Planning to keep your next phone for 3 years or more? Know these 7 tips before buying is attracting attention across the tech world. Analysts, enthusiasts, and industry observers are watching closely to see how this story develops.
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Most people are no longer upgrading their Android phones every two years. It’s now the norm for consumers to replace their devices every three or four years. It also doesn’t hurt that carriers have embraced 36-month or even 48-month contracts.
As such, I totally understand if you’re buying a phone with the intention of keeping it for three or more years. But before you put your money down or sign that contract, I’ve got some tips to keep in mind if you want to buy a phone that will last for years and years.
My first tip when buying a smartphone for the long haul is to ensure it has a long update policy. This means that the phone will receive software upgrades for many years to come, bringing new features and keeping the device secure.
Google, Samsung, and HONOR’s top-end phones all offer seven years of OS and security upgrades, making these the best performers in this regard. Meanwhile, high-end phones from the likes of Xiaomi and OnePlus often come with four major OS upgrades and six years of security patches. On the other end of the spectrum, cheap Motorola phones usually only get two OS updates and three years of security patches.
In other words, if you plan to keep a cheap Motorola phone for five years, it will stop receiving updates just after the midway point. This means your device won’t be protected against newfound vulnerabilities. The lack of Android OS upgrades after two years also means you won’t receive many new features down the line.
All smartphone batteries degrade over time, effectively losing 20% of their capacity after a set number of charging cycles. It’s why your new phone lasts for ages compared to the same phone two or three years later. However, phone batteries don’t degrade at the same rate.
Some phones have batteries rated for 800 charging cycles (i.e., roughly two years) before they’ve essentially lost 20% capacity. Google and Apple’s phones are rated for 1,000 charging cycles. Samsung is the top dog, though, as its flagship phones are rated for 2,000 cycles (more than four years) before effectively losing 20%. That means if you’ve got a Samsung phone and a Pixel device with the same battery capacity, the Pixel will see a more severe drop in battery life after a few years.
Needless to say, you should check how many charging cycles your next phone is rated for if you don’t want its battery life to fall off a cliff after a couple of years. Manufacturers sometimes post this info on their product pages, but they can also be cagey about it. I’d also recommend you visit the EU’s EPREL database to find these details.
There’s more to a smartphone’s long-term battery life than charging cycles, though. The actual battery capacity also plays a major role if you want to keep a phone for ages. After all, who cares if the phone’s battery ages very slowly when it’s a small battery capacity anyway?
I’d recommend buying a phone with a large battery (5,000mAh or higher), as this softens the blow of degradation. A phone with an average-sized battery will effectively turn into a device with a small battery owing to that ~20% capacity loss over time. However, a phone with a large battery will turn into one with an average-sized battery.
Of course, you ideally want a phone with both a huge battery and slow degradation. But a huge battery can help offset typical degradation. Furthermore, a phone with a large battery doesn’t need to be charged as often as one with a small battery, so it won’t accrue charging cycles as quickly. However, even a phone with a big battery will see a noticeable decline in endurance after five or six years.
You’ll accrue a ton of files as you use your phone over the years. This includes photos, videos, documents, downloaded podcasts, offline music playlists, and WhatsApp-related data. I therefore recommend buying a phone with plenty of storage if you plan to keep it for the long run. This way, you’re unlikely to run out of storage after a year or two. It also means you don’t have to constantly clean up files to claw back space.
I’d suggest buying a phone with at least 256GB of storage in 2026, as 128GB can fill up pretty quickly with captured media, downloaded music, and more. The good news is that the latest flagship phones from Apple, Samsung, and most Chinese brands offer 256GB of base storage. However, Google’s Pixel phones and many mid-range devices still start at just 128GB. This isn’t bad if you don’t use the camera much, or if you frequently offload photos and videos to cloud storage, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Another option is to find a phone with a built-in microSD card slot, allowing you to expand your storage with a memory card. Unfortunately, this feature is largely limited to budget Android phones and Sony’s high-end Xperia devices.
