: is it still updated? Smartphones are constantly connected to the Internet, so keeping them as up-to-date as possible is essential to protect them against malware and other viruses that can linger.

As we said, the reputation of Android manufacturers is not bright in the sector. Other than Fairphone, no company in the industry provides follow-up beyond 5 years, whether for major updates or security updates. It is however the sinews of war. The brand new features of an operating system are not essential, protecting it from security threats is much more so.

On the side of Apple, the situation is different. The company is known to provide long-term monitoring of its devices. iOS 15 (released in September 2021) is for example compatible with the iPhone 6s released in 2014. No one is providing better tracking in the mobile world at the moment.

The first data to take into account is therefore this. If your smartphone is still updated, its life is far from over. It might not have the latest fad features, or a fourth camera, but it’s not outdated either. The lack of application of some manufacturers in monitoring updates unfortunately condemns some phones to get old prematurely. To make the most sustainable choice possible, therefore favor manufacturers offering the best follow-up (Apple, Google, Samsung, Oppo).

The other sign of a phone’s old age is declining performance. Sometimes a phone is a little less quick to react after a few years of existence. An application that takes a few seconds longer to load, or signs of slowdown within the interface, may appear after a few months or years of use.

Again, the disease is not incurable. If your phone is experiencing any signs of weakness, try to clean up your apps a bit. Some may be weighing on the processor in the background. If your storage space is full, also consider deleting a few files. Some smartphones rely on storage space to deliver a simulated additional RAM. If the memory overflows, performance can therefore be impacted.

Battery wear may also slow down the performance of your smartphone, as Apple explained in 2017. If you have an iPhone, be sure to check the battery status in the app Settings, Drums then Battery status. If it is worn out and your phone is idling, it may be possible to change it.

On the question of performance too, the age of a phone is relative. If your phone is really in agony when you open the Google application and you have nevertheless done the maximum to remedy the problem, then perhaps it is indeed time to change it. But by taking a little care of his mobile, it is possible to give him a second youth. A drop in performance does not mean that a smartphone is good for retirement.

As we have seen, the “old age” of a telephone depends on several factors which will be more or less aggravating depending on your case. Some, like the duration of the updates, do not depend on the customers, but on the goodwill of the manufacturers.

That being said, it is rare for a smartphone to be really “old” if it is less than 3 years old. As Fairphone and Apple prove, the lifespan of a smartphone can easily reach 6-7 years. Smartphones are more often abandoned than outdated today. Abandoned, first of all by manufacturers, who can and must do better on the issue of monitoring updates, and by consumers who change mobile phones by keeping their old phones in a drawer “just in case”.

According to an Ecosystem report, the organization in charge of collecting electronic equipment, in March 2020 there were more than 100 million smartphones sleeping in the drawers of French women and men. It is obviously not forbidden to change your phone (even if slowing down the rate of renewal would be good for the planet), but there are solutions like recycling, reuse where the reconditioning, which extend the life of a smartphone.

It is also important to put pressure on the industry to change its habits. At a consumer level, that may simply mean choosing a brand that offers long-term updates. Monitoring has improved in recent years, but we are still far from a truly sustainable and relevant model. Legislative efforts, such as the law on the circular economy and the repairability index, have also been put in place.

To clearly answer the question proposed at the beginning of the article: there is no specific date when a smartphone gets old. It depends on the goodwill of the industry and the sacrifices that customers are willing to make. 37 months seems to be the symbolic date of “old age” for a smartphone. But it is possible to change that.

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