Every year, smartphone manufacturers introduce new products in various price ranges, from top-of-the-range down to mid-range and low-cost. In the past, they have gone even further, inaugurating the ‘premium’ market segment, an adjective with which the electronics bigwigs justify a device price that is now well over a thousand euros. On the other side, of those who buy smartphones and don’t sell them, the public is basically divided into two factions: those who would like to change model every year, to always have the latest smartphone on the market, and those who only change it when it breaks or when the phone just can’t take it anymore.

In between, there are suspicions and accusations of planned obsolescence, i.e. an ageing of devices designed to stimulate the purchase of a new product. In the background, however, the same question always remains: does it really make sense to change smartphones all the time? A question that, in 2025, becomes even more important than in the past given the continuing ‘chip crisis’. A crisis has also changed the plans of many smartphone manufacturers, who are using practically every type of SoC and other electronic components available in their models, creating dozens of variants to be able to produce and sell something new.

When a smartphone ‘lasts’

In the United States, a large proportion of smartphones are sold through mobile phone operators, with a kind of leasing contract that provides for a very low monthly fee and then, at the end of the second year, the possibility of upgrading to a newer model by paying a small amount and starting again with the instalments. The result of this policy is that many Americans change smartphones every two years.

On the other side of the world, in India, one must spend the equivalent of two monthly salaries to buy a low-cost smartphone. In between, in Europe, the situation is still different and certainly more varied. On the contrary, many smartphones that are locked away in a drawer or traded in to buy a new model would have enough technical features to ‘work’ for several more years. With smartphones produced from 2020 onwards, this situation has become even more apparent: starting from the mid-range, recent smartphones have even too much power compared to the actual needs of users.

If it is not the power that is lacking in ‘old’ smartphones, perhaps it is the battery that most often drives users to change models. The battery is the component that ages first in smartphones: each charge and discharge cycle makes it less able to accumulate electrons the next time it is recharged so that even after only a few months, the phone’s battery life drops inexorably.

For several years now, smartphone batteries have not been removable, so a technician is needed to change them. But most users take the plunge and, instead of changing their batteries, change their smartphones, enticed by the greater potential of the newly released model (which will often remain unused, as we have already seen), a larger screen and, only rarely, by truly new and innovative technologies, such as 5G.

This trend can only grow in the coming years due to high-power fast charging: the higher the charging power, the greater the impact on the delicate lithium-ion batteries used in smartphones.

The environmental issue

What hardly any user takes into consideration when changing their smartphone is the environmental issue: modern phones are electronic waste, which is very difficult to dispose of due to the presence of very polluting and difficult-to-handle chemical elements inside them. Recycling chains exist, but it is perhaps better to envisage a second life for the old smartphone before disposing of it for good.

Then, when the phone is no longer really usable for anything, one can take advantage of the one-for-one mechanism: by taking the old phone to the shop, when buying a new model, the shopkeeper is obliged to collect it free of charge and send it for disposal in accordance with the law. If, on the other hand, the phone is not yet very old, but you do not want to put it to any other use, you should also consider selling it on the second-hand market: we will make those who are looking for that model happy at a lower price, and we will put off the day when the phone will become a hard waste to dispose of.