We’ve passed through another new iPhone season, that glorious time of year when everyone gets a new phone. Right? If you read enough Apple news or hang out with enough tech podcasters, it would seem to be so.
But just as science fiction offers us the possibility of parallel universes, time spent talking to people who don’t even know when preorders open up each year is bound to alter the way you experience the most iPhone time of the year. And as someone who isn’t personally in the new-phone-a-year club, I’ve felt for a while that we enthusiast writers and talkers collectively overestimate, or over-sample, at any rate, those who are always up-to-date with their Apple gear.
But is it as black-and-white (er, midnight and starlight) as all that? Do Apple nerds always trade up from last year’s phone, determined to rock the best camera and the most dynamic of islands, while regular folks struggle on until the screen shatters and the charger port rattles?
In the public radio newsroom where I work, phones are mighty important. We track down sources who won’t return our emails. We text our favorite news analyzers at 7:30 a.m. to see if they’ll please talk to us for today’s 10 a.m. show. We ask those same guests if they have an iPhone for the segment taping, because FaceTime Audio calls sound best. But no one I spoke to between iPhone event day and order arrival day had preordered a new phone, or could even tell me what new things Apple had put on offer. (Well, someone asked about the “thin one,” but that was about it.)
On the other hand, I imagine a “typical” Six Colors reader soaking up Jason’s event recaps and studying the presentation video for clues about this year’s color choices. Next comes the trip to apple.com to get that Pro Max preordered, and sharing the happy news with a family member that last year’s super phone is coming their way. Finally, there’s a trip to the Apple Store to claim the phone, or impatient refreshing of the old phone’s browser to track that package from Apple.
Survey says!
To find out whether iPhone users live in vastly different worlds from one another, I decided to put together a survey of the non-enthusiast iPhone users in my life (“Civilians”). To my newsroom cohort, I added other staff from KUT and KUTX Radio in Austin, plus a smattering from my Facebook feed – social media home base for cousins, high school acquaintances, and people I worked with back before the iPod was Apple’s flagship handheld device.
When I brought the idea to Jason, he suggested giving the same survey to Six Colors members. Okay then. Instead of just proving my assumptions about iPhone civilians, we could find out how well they matched, or clashed, with the enthusiast readership.
I asked ten questions, all focused on how long people hold onto their phones, and what factors influence them when they think about getting a new one. I also wanted to know how people acquire their phones. I didn’t ask for demographic information. We sent the same survey to Six Colors members via Discord. Though the questions were identical, I collected results separately. My survey of civilians netted 49 responses, while 204 Six Colors members took the survey. There is nothing scientific about this survey, and the larger number of members in the pool does give a more granular look at the numbers than the civilian results do. Even so, I’m happy with the response from both audiences.
What model, how often?
So what iPhone does your average news reporter, DJ, or Shelly’s cousin carry around? I suspected this question would bring a wide array of responses, and I was right. My group listed 19 different iPhone models, and one selected “Other iPhone,” which means theirs is older than that. But if I thought new models were completely out of the realm for these folks, I was wrong: three have already picked up an iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Six Colors members, meanwhile, mentioned 20 different models, one more than my cohort did. But 43% have already picked up a 17 Pro or 17 Pro Max.
| Members | Civilians | |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone 12 | 0% | 2% |
| iPhone 12 Pro | 0% | 2% |
| iPhone 12 Pro Max | 0% | 0% |
| iPhone 12 mini | 1% | 2% |
| iPhone 13 | 0% | 9% |
| iPhone 13 Pro | 1% | 4% |
| iPhone 13 Pro Max | 2% | 2% |
| iPhone 13 mini | 5% | 2% |
| iPhone 14 | 0% | 11% |
| iPhone 14 Plus | 0% | 2% |
| iPhone 14 Pro | 3% | 6% |
| iPhone 14 Pro Max | 1% | 0% |
| iPhone 15 | 1% | 2% |
| iPhone 15 Plus | 1% | 2% |
| iPhone 15 Pro | 6% | 9% |
| iPhone 15 Pro Max | 6% | 6% |
| iPhone 16 | 4% | 6% |
| iPhone 16 Pro | 13% | 11% |
| iPhone 16 Pro Max | 6% | 13% |
| iPhone 17 | 1% | 0% |
| iPhone 17 Pro | 26% | 0% |
| iPhone 17 Pro Max | 17% | 6% |
| iPhone Air | 3% | 0% |
| Other | 0% | 2% |
Central to my idea about regular people and their phones is a belief that getting a new one every year is a rarified thing. Fully 38% of respondents say their new phone purchases come four years or more apart. Another 22% answered that they get a new one when the old one dies. 20% are on a one- or two-year cycle. Among members, 35% upgrade every year, with another 28% on a two-year cycle. That’s a lot of frequent upgraders, but it still leaves 40% hanging onto their phones for three years or more.
