Buy or Wait? Here’s a Guide to Phone Upgrades.

Apple, Samsung and others want us to replace our phones constantly, but many of our problems with current devices can be fixed.

It’s almost phone season again — the time of year when tech companies like Apple, Google and Samsung bombard us with glitzy marketing campaigns to persuade us to upgrade. Their new phones vary somewhat, but the pitch is always roughly the same: The phone you have is no longer good enough because this new one has a fancier camera and brighter screen, plus it’s faster. So give the “old” one to a less tech-inclined member of the family or trade it in for credit toward a shiny new gadget. This hype cycle creates an annual dilemma: Is it time to upgrade? We all know that after a few years, our phones no longer work as well as they used to. It might not be able to run the latest apps. It can feel sluggish. Some components, like touch-screens, may begin to fail.