So I generally replace my iPhone on roughly a 3-year cycle (iPhone 4 Nov. 2010, iPhone 5c Sept. 2013, iPhone SE Mar. 2017) but I've got a real urge to upgrade early when this year's iPhone drops, and I'm having a hell of a time talking myself into it.
My SE's battery is more or less kaput. After almost two and a half years of daily usage I find I can drain it from 100% to 0% in roughly three hours of average use. I know a new battery can be purchased from Apple for $50, and from third party suppliers for $30, but I'm never a fan of doing surgery on iPhones, even though I've done it a dozen times by now. I figure that's $50 I can put into a new iPhone instead.
I'd like a new camera. The wife and I adopted a cat recently, and trying to take pictures of a black cat in a poorly lit room really highlights how poor the iPhone SE camera is, especially next to my wife's iPhone XR. I have a "proper" camera that I bought back in 2012 (Fujifilm X10) but it's so inconvenient to take out and about that I'm honestly thinking of selling it for whatever it's worth (Maybe $200-300ish? It was worth $600 new) and putting that cash into a new iPhone instead, as much as it pains me, because I honestly haven't used it enough to get $600 worth out of it, no matter how much I push myself to use it. (Doesn't help that the fancy leather case I bought back in 2012 recent fell apart on me...gotta get some glue for that.)
My biggest roadblock with this whole scenario is the size of the phone itself though. I don't consider myself a heavy phone user. I'll watch a Youtube video here and there and maybe browse the web, but I'm generally not the kind of person that is glued to their phone, especially after buying an Apple Watch last year. Because of this, I love love love (x100) the size of the iPhone SE. Small, compact, out of the way, slips easily into a shirt pocket without peeking out and is almost smaller than my wallet. It does everything I could want or need it to without being a ginormo-phone like what's on the market today.
The rumor coming down the pipeline is that Apple has a new "small" phone being prepped for 2020, but that's a LONG way away and I honestly don't know if I want to stay on my iPhone SE for that much longer, especially considering it was technically a generation out of date when I bought it. iPhones now come in "Uncomfortably Big" (iPhone XS Max) "Hilariously Big" (iPhone XR) and "Bigger Than I'd Care For" (iPhone XS) and as far as I can tell the 2019 iPhones are going to come in those same sizes.
So now I'm more or less stuck in a land with no real options, and it suuuuuucks. I can wait for the 2020 phone, hope it's closer in size to the iPhone SE that I love, and just live with my iPhone SE that I have now for another 14 months. Or I can buy the 2019 phone, then kick myself when I've spent $1000+ on a phone that I don't really want, especially when the 2020 iPhone releases and it could potentially be closer to what I'd prefer. Or I can buy a refurbished iPhone 8 or iPhone X and probably overspend for tech that'll be two years old at that point.
I guess I can't make any proper decisions until Apple's iPhone event comes, but it's a real bummer that I don't have a whole lot of real options in the meantime.