Digital circuits use more energy than analog circuits to accomplish the same calculations and signal processing tasks, thus producing more heat as well. In portable or battery-powered systems this can be a major limiting factor, but in a situation where power is plentiful, a digital system is often preferred because of all the advantages listed above, especially that of (re-)programmability and ease of upgrading without requiring hardware changes.
A particular example is the cellular telephone, which being a battery-powered portable device, uses a low-power analog front-end to acquire and tune in the radio signal from the base station. The base station, being in a fixed location with access to the power grid, can afford to use power-hungry software-defined (digital) radio techniques that digitize the signal essentially at the antenna (after wideband filtering and down conversion to intermediate frequency) and performs all channelization and demodulation via software-driven calculations. Such base stations can be reprogrammed, potentially via remote control, to process the signals used in future cellular standards as those standards become available.
Digital circuits are sometimes more expensive, especially in small quantities.