Why upgrade your iPhone if you like the one you’ve got?

Jan 22 , 2019

At the start of January, Apple announced that its holiday quarter revenue would be 7 per cent lower than expected due to weakening iPhone sales. Photo: Nick Bastone

The XR and XS were supposed to tempt us into upgrading, but more of us are sticking with our older iPhone models for now, convinced that the extra cost just isn’t worth it, writes Nick Bastone

I am part of Apple’s iPhone problem.

You see, I own a perfectly fine iPhone 7 plus that I’ve had for over two years, and I feel no pressure to upgrade.

My screen isn’t cracked. All the apps I need are running smoothly (despite the occasional crash). And I like to think that my photos still stand up when compared with the images of my friends, who shoot with their new, notch-laden iPhone XR and XS.

Bah humbug! I’m sticking with my 7!

I was curious, though, about how much it would cost to upgrade, and whether that cost would be justified.

I headed to my local Apple store in San Francisco’s Union Square to figure out if I should finally upgrade or not

The Face ID feature to open a locked screen seems nice (my thumbprint only works 50 per cent of the time when it’s sunny out and zero per cent when it’s raining). And maybe having Portrait Mode on the front facing camera would help make me look less awkward in selfies. Maybe not.

Anyway, I headed to my local Apple store in San Francisco’s Union Square to figure out if I should finally upgrade or not.

Here’s what I found:

If I were to buy the cheapest of Apple’s new phones – the 64GB iPhone XR – my monthly fee would be US$37.41 through its financing programme.