It’s tough to always have the newest electronic wonder, and (at least in the smartphone world) getting harder all the time:
If you bought a smartphone within the past year, you might already have noticed that your once-cool superdevice is feeling outdated.
There’s a reason for that: “Android’s law.”
Smartphones are continually outdueling one another in terms of performance, and they’re coming to market at a breakneck speed.
For instance, if you picked up the Motorola (MMI) Droid when it went on sale in November 2009, you had the best Android device on the market. But then the twice-as-fast Nexus One went on sale in January 2010. Then the HTC Droid Incredible hit the market in April. Then in June, the Evo 4G put the Droid Incredible to shame. The Samsung Galaxy S came out later that month. Then the Nexus S … You get the point.
The average time smartphones spend on the market is now just six to nine months, according to HTC. But it wasn’t always this way: Average shelf time was about three years prior to 2007, HTC estimates.
