The Best Smartphone May Be the One You Already Own (Premium)

After evaluating several new smartphones this season, I’ve elected to stick with my existing handset. And while my reasons for doing so are my own, I’m not alone: People are holding on to their existing smartphones for longer than before, triggering a sales collapse that extends across the industry.

Meaning, this isn’t just about Apple, though we seem collectively obsessed by any bad news about the consumer electronics giant. But as the market leader, Apple is correctly seen as the bellwether for the rest of the smartphone industry. And in this case, the industry is absolutely following Apple in a downward trajectory.

Consider Samsung, which sells even more smartphones than Apple: It’s been warning about soft sales all year, and its most recent flagships—like those of Apple—have been met with a distinct lack of excitement.

Unlike Apple, however, Samsung has been very upfront about the issues it faces. Samsung president Dong Jin Koh even went so far as to discuss these problems publicly during the firm’s Note 9 announcement back in August.

“You inspire us to push through barriers to make the Note better every year,” he said, gesturing to the on-location and virtual audiences of Samsung’s users. “It’s not easy every year, frankly speaking.”

Apple’s admissions about this same problem are made more subtly. It finally developed a version of iOS—to cheers, no less—that doesn’t make older iPhones run slower, a strategy it employed in the past to trigger hardware upgrades each year. Apple didn’t do this out of altruism. It did this because the market demanded it: Its customers, like all smartphone users, are holding on to their existing handsets for longer periods of time. And if their experience degraded over time, as it had in the past, many of those customers would jump ship to Android.

Many will blame higher prices, but I don’t feel this is the key factor, or trigger, for the changing buy habits: Instead, higher prices are a reaction to the situation. But higher prices have absolutely exacerbated the problem, and reinforce the decisions that consumers were already making. They just don’t need to upgrade.

No, smartphone sales are slowing or even falling for three other reasons.

First, the market is saturated. If you think about the iPhone growth curve, you’ll see that Apple was able to expand beyond a single carrier, and then beyond a single country, and then to emerging markets. China and India came—and, some argue, went—offering gigantic bumps. But those opportunities are gone. The “next billion,” as the industry fantasizes about endlessly, isn’t a single country anymore, but rather a dispersed group of people, spread across the planet, in remote and isolated areas. They’ll come online eventually. But not in a huge wave.

Second, smartphones are more reliable than ever. As we see with the PC, smartphones never really stop working, and even a years-old Android handset or iPhone can run all the apps any user would want. If it ain’t broke, don’t replace it.

Third, the rate of innovation in new handsets is more of a gentle curve than a spike. This is what Dong Jin Koh was speaking to at the Note 9 introduction: There’s just not a lot of exciting new technology to promote each year. And many changes—like Apple’s use of FaceID instead of Touch ID on the newer iPhones—reeks of change for change’s sake; different but not always better. Something that’s been dogging Windows and the PC for years as well.

Faced with all this, and buttressed by ever-higher prices for new handsets, consumers are holding off on upgrades for as long as possible. A recent study shows a huge increase in time between smartphone upgrades when comparing 2018 to just two years ago; we used to upgrade on average every 2.37 years, but now that figure is nearly at 3 years.

Over the past few months, I’ve evaluated several new smartphones with the goal of replacing my Google Pixel 2 XL. These included the Google Pixel 3, Google Pixel 3 XL, Samsung Galaxy S9+, OnePlus 6T, Apple iPhone XS, Apple iPhone XR, Huawei Mate 20, and Huawei Mate 20 Pro. To be clear, all of these smartphones are excellent in many ways. And any one of them—save the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL—would be a fine choice for virtually any user.

But I’m sticking with the Pixel 2 XL. For now, at least.

My situation is unique. But then all of our situations are unique. We each have certain requirements and wants, and we make decisions based on what is most important to us.

In my case, I’ve established that some combination of camera quality, Project Fi compatibility, and a clean Android image are key to my own smartphone experience. That latter need doesn’t actually disqualify an iPhone, by the way, as iOS is even cleaner and more consistent—and offers better performance and reliability—than any Android handset. But whatever. My needs and wants really limit my choices.

I had expected to upgrade to the Pixel 3 or Pixel 3 XL. But I’ve already documented why I will not do that. And unless something really changes—Google revises the hardware and/or software to meaningfully address the devices’ many problems—I will never “upgrade” to these phones.

What’s interesting is that I don’t have to, either. As it turns out, most of the excellent new features that ship with the Pixel 3/3 XL are available on the Pixel 2 XL as well. Its camera is just about as good, and it supports Night Mode and will soon support portrait mode live focus adjustment and Playground (the new AR stickers). Call Screening is coming to the Pixel 2 XL, and so is Duplex. So is Gmail smart compose.

We’re not getting all Pixel 3 features, of course–Top Shot, motion autofocus, and super-res zoom (which is no replacement for optical zoom—will remain exclusive to the new handsets. But I won’t suffer without this stuff. And I have a year of stunning photos to prove it.

What I am worried about, of course, is that my Pixel 2 XL—which is the third one I’ve owned thanks to hardware issues with the first two—will eventually flake out. That I’ll have to replace it.

I’ll cross that bridge when and if it happens. For now, I’m OK using the handsets I already own. It has issues, for sure: The performance is terrible, and I still curse at the thing as it slowly rotates the home screen while I wait to press the Camera icon. But it’s a known-known, if you will. The Pixel 3/3 XL is an unknown. The devil you know, and all that.

Put simply, we live in a wondrous time. If you do need to buy a new smartphone, there’s never been a better time. Again, just like the PC industry. But if you don’t, you’re all set. Chances are that the smartphone you’re using will work just fine for the foreseeable future. And that when it does come time to upgrade, you can be delighted by the three or more years of improvements that it contains.

Saying no to spending money is its own reward, as well. I spent thousands and thousands of dollars in the course of evaluating all those phones. And while I got most of it back—a few companies don’t refund shipping or add a restocking charge—I know that none of them would have actually made me happier. Whatever I did end paying for this grand experiment, it was money well-spent: For someone who dithers as much as I do, having a sense of certainty is a wonderful gift.

We’ll see what 2019 brings. Maybe Google will get over its reliability issues and fix its existing phones, or perhaps the rumored Pixel 3 Lite will arrive in problem-free form. Samsung is moving to new designs next year, and they’ve long been a strong contender. If OnePlus could just deliver a leading-edge camera, I could see making that change very happily. And Apple. Who knows? Maybe it will make my iPhone Classic a reality.

No matter. I’m happy where I am right now. And I don’t get to say that very often.