Mobile Phones - Bang for Buck Thread

Gaberdeen

Good Morning Everyone,

So I started a little money-saving exercise of my own today where I tried to work out how often in the past I used to change my mobile phone, how much it cost me and work out a metric from which to derive some kind of value from it.

This was prompted by the realisation that at (almost) 44 years old, I've had the same handset for well over 3 years now and don't feel any compelling need to change it. After doing the exercise I now feel even more determined not to change handsets and also giving myself a benchmark of how much value I should expect to get out of a new handset when the time eventually comes.

The way I worked this out won't work for everyone, I've been sim-only and phones' purchased outright for about 15 years now, so I can extricate the cost of the contract costs quite easily, I'm sure there's a straightforward way of doing the same if you purchased on a contract, though.

So, here's my last 10 years of phone ownership;

Phone Cost	Phone Model	Used	Replaced	days used	cost per day	Years
£349	Oppo Reno4 Pro 5G	03-Oct-21	ongoing	1232	£0.28	3.4
£639	1+ Mclaren	21-Jan-19	03-Oct-21	986	£0.65	2.7
£329	1+ 3	14-Sep-16	21-Jan-19	859	£0.38	2.4
£275	1+ 1	21-Jul-15	14-Sep-16	421	£0.65	1.2

So right now, my Oppo Reno4 has cost me 28p a day based on what I paid and how many days usage I've had out of it (so far!)

By using that benchmark, I can see that if I planned on replacing my phone every 2 years and still wanted to match my 28p a day cost-efficiency, I'd need to limit my phone budget to around £205 - i.e. (365 x 2) x £0.28 = ~£205

Looked at another way, I could splash out on a £700 handset and it would cost me the same 28p per day if I managed to use it for ~7 years i.e (£700 / £0.28) / 365 = 6.8 years.

Curious to see how many battle-hardened money-savers on the forum can beat 28p a day on a handset! If you don't mind sharing, I'd love to hear just how low that number can get! 

Murmansk

I think you've got too much time on your hands!

Frozen_up_north

Perhaps a more useful benchmark is how long a phone will realistically last if used every day. Battery capacity drops, buttons start failing, not to mention possible scratches on the screen and lack of operating system updates that limit security and some apps.

4 or 5 years is probably the limit for a smartphone, maybe a little longer with a battery change.

A £499 phone that lasts 5 years, then is scrapped, works out around 28p per day...

TMSG

Frozen_up_north said:

4 or 5 years is probably the limit for a smartphone, maybe a little longer with a battery change.

I bought a Sony L1 as a refurb mid-2018 for around £50, so no idea what the battery had been through already. This phone has been used for five years as a daily driver and is still going strong though nowadays it's mostly used a GPS device (mostly offline Osmand for walks and long hikes). The phone has dropped from the roof of our car when we forgot it there (first roundabout we heard a nasty sound but only the screen protector was damaged) and it simply refuses to die. Battery's still good for almost a day.

pallyman

I have bought  a Moto phone because it has more ram & storage but it also comes with 5 yr  operating system & security updates,So unless i kill it will be keeping it,payed about £230 in November.

molerat

pallyman said:

I have bought  a Moto phone because it has more ram & storage but it also comes with 5 yr  operating system & security updates,So unless i kill it will be keeping it,payed about £230 in November.

Only available on a limited number of models though, the vast majority limited to one or two OS updates and two years of security updates.

Gaberdeen

Murmansk said:

I think you've got too much time on your hands!

Ha ha, it's a Sunday so I'm kind-of allowed

matelodave

My present Moto G31 is around three and a bit years old, say 1000 days and it cost me £170 = 17p/day. I expect to keep it at least another year, possibly more.

My previous phone, also a Moto cost me around £150 and lasted five years = 150/1825 = 8.3p/day.

I reckon spending £200 on a phone is a bit excessive and unless summat goes wrong I expect it last 4-5 years. I dont get hung up on security or having the latest OS as I don't put sensitive stuff on it.

Timalay

I think my old OnePlus X I passed down to my mum, lasted about 5+ years before it got screenburn.  That only cost me £189.  The only reason I upgraded that was because of the limited 16GB of storage.

liggerz87

I got a red magic 9 pro paid 520 for it in August last year from cex still got it has gaming triggers on it to and a fan to cool it down I got the 16gb ram 512gb storage