I got a new phone last year because my old phone could not call emergency services. Even if it was still receiving updates it's not clear that this would be fixed though. Google seems to think that local regulations prevent them from fixing this users of certain of their phones on certain carriers.
I've decided to upgrade instead of fix a 3-year-old phone that was because even if I could fix the hardware I still would not be able to safely enable bluetooth due to an arbitrary code execution bug in android that was not patched. It was otherwise perfectly good for my needs. I could not install a custom ROM because my model was not well supported and any I could not rely on such ROMs passing safetynet/play secure checks which the extremely vulnerable OEM ROM would reliably pass.
Maybe not throw away but give away. Just look at how many people buy a new phone every 2 years or even shorter period. Something must happen to their old phones.
People do that exact same thing with iPhones, so clearly Apple must suck too. /s
A lot of phone purchases anymore fall into the fashion side of consumerism. They don't actually care about X, Y or Z new features. They just want to show off that they have the new thing.
