Another Apple iPhone unveiling has come and gone, and with it another wave of breathless analyst speculation about whether the iPhone 16 model lineup unveiled at yesterday’s “Glowtime” event will kick off an upgrade supercycle. A Wedbush analysis, for example, forecasts that the new iPhones — the first to feature Apple Intelligence, Apple’s personal intelligence system built from generative AI models — will unleash the biggest upgrade cycle in Apple’s history.
As with every round of upgrade speculation that accompanies a new iPhone lineup, though, the analysts and the Apple faithful are once again failing to take into account people like, well, me.
I actually haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to take the plunge and upgrade to iPhone 16. That’s partly because I don’t automatically spring for a new iPhone every year; in fact, I’m still rocking a model from several generations back. And it’s because of a truism that will forever govern how I think about iPhone models going forward:
What the Apple analysts fail to understand about the slow-to-upgrade like me is that there’s really nothing a new iPhone could offer that would ever convince me to automatically upgrade to it. For me, it will forever and always be about the iPhone I have now — not the next one.
There comes a point, for example, when my existing phone will just feel old and no longer optimal for my needs. Maybe the battery life is a shadow of its former self, or the system is just slow and no longer as fast and smooth as it once was. Then, and only then, will I spring for whatever the latest model iPhone is at that time. Again, my upgrade decision is solely about the phone I have now, rather than the shiny new model that analysts think will convince people to upgrade.
I get that this probably puts me into a minority of iPhone buyers, but it is what it is. That said, it’s a perspective that I feel isn’t always reflected in the incessant upgrade chatter. Certainly, I’ll be an iPhone user from here on out, and I likewise always buy my new iPhone models outright instead of financing them through my carrier. It’s just that, the older I get, I find myself less concerned with the things I don’t have — and more mindful of being too tied to my phone, which is another reason why I’m never in a hurry to chase the latest set of iPhone bells and whistles. I’ll get there when I get there. But it’s not, and never will be, about the next phone.
