It is amazing how we are always lusting after the newest and latest phone and we seem to turn over our phones at an amazing rate, discarding them after only a few short months to buy the latest mobile sim only phone or handset.
I can think of no other area of technology where the turnover of product is quite so high and we literally throw away some models while they are still in perfectly good working order. Many companies do trade in deals if you are buying a new phone package with them but if you try to sell it privately it becomes worthless almost as soon as you have purchased it.
One way of avoiding the feeling of guilt for this consumer tendency is to recycle your phone when buying a new one. Many charities collect old handsets and they use them to send to emerging countries where people are not quite so finicky about always having the latest model.
That seems to be one of the problems with our society in that we have lost sight that a phone is essentially a tool to keep in touch with our friends and family but instead has turned into a symbol of our own status.
The fact that we happily get rid of perfectly functioning phones has to be a sad symptom of our throwaway society.