Apple just announced its new iPhone 17 lineup, but I’m not upgrading yet — and it’s not just about saving money.
Apple just announced the iPhone 17 lineup, with a new slim iPhone Air model.
Despite a few hardware updates, many consumers won’t be compelled to upgrade.
If your iPhone supports the latest OS, you might find the upgrade too incremental to justify.
People used to replace their iPhones every few years. There was a time when every new iPhone felt like an all-new device, packed with new features and significant leaps forward in hardware capabilities.
As the iPhone became more refined, however, these new features felt less bombastic and more incremental with every new version. This, combined with increasingly resilient hardware, means that the consumer upgrade cycle has slowed down.
Consumers are also more budget-conscious these days. In a recent study published by Statista, researchers found that people are waiting longer to upgrade their phones, and that wait time is only going up — projected to be an average of 2.93 years between upgrades by 2027.
I’m in that category, and I’m not alone. In fact, I’m still rocking my iPhone 12 — a phone that came out in 2020. At the beginning of the year, I told myself I’d upgrade to the iPhone 17 when it came out this fall. Five years with one phone is enough, right?
Well, now that it’s here, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll be waiting another year. Why? Because my iPhone 12 is still good. The battery still rocks, my display only has one hairline crack, and it’ll run Apple’s latest operating system: iOS 26. Below are a few more reasons why I’m waiting to upgrade.Older models still get iOS 26
Apple’s latest operating system upgrade is available on devices as far back as the iPhone 11. This is important because a massive part of using any Apple product is the operating system.
