yet they’re still priced and treated culturally like luxury toys
You’re must be joking! Look around, if you look past the bitten apple, there are plenty of perfectly capable devices out there for under $300. In fact, I see plenty of people who are on the street corners panhandling AND using a smartphone.
A quick Google showed me a $40 smartphone from Walmart. Granted it’s probably pretty terrible, but it does go to show that they aren’t all priced like luxury toys. If you want a luxury branded phone, you’ll pay luxury prices.
I went through a time where I weaned myself from phones by using an ancient flip phone, plus an old Galaxy only on WiFi. Then I moved and needed text messaging etc and bought a $40 Kyocera at Radio Shack thinking it would be good enough. It… sort of was. Mainly I regret that it had a really shitty camera, plus god knows what insane Android spyware.
You can get a refurbished SE with an A15 cpu for around $200. That’s more processing power than any reasonable person needs on the toilet.
Of course you can get a used of refurbished ones for less even Apple. I was referring to new devices. As an example, I use a Motorola Edge plus that I bought new for $400. It does everything my wife’s iPhone 15 Pro. The camera quality is slightly lower, but perfectly adequate.
I bought a new iPhone 6 for $200 when the 7-8 were new. Totally happy with it and I used it for 3 years. Apple used to be priced at a premium but that hasn’t been true for several years… high-end Android phones cost as much as new iOS devices, and you can get old ones or a SE pretty cheap.
Regarding panhandlers with cellphones: https://www.wikihow.com/Get-an-Obama-Phone
If you go for used devices, you can quite easily get an outdated entry level phone for free and a decently useable one for <€30.
You can even get new entry level phones for as cheap as €70.
So it’s very much a market where you can spend whatever you want.
A flagship phone is priced like a luxurity toy, because that’s exactly what it is.
And an entry level phone is incredibly cheap so that people who have no money can still get one. €70 with 2 years of usage is less than €3/month (realistically though, if you are in this kind of situation, you hold on to a phone for much longer).
Over here, if you are poor enough, you’ll even get a free phone plan.
I think it’s actually kinda crazy what kind of new phone you can get for 200 dollars. My last phone was a 200 dollar phone that did everything my old flagship phone did. Obviously there are differences if you look deep. I talked to my friend who just bought a 1200 dollar samsung phone and said he “needs” a phone like that, because of the camera. I don’t know what that means, because he sells bread at a bakery. His camera was obviously better, but he never goes deep into his settings, like all he does is auto focus and click the button. We went on a bike ride and i’m not a picture kinda guy, i use my camara pretty much only for work related stuff and it doesn’t matter how good it is. And i showed someone a picture i took and the guy said: wow that must be a really good canera. Which kinda upset samsung guy.
I don’t know anyone who uses their 1000 dollar phone to even a fraction of it’s capability. Now i own a nothing phone which is priced somewhere in the middle, and i like it a lot, but i wouldn’t say it’s much better than my 200 dollar phone.I was selling phones back when most people thought that Internet on a cell phone was a crazy idea. Phones were advancing by leaps and bounds. The difference between a 1MP and 5MP camera was amazing.(mostly) Every year, the new version had features that last year’s wouldn’t dream of.
Now, I’m running a five year old flagship Android, because there still won’t be much of a difference when I finally do upgrade.
That was insane. I remember reading that 1mp cameras on phones are just years away. I was pretty excited and couldn’t believe it. Not two months later they released the first 1mp phone. And that was just the beginning.
The only reason i buy new phones is because it gets really dusty and abused because of work and stuff. So speakers give up, too many cracks to handle and charging port malfunction. It’s nice to have a new battery as well. But these super high resolution panels with ridiculous framerates are pretty pointless. I sometimes watch halfeay through a YouTube video and don’t realize that it’s 480p. And i’m pretty picky with my computer monitor. I want my 2k and my 165fps.That was a crazy time.
I still have my HTC Universal, which was an absolute flagship in 2005.
My next phone was a Motorola Droid 3, a mit-ranger from 2011.
