despite so many text messages from my phone carrier over the last couple of years—the tone of which seeming to steadily increase in desperation over time—promising me a free or heavily discounted new phone if i trade in my still-working-mostly-fine iphone 14 pro, i’ve yet to upgrade.

a number of things have kept me from doing so. as said above, my current phone mostly works fine. ok, yeah, the battery isn’t in great shape. what with its 73% capacity right now, i’m dealing with a lot of app freezing and random shutdowns. (it also randomly called someone once, but i don’t know if that’s related.) but it’s not negatively impacting my day-to-day experience enough that i’ve felt i’ve needed a brand new device.

another reason: it’s expensive. my phone, when i got it, was leased (as most new phone deals are these days now that we don’t have traditional 2-year contracts anymore). it's been paid off for a while. i own it. it’s mine. i don’t want to drop $1k every couple of years for a new device just to have a new device.

i also don’t really see that big of a difference between the features of phones these days. (i should note here that switching to android isn’t an option i’ve even considered, because fuck google—even if i do really like that samsung flip phone.) what with the announcement of the duo and the 18 pro yesterday, i’ve spent too much time over the last day comparing features between the device i have, the 17, and the new phones—and there wasn’t any one feature that made me think it was time to upgrade.

i used to be swayed by the camera improvements, but i don’t even really care about that anymore? part of that is because i’m trying to spend less time on my phone these days and not more. so i don’t really even want my phone to do much except text, play music, make calls, and give me directions to where i need to go.

all that said, because of my phone’s battery warning me its past time to service it, i thought i’d finally get a new iphone when the new ones were announced. but after looking at the duo and the 18 pro, i’m not that impressed.

i don’t really care about the device colors since my phones always live in cases. a folding phone is appealing to me simply because of size. my hands are small and i want a smaller phone to fit them. but the duo is huge unfolded and i don’t want to spend $2k on a thing i don’t even want to use that often. the 18 pro is also—imo—too big, and it’s not better enough from my current phone (except for that brand new battery) to justify the expense.

then i thought: ok, i’ll get an iphone 17! surely with new phones announced the price will decrease! wrong. they did not. they increased $100. and yes, an iphone 18 will come out in the spring, but i don’t think i should keep using my phone’s fucked battery until then.

so i’ve landed on just replacing the battery. it’s $99 for apple to do a same-day battery replacement and that seems like a much better deal. since ios 27 will still work on my phone anyway, there’s just no real reason to upgrade right now. a new battery will buy me a couple of years, and maybe by that time we’ll have even more non-apple/non-android options that are appealing, or at least new phone sizes.

but i’m not holding my breath 🤷🏻‍♀️