Why? Granted us techies want to have bleeding-edge everything, but the majority of phone users could safely ignore the upgrade treadmill if they weren’t having the latest-and-greatest shoved in their faces when their old phone craps out every year or two. You don’t need LTE, wireless-N, military-grade GPS, and a Retina display to make calls, text, browse Facebook, or play Angry Birds.
Phones are still changing pretty fast, but the basic technologies are already starting to stabilize after the flurry of innovation that came when the smartphone market exploded. What’s going to kill this in the market is that the manufacturers don’t want hardy, upgradable technologies. They want flashy, non-backwards compatible incremental upgrades and planned obsolescence, because that’s how they convince users to re-buy every year or two.