If you put both of them side by side, these phones could be from different planets.
If he doesn’t use any camera settings getting a high end phone will ofcourse give the best results for someone that just wants to point and shoot.
But I’ve definitely seen similar reactions to pictures I took on my Poco F1 once I had a custom Gcam app well tuned. In good conditions it was close to the best phones of the time.
There are plenty of touch screen smartphones out there that cost like $150. The expensive ones are still the norm though because people want status symbols
While some may but them for status, I bought the 22 ultra for screen real-estate, a built in s-pen, and a badass camera. There’s definitely reasons to invest in a good device beyond impressing others.
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I agree. I get an insane amount of use from my phone both at home and away from home. Much more than the desktops and laptops I have. Buying a new one for $800 sucks but that only happens once every 3-4 years.
You get 80% of the price you paid for a phone 2 years later?
I’m calling bullshit there. I could buy a brand new iPhone 13 for £599 today when it released at £779 in September 2021. Why would they give you more than the cost of a new one…?
Or for android, a brand new Samsung S22 costs £499 today and released in early 2022 for £769.
No way you’re getting 80% of what you paid for it after 2 years of use.
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If that were the case couldn’t I literally buy a phone with cash and trade it in for more value?Right now in the US you can buy an iPhone 13 for $475 from Walmart, but a carrier will give you a trade in value of $640ish you reckon?
We generally don’t buy phones with cash here either and there are plenty of networks competing, but nobody offers 80% of what you paid 2 years later as a trade in, because they simply aren’t worth it.
Not saying you’re lying, I just don’t see the logic, feel like I’m missing something.
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Yeah I figured that out by pretending to buy one on the at&t site. They eat the cost of the phone because in the US the network fees are mental from what I could tell.
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Jesus I just set up an iPhone 15 purchase with at&t claiming to trade in your phone and yeah it’s $1000 trade in. However I couldn’t work out why it was a final price of 0 so I kept going, the actual network plans are fucking insane prices so I guess that’s where they make their money back. In the UK I pay £20 a month for a Samsung s22 and £20 a month for 200gb data and unlimited calls/texts. The equivalent of about $50 a month total without even trading in my old phone.
I was feeling hard done by until I got to the network plans, fuck me.
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We can say the same thing about cars or any necessary manufactured good. But in every category, as with phones, cheaper models exist.
cars are not a necessity same as phones
Guess that depends on where you live
I’ve bought people very nice phones for under $400 multiple times. Recently.
Flagship phones are grossly overpriced. The midrange is super nice and usable these days, though. It’s a side advantage of phone tech standardizing so much. And as you said, being a necessity for daily life it’s probably okay to spend at least a few hundred on one you’re going to use for several years.
Is this going to be another “the US has weird ideas about consumer goods” thread? Because it kinda sounds like one.
I just bought a new phone (originally released in May 2023) for $170. I’ve used it for 3 days now and it works perfectly. My old phone lasted ~3-4 years and cost a similar price.
I stopped buying “flagship” phones years ago and it’s been great. Midrange phones are absolutely the phones people should be buying.
I also get the bells and whistles that are often missing from premium phones. I have an SD card slot for expandable storage and I have a headphone jack.
Oh, man, I switched from Samsung to Sony because they still do all those midrange phone features in a flagship container.
I’d have gone full midrange, but I hang around mobile developers a lot and I was already getting crap for being on a four year old flagship (that was still in working order and I still use for other stuff). Now my Xperia is a conversation starter in those circles, for some reason and I still get to add storage and use my headphones and my screen has no holes in it.
Just don’t buy crapple
If we could fight over legislations to force swappable batteries and operating systems, most people would just buy used. Like how now laptops, desktops, Raspberry Pi’s you can buy used cheap, slap a light fresh OS and go.
We’ll at least get swappable batteries in the EU from 2027 on. From then on it will be illegal to sell phones without swappable batteries.