A related, but slightly different question was about how long folks have had the phone they’re using right now. It’s always possible that upgrade cycles are irregular, especially if they’re dependent on how an old phone is holding up. Here I got my first surprise. 31% of civilians have had their current phone for less than one year. So, as I wrote last year, maybe the iPhone 16 cycle was a tempting upgrade opportunity. Another 29% say their current phone is 1-2 years old. Only 6% say they’ve had their current phone for more than four years.
The feature chart
It’s hard to pick just one thing about a new product that gets you to buy it. So I let respondents pick two features they value when choosing a phone. This doesn’t address what was going on with an old phone or how long it’s been since their last upgrade. But I wondered how the things reviewers write about, and that Apple sells in those iPhone event videos, map to the things buyers value. Well, camera won the day among both survey groups; 31% for Six Colors readers and 21% for the non-readers. 21% of non-readers (tied with camera) listed price, while only 4% of Six Colors readers picked it. Next on both lists was speed/performance/specs, with a slightly larger percentage (19%) of civilians choosing that option. Coming in next for both groups – screen size. Again, percentages were similar.
Aesthetics
If any questions in this survey can be traced directly to the tech podcasts I consume, it would be those about phone color and the case versus no-case lifestyle. Color and color choice matter a lot to some people, and not a great deal to others. I gave survey-takers a choice of nine colors. I didn’t ask about their current phone’s color, but which one they would choose if they could. I didn’t bother with Apple’s ever-eclectic color names, just some basics.
Of those with a preference, blue was the top choice among both groups, though it tied with red among civilians. Six Colors members’ second-favorite was orange, with black holding down third place. Only 6% of Six Colors members said they don’t care about phone color. 22% of non-members have no preference. Have they been convinced by Apple that color isn’t a thing they should care about?
I do regret not including silver or gold as options. Perhaps that’s why “something else” earned 10% of responses, tied with black and green, among civilians. Just 4% of Six Colors members wanted a choice I didn’t offer.
I asked about cases because I thought the result might say something about the importance of phone color, or lack thereof. 92% of regular folks said their iPhone rocks a case, so the hue of those edges peeking out does matter to some. No one in this group said they are sometimes case users. Six Colors readers are far more likely to go caseless, with 33% choosing that option, and another 9% indicating they sometimes use a case.
Dollars and cents
Yearly upgraders can choose the iPhone Upgrade Program, and buyers often receive incentives to get a phone over two years from cellular carriers. 41% of my civilian responders said they have used some kind of incentive to get a better deal. I’d guess that a lot of them are paying phones off through a carrier deal, based on the lack of once-a-year upgraders. I was surprised that only 25% of Six Colors members are using some sort of upgrade/incentive program, given generally shorter upgrade cycles.
Given the lifespan of most iPhones, I also wanted to know if people in my newsroom/Facebook cohort were beneficiaries of a passed-down phone from a family member or friend. Even in the non-enthusiast world, lots of people have that person in their life who turns a family member’s old tech into an excuse to upgrade for themselves, I believed. Just 16% said they were rocking a hand-me-down. But that’s still a significant number in terms of iPhone longevity overall. These devices are often good for multiple owners. Only one Six Colors member said they got their current phone in this way. (This doesn’t account for those who are the passers of phones, not the recipients.)
Summing up the survey
The fun part of reading these two sets of survey answers was how often the results swung far apart, and then came back together, and how many different iPhone ownership experiences are available. The lineup, as updated, expanded, and contracted over the years, is even more flexible than I had imagined. The sheer number of models and vintages still in service gives people a lot of options. Even if they might like to get something new, there’s a way to make the older phone work. And every once in a while, a big old splurge happens, when a camera, or a new color, or something intangible, puts that option in front of someone’s face.
There are a lot of Six Colors members who go all-in on what Apple has to offer. But another large group is less predictable, and just as likely as anyone to keep an iPhone for years.
[Shelly Brisbin is a radio producer and author of the book iOS Access for All. She's the host of Lions, Towers & Shields, a podcast about classic movies, on The Incomparable network.]
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