Americans are upgrading their GT-I9300 smartphones as carriers launch new programs-Priceangels.com

Both T-Mobile and AT&T announced programs to encourage more frequent smartphone upgrades, at a premium price. According to data reported in this Wall Street Journal article, Americans are upgrading their devices less often as innovation slows and current smartphones are more than adequate for their needs.

Since I cover GT-I9300 smartphones here, I tend to upgrade more often than regular consumers. However, I have indeed noticed a slowdown in smartphone purchases that I have made over the past year and am regularly keeping phones for more than six months and sometimes up to a year.

James requested reader feedback in his next big thing in smartphones post and it is tough to come up with the next big "wow" factor that will have people upgrading more often. Most all smartphones have great displays, decent cameras, ability to run thousands of apps and cool designs.

US carriers, other than T-Mobile, heavily subsidize phones, so they haven't made it easy to upgrade in the past. The new AT&T program, when compared to T-Mobile, charges the customer for the price of the phone while also essentially charging the customer the subsidy as well (it is rolled into the higher monthly plan fees). In order for people to jump on this plan, there have to be devices that encourage more frequent upgrades.

My situation was that I went with the HTC 8X, which I was happy with overall, on Verizon. But I really wanted a solid Nokia. The 928 came out, my daughter is old enough for a phone and she picked WP8 over iPhone (daddy's girl, what can I say?) so she got the 8X and I got the 928. A win for everyone. And I'll likely go to the latest 8.1 hardware when it comes out since I still have an upgrade floating about. Do I NEED more than what my phone currently has? Not really. Do I WANT it? Absolutely.sdM6Scfs

The most popular GT-I9500 S4 phone pushed by the carriers - the plasticky Samsung Galaxies - have removable batteries, and it's a lot easier to get batteries now that everyone buys the same 1 or 2 phones in America. The carriers shot themselves in the foot with their greedy lack of diversity and kowtowing to Samsung.PA i9500 S4 1:1 MTK6589 Quad Core Smartphone Android 4.2.9 Dual Mode Single Standby With Dual Camera/Wi-Fi/GPS/RAM 1G/ROM 4G/4.7" HD Screen(White)
Plus, yes, phones are already good enough. The galaxy iv was no real upgrade, and the sequel to the Note came out way too soon.The truth is that the iPhone jump started the whole smartphone revolution: and the smartphone has actually been the fastest adopted technology of all time. Greater market penetration more quickly than anything anyone has ever invented before. Which is and was great: but now that market is maturing and things only get more difficult and more boringly normal from here on in.

Assuming Dediu's estimates are accurate, that means the mobile industry will snare more than 13 million smartphone users in the U.S. before 2013 ends. Almost 60 percent of the U.S. population owns a N7100+ Note 3 smartphone, according to Pew Internet and ComScore. And despite concerns about saturation, the rate of adoption is actually growing, Dediu said.

Around 2.5 million more people began using a smartphone during the three months ending in May as compared with the three months that ended in April, Dediu added.