it's new iphone season again everyone but
is it a good time to upgrade and here's the thing i'm not even asking whether
you think that the newest iphone is worth switching to i'm talking
specifically about this time of year is
it a good time to upgrade think about it for a second new iphones
get released at the same time every year which means that there is a certain
seasonality to the pricing of the latest
the last gen and even second-hand
iphones and the crazy thing is this topic goes
deeper than that because even if you hate iphones you're going to want to
stay tuned because as it turns out computer processors are affected in a
similar manner and apple's september event can also affect
the pricing of certain components for things like gaming pcs
so we're going to tell you what to look out for right after this message from our sponsor pulseway pulseway lets you
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a new iphone has been announced on the second week of september every year
since the iphone 5 launch in 2012 with availability about 10 days later give or
take so for years you could count on the latest iphone costing 6.49 unsubsidized
with the plus size model selling for a hundred dollars more
that is until apple snuck an extra 50
onto the price tag of the iphone 8 and 8 plus and then quite literally turned it
up to 11 the following year what hasn't changed is the discount on last gen
phones every time a new iphone launches the devices from the previous year are
dropped one hundred dollars this is notable because historically
it's been the only time that apple has directly adjusted the iphone's
unsubsidized price even their black friday sales are just
free apple gift cards offered alongside regularly priced devices
so an iphone will typically get discounted twice before it gets
discontinued with the exception of the iphone 5 and the 10 which were both
discontinued after just one year when the subsequent generation's budget
offering made them redundant just because a model is discontinued
however doesn't mean that it is not supported
over time apple has actually increased the number of years of support that they
offer to new iphones but there's something to watch out for here when you
hear that an iphone gets five years of updates take that android loser that
means five years from the phone's launch not five years after you walk to a store
and buy it so if you think about it then a last gen
iphone isn't discounted much if at all
when you factor in that apple is going to kill its software updates that much
sooner reducing its expected lifespan so our recommendation then is if you're
planning to buy an iphone off contract buy it within the september launch
period like do it right away the reason is that your purchase price
of the phone isn't going to go down over the course of the rest of the year
anyway but the resale value of your current phone could dropping 10 to 15
per month after the new generation's launch so like if you're gonna spend the
money you might as well get max enjoyment out of it by the way guys yes
i will be reviewing the new iphones subscribe now so that you don't miss it
now to change gears a little bit i mentioned before that even if you have
no intention of ever buying an iphone it's still a good idea to be mindful of
their launch window when you're upgrading your other electronics
let's talk about how the demand for iphones can actually impact the price of
the commodity chips that you'd find on your next ssd or maybe even system
memory upgrade apple is the third largest manufacturer of smartphones
globally behind samsung and huawei but
unlike samsung who launches their galaxy s and note phones five months apart with
other models sprinkled in between apple's new iphone lineup usually all
launches at the same time or very close to it this puts a huge demand on
manufacturers of integrated circuits like dram and nand flash that are found
not just in phones but in tablets servers and yes of course your gaming pc
so smartphones use up 35 of the world's
nand flash memory that's more than any other segment so phone production during
the summer to stock up for a big launch can actually eat up a lot of the global
supply resulting in more expensive ssds during the holiday season a problem that
ends up getting amplified whenever apple increases the storage capacity of their
base model phones something that at the time of filming is rumored to happen
this year including even on their budget model so that phone
the 11r 10r2 ys i don't know whatever it ends up
being called could potentially impact ram prices too the iphone 10r has been
the best selling iphone since it launched accounting for nearly half of
all iphone sales in the third quarter of this year and its successor is predicted
to feature 33 percent more ram that's 4 gigs up from just 3 on the 10r
however when it comes to ram there are many other factors that affect the
supply everything from transitions to new process nodes and waiting for fabs
to fire up to international trade spats to
fires ripping through factories quite literally so imho it's not likely to be
the new iphones that end up raising dram prices and that seems especially
unlikely given that smartphone manufacturers have been missing their
sales forecasts for the latest and greatest smartphones due to falling
sales in recent years this has caused oversupply and the current climate of
very very low memory prices there's also the fact that there are
some single devices already being shipped in volume that pack more ram
than apple's entire flagship lineup combined so yeah there's that too
another industry that launches products like clockwork
pun definitely intended is desktop computer processors
on the surface there might not appear to be much of a pattern to intel's cpu
launch schedule over the last nine years ever since they separated their
enthusiasts and their mainstream product lineups but there are a couple of key
takeaways here one is that intel typically launches
enthusiast flagship processors at any of
three times per year during ces in early january during computex in early summer
or right before the holiday shopping season in early autumn after the launch
a couple of things will happen depending on the strength of the new product
compared to last gen the pricing for the older parts will either hold pretty
steady while the stock trickles off the shelves or it'll
plummet and there will be deals on
motherboards one of intel's rather annoying habits is their tendency to
drop a new motherboard chipset on the consumers even if it isn't strictly
needed for compatibility and or doesn't even offer a tangible performance
improvement so that is actually where some of the best deals can be found
lightly discounted cpus and clearance motherboards bundled together and this
can be true of amd as well 3rd gen ryzen chips paired with b450 motherboards are
currently one heck of a killer value combo
but another consideration that didn't used to be a big deal when it came to
computer processors is support
as cpus have gotten more complex timely patches for security vulnerabilities
like spectre and meltdown have become more and more of a factor and some users
were very disappointed to discover that their still very functional 900 series
core i7 processor would not be getting a patch for spectre or meltdown the main
lesson here for computer enthusiasts then is that cpus and actually graphics
cards for that matter have a seasonality to them as well so in conclusion i'd say
go ahead and upgrade your pc ram whenever you want this year and if
you're unsure how much you need maybe check out our guide right over here just
maybe keep a close eye on ssd prices especially if you're targeting the lower
capacity parts and if you start to see things creep up maybe pull the trigger
sooner rather than later thing is you got to save money on that
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