If I’m buying a phone that will last longer than any other, I need surprises, and I need a good payment plan
I have seen so many phones. I’ve flip-flopped between the best Samsung Galaxy and the best iPhones, but one stayed much longer than the others. After I bought the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, I really felt like I wouldn’t need a new phone for a while, but now, the Galaxy S23 Ultra has my wallet giving me a side-eye. Maybe it shouldn’t be concerned.
As a phone reviewer, I borrow phones from manufacturers and cellular carriers. Those phones need to go back where they came from, but reviewers get a regular stream of new phones. Even so, I still carry a personal phone that I bought myself.
I keep my personal accounts and communications separate from work. I recommend the same for everyone, even if you get a free phone (or a few phones) from work. I trust my own device to hold my personal life. That device shouldn’t belong to anyone else.
It’s good to keep a phone longer. Who has money to buy a new phone every few months? In the heyday of the iPhone, it wasn’t uncommon to upgrade every 18 months, and then, there was actually a reason to upgrade.
The first iPhone didn’t have 3G networking or GPS, for example, and it couldn’t record video. Many basic features took generations to arrive on the earliest popular phones.
Back then, your wireless carrier also subsidized your new purchase. Every two years you paid a modest amount, signed a new contract, and got an iPhone 7 that could finally handle a splash in the sink, just like the Galaxy S5 from a few years ago.
It’s common today to keep a phone longer than two years. That’s why AT&T and other carriers offer payment agreements that give you a new Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus for ‘free,’ as long as you wriggle on the hook for three years. A three-year contract was anathema to the US market a few years ago.
I’ve flip-flopped between Samsung and Apple phones for the past six years. As I say in my bio, in 2017 I left the Samsung PR team, where I’d worked for six years reviewing phones internally for Samsung. During that time, the company provided phones for me to review, including competitor models, but I still kept a personal phone that I purchased.
It was always a Samsung while I worked there. I got a good discount. Even before I worked at Samsung, my preceding phone purchase was a Samsung-made Google Nexus S, and before that an iPhone 3GS.
