Apple iOS 26 with Liquid Glass (from the Developer Beta). Kerry Wan/ZDNET
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ZDNET's key takeaways
Apple just announced the iPhone 17 lineup, with a new slim iPhone Air model.
Despite a few hardware updates, many consumers won't be compelled to upgrade.
If your iPhone supports the latest OS, you might find the upgrade too incremental to justify.
People used to replace their iPhones every few years. There was a time when every new iPhone felt like an all-new device, packed with new features and significant leaps forward in hardware capabilities.
As the iPhone became more refined, however, these new features felt less bombastic and more incremental with every new version. This, combined with increasingly resilient hardware, means that the consumer upgrade cycle has slowed down.
Also: iPhone 17 vs. iPhone Air, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max: I compared every model, and here's my buying advice
Consumers are also more budget-conscious these days. In a recent study published by Statista, researchers found that people are waiting longer to upgrade their phones, and that wait time is only going up -- projected to be an average of 2.93 years between upgrades by 2027.
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