You know the drill - a newer model of your current phone nears release, and your handset of choice suddenly feels sad and useless. What to do given that you splurged so much money on it last year, and it still works perfectly fine? Well, researchers from the Columbia Business School recently plotted the amount of accidents with our phones prior to the new model release, and it turns out that they go up nearer to the event.
There is even a phrase coined for this phenomenon - the "upgrade effect" - and it seems to be valid for a lot of things, not only handsets. The authors also focused on the peak of the amount of iPhones reported lost when a fresher model is on the horizon.
Thus, it turns out that we may be subconsciously more careless with our oldie-but-goodies when a shinier thing is in store, and may be more prone to lose or drop them in order to justify a new purchase - you know, the "oops" factor.
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