All of them aren’t. There are cheap touch screen phones. You just don’t get ridiculous features at the price point if $50. The Samsung A30 is a pretty cheap android phone.
Just like with everything else there’s a gradient of price and quality. You don’t have to buy a 1300 dollar iPhone, you could get one for only a couple hundred that would serve any use case you can think of where it would be required.
Just because something is a necessity for daily life doesn’t mean it’s going to be cheap, it can’t just be sold below cost simply because it’s critical.
They’re also full of the most compact and advanced sensors developed to date. It’s amazing what they’re capable of, but I agree they’re just a matter of fact now
You can get good condition, used, last year flagships on eBay and Swappa all day long. I’ve literally never bought a brand new phone.
A mate of mine has a keyboard flip phone and it’s amazing full qwerty keyboard dude can type wicked quick on that thing compared to touch screens
Uhh no? They’ve gotten really cheap nowadays.
$300 gets you a 5G capable phone with a high refresh OLED and a processor fast enough to play resource intensive games like Genshin Impact.
You can get a decent smart phone for $0 on a contract here in the US. Same as it was back in days of dumb candy bar and RAZR flip phones.
And like the old days, there are phones you can spend a lot of money on. But these are also a fast portable computer and a killer camera.
IMHO, the pricing makes total sense to me. Hell, before cell phone cameras got good, people commonly spent $400+ on nice point and shoot camera.
Here in Europe you can also get pretty good phones with such contracts. But the contracts are insanely overpriced for sometime 30€/month for 2gb. Where you pay 10€ for 2gb without a phone.
I know phones cost money but when they lock you in a shitty contract for 2 or even 4 years, is it even worth it.
I know phones cost money but when they lock you in a shitty contract for 2 or even 4 years, is it even worth it.
In the EU, mobile phone contracts have been limited to 24 months since 2011.
Ok didn’t know that. But that is a good explanation why i haven’t seen 4y contracts since some years
A contract like that doesn’t make the phone free.
You just pay for it over time and pay more in the end.
They just incorporate the price into your subscription and lock you in it, making it overpriced.
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You could argue that’s a definition of success for a gadget: when it is ubiquitous and necessary.
Time to get in on some new gadget that will soon be a boring ordinary part of life. Electric Vehicles look like they will but still pretty expensive. My vote is home automation stuff
Electric Vehicles look like they will but still pretty expensive.
Expensive and impractical at the moment due to the lack of charging stations.
My vote is home automation stuff
I kinda hope not. I don’t need even more devices listening in on me.
Most charging happens at home. There are still some hurdles, but lack of charging stations is not the argument against mass adoption of EVs that you think it is.
Sadly I can’t find any hard numbers but this report states “The project shed light on other facets of PEV use. It found that public and workplace charging infrastructure enabled drivers to increase their electric driving range, although most drivers did not charge away from home frequently”
edit: nevermind, there is another report that states “According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 80 percent of EV charging happens at home”
And how many people do you think live in apartments/rentals that cannot just install a charging station at home?
My bet is on VR/AR
I have VR and I don’t see how that would ever reach mass adoption. I think it will forever be a toy for people interested in techy stuff, and only be a tool for very specific jobs.
It’s just not really useful in any meaningful way to most people. Why would I replace a regular monitor with VR if all I do is organize spreadsheets and write emails?
I’ve got the hardware to use VR on my gaming rig.
But between the entry cost for the actual VR equipment, and the sheer lack of games that look interesting I don’t see the point in it.
Then again, the lack of games that look interesting isn’t just a VR problem - to me at least.
Repeating patterns of slight upgrades to visuals, mechanics I grew bored of a decade ago, etc.
I used to rip on Madden/FIFA/Sports games in general for that crap, but it seems to be the trend.
That being said, I’ve felt jaded about games since I was a teen, and that was a long time ago, but there was always something to keep my attention.
Don’t really have any other majornhobbies though, so I’m at a bit of an impasse on that subject. I do spend more time with my wife though, lol.
Rockid, Xreal and RayNeo watching closely.