Many smartphones slow down over time, so it’s worth considering a phone that has good performance. Because much like battery degradation, a phone with mediocre performance on day one might be a stuttering mess four or five years later. But a phone with good performance out of the box should still be relatively smooth, or at least satisfactory, down the line. The big difference is that you can always replace your battery, but you can’t replace your phone’s processor.
Furthermore, manufacturers and Google constantly bring new features to their phones with each major update. Some of these features require a relatively powerful phone, leaving you in the lurch if your device has no horsepower. You should also consider device performance if you’re a mobile gamer, as a phone with disappointing performance in 2026 is less likely to support the most demanding games a few years from now. My rule of thumb is to buy phones with Snapdragon 8 series chips, recent Snapdragon 7 series processors, Dimensity 8000 or 9000 chips, Samsung’s Exynos 2×00 series, or Google’s Tensor line.
Some Chinese brands like OPPO, vivo, and OnePlus also make interesting claims about long-term performance. for instance, OnePlus asserts that the Nord CE 6 Lite will maintain its smoothness for five years, while vivo made the same claim for its V50. I imagine that if these phones have middling performance on day one, this promise just means they’ll have the same middling performance five years from now. I’d still prioritize a good chip and a decent amount of RAM (8GB or more) over these claims, though. But it’s something else to keep in mind if you want to keep your phone for three or more years.
Another significant consideration is the phone’s durability. After all, you don’t want your new device to break after its first drop. There are several durability-related factors worth knowing.
Perhaps the most significant consideration is the type of protective glass on the phone’s display. Gorilla Glass is the most popular protective glass solution on the market, but there are many versions. Some cheap phones use old Gorilla Glass versions (i.e., Gorilla Glass 3), but you should really look for the Gorilla Glass Victus series and Gorilla Glass 7i if you want more robust protection. Some of the most durable phones on the market use ceramic-based protective glass, such as Gorilla Glass Ceramic, HONOR NanoCrystal Shield, and Gorilla Armor, for improved scratch resistance. Does the phone you’re eyeing have a glass back? Then you should also make sure that the rear cover is protected by Gorilla Glass.
You should also check your phone’s IP rating, which is expressed as two digits (e.g., IP53, IP68). The first digit refers to dust resistance, while the second refers to freshwater resistance. That means a phone with an IP53 rating can resist dust and splashes but can’t be dunked in water. Meanwhile, a phone with an IP67 rating or higher is sealed against dust and can be immersed in water. Some phones don’t have prominent IP ratings at all, but might have “water-repellent” designs. Translation: You can probably use the phone in the rain, but that’s it.
Another key tip when buying a phone for long-term usage is to make sure that repairs won’t be a problem. Phones officially sold in your country will often have official or authorized repair centers, but it’s a good idea to double-check this.
If you don’t mind DIY repairs, you should find out how easy it is to repair your future smartphone. The iFixit platform often posts written articles and videos detailing a phone’s repairability, complete with a score out of 10. The JerryRigEverything and PBKReviews YouTube channels also deliver great teardown videos. Otherwise, Fairphone is the undisputed king of repairable phones, while HMD has also released a few repairable phones in the last couple of years.
Even if you don’t plan to fix your own phone, you should still find out how easy it is to get spare parts for your prospective phone. Some brands sell spare parts via their website or repair centers, while others might partner with iFixit. The likes of Google and Samsung both sell spare parts in the US, with Google also confirming it’ll offer them for seven years, matching their phone update policy. That’s good news and means you won’t be left in the lurch if you need a new screen or battery five years from now. This also means you can buy spare parts and then take both the parts and your broken phone to an alternative repair store if you’d like.
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Why This Matters
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Looking Ahead
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Observers will continue tracking the next steps and how they affect products, users, and the wider market.
