Until recently, that’s been a wise strategy; carriers’ contracts encouraged frequent upgrades, and the smartphone business was advancing so rapidly that old phones just couldn’t keep up with the state of the art. But that aggressive upgrade cycle is taxing to the environment and to our wallets, and is unsustainable over the long run.

Image Credit... Stuart Goldenberg

“There are 5.6 billion adults in the world, and one day they all should have a cellphone,” said Kyle Wiens, the co-founder of iFixit, a site that publishes repair manuals for electronics. “To make that happen, we’re going to have to make sure that any phone manufactured today lasts for 10 years.”

Despite their small size, smartphones are expensive, resource-hungry goods, and they deserve a better life cycle than two years of use followed by an eternity in a forgotten desk drawer. It is possible to buy smartphones with an eye to longevity — a strategy that will save money and global resources and give you the snooty self-satisfaction of knowing you’re shunning gadget consumerism.

The main points are: Use your phone for more than two years, ideally three; when you run into trouble, try to repair, not replace it; and when you’re done with it, trade it in. When you’re looking for a new phone, don’t just consider the latest high-end devices; many people will find last year’s best phone just as useful as the newest one. You might even consider buying a used phone instead of a new one.

Sound complicated? It’s not. Let’s dive deeper into this plan:

KEEP YOUR PHONE LONGER. It’s become a cliché among tech critics that smartphones have crossed the threshold from amazing to boring. High-end phones seem to have hit an innovation plateau, with each new iPhone or Samsung Galaxy just incrementally better than the last.