Although Mobile phones have been around for more than 20 years and we had disposable mobile phones in the past, but Samsung has taken a bold step to introduce smartphones which are not only cheap but are very reliable as well and offer its users excellent usability experience.
These mobile phones include Samsung J, and A series, the drawback of these series is that their displays are much more expensive than would have expected them to be. Hence, people prefer to buy a new mobile phone rather than getting their old mobile phone fixed. But at the same time, they hold their market value, and when you try to sell them, they fetch a decent amount of money.
I recently had to sell a Samsung Galaxy A3 and recycle a Samsung s7. Both the mobile phone was both at the same time in 2016 and had almost the same type of wear and tear. Over the years, the Samsung s7 lost practically 80% of its value, whereas Samsung A3 just lost 30% of its value when I sold them. This is an excellent insight on how low-value mobile phones do not tend to lose their value over time as compared to high-end mobile phones such as Samsung s7, Samsung s8 and Samsung s9 models.
Most of the mobile phones lose their value over time, but the budget mobile phones, even those who are not android or are apple do not lose their value as much. For instance, Samsung E1100 etc. are £15 brand new, and when you sell them after a few years of usage, they still manage to fetch £10. Whereas a latest Samsung Galaxy mobile phone bought for £500 will be of less than £100 after few years of usage which is massive depreciation.
Over the last couple of years, several steps taken by Samsung have shortened the life-cycle of Samsung Mobile Phones. Until 2015, most of the Samsung’s flagship models such as Samsung Galaxy s3, Samsung Galaxy s4, Samsung S5 and Samsung Note 2 had much longer product life cycle purely because their screens were being refurbished in vast quantities at a fraction of the cost of a used mobile phone of the same model.
It definitely helped the environment but significantly dropped the need of newer mobiles. Now all the devices which use, apparently better screen technology called WQHD Super AMOLED other than the previous technology HD Super AMOLED are hard to get refurbished. So, in case of an accident, the customer has to pay more than what is the price of a used mobile phone of the same model to get their screen fixed.
This had shortened the product life cycle with many mobile phones getting broken and going into the trash rather than getting refurbished/repaired and finding a new home. Other than that, Samsung also has started gluing its mobile phones rather than getting them screwed so technically speaking, in most cases the screen has to be broken or peeled off using a hot oven with 50% chances of mobile phone being more damaged in the process of opening, as it’s not screwed to rest of the mobile phone to get into it and fix anything.
Mobile Phones manufactured after 2016 are glued including Samsung Galaxy S6, Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and Samsung Galaxy S7 series. The sticking of mobile phones has made it not only harder for technicians to fix but also expensive for consumers. Overall, these steps taken by Samsung has shortened the product life cycle of Samsung mobile Phones by half.
