Planned obsolescence is something the technology industry has been doing for years. It is an artificially planned lifecycle that applies to electronics when manufacturers believe they’ll become outdated and useless for the greater majority. It encourages consumers to spend more regularly on tech and upgrade their electronics as often as possible. However, it doesn’t consider the severe impact planned obsolescence has on the natural world around us. We’re filling our landfills with increasingly toxic materials when many of us improperly dispose of electronics. This is something that has to change.

Planned obsolescence not only has negative consequences for the environment, but also for our wallets. Manufacturers are increasingly trying to get us to spend our hard-earned money on usually unnecessary upgrades through savvy commercial promotions and strategic launch timings. When we become more familiar with our electronics and their components, then we soon find out that upgrading all the time isn’t truly necessary to keep up with modern demands of technology. It just takes a more planned approach to ensure we’re maximizing the useful life of our gadgets while minimizing the amount of impact we have on the environment and our bank accounts!

So, what are some things we can do right now to ensure planned obsolescence becomes a thing of the past? While we’ll never truly eliminate corporate greed and profiteering, these are some things we can do to ensure what we buy today is still functionally useful well past its “planned finish”.

1. Buy Flagship Mobile Phones

Flagship mobile phones are top-range devices that include all of the best technologies available to consumers at that very moment. While they usually come with a very premium price tag to match, the investment is one that usually pays dividends. Consumers who get their hands on the highest levels of tech in the beginning will almost always find that their electronics last a lot longer than budget-friendly devices. The technologies in these devices are able to cope with sudden increases in technological demand far better than budget models, which will usually struggle or show a very obvious performance decrease as time goes on. Flagship phones will eventually succumb to performance decrease, but it will always be well-after planned obsolescence figures and statistics. It’s not unusual to still find first generation flagship phones in current use today with very functional lives and great app performance.

Flagship mobile phones also hold their value incredibly well as time goes on. When it does actually come time to upgrade your phone, then you’ll find you usually have excellent trade-in value for purchasing a newer phone. You can quickly assess the value of your mobile phone by using comparison websites like www.sellmyphone.co.uk. This website compares buy prices from the leading recyclers in the United Kingdom and allows you to secure the best price for your tech today.

1. Premium PC

Like buying flagship mobile phones, it’s important to consider buying a top-tier PC when choosing to upgrade your system. Mobile technology is rapidly evolving in today’s world, but desktop and laptop computers have taken a slight backseat to these advancements. It’s never been a better time to buy a high range personal computer because the useful life expectancy of them is far greater than it was 10 years ago due to the increasing change towards the mobile world.

You’ll usually find premium computers marked as “gaming systems”. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to play modern video games to use the system, but rather it contains far higher quality components and dedicated technology solutions built into the system. This will result in a far longer lasting computer that is able to cope with the natural evolution of technology when compared to budget systems. Value builds are strictly limited in their hardware and usually include low-end chips and components to follow their budget-friendly price tags.

1. High-end Peripherals

It’s important that we don’t just consider our immediate needs when it comes to purchasing future-proofed technology. Any accessories or required peripherals should similarly follow choosing a premium option rather than the cheapest budget option on the market. This is especially important for displays like computer monitors. Lower-end displays tend to be made with cheaper components, which result in LCD burnout and dead pixels on LEDs very quickly when compared to a premium display. While the proper maintenance procedures and care needs to be shown to any device, premium peripherals are able to cope with more of what life throws at them and will do so more readily than low priced options.

Yes, choosing to end planned obsolescence will require some investment on your behalf, but this initial upfront cost will ensure your tech goes a much longer way in terms of living a usable life beyond what the manufacturer wants to you to believe is the end of its natural lifecycle. Choosing value options is choosing a bleak future of excess e-waste, which could be reduce by considering your future needs in the beginning and making more selective choices in the process.

Francisco Butler