The basics - talk and text, check.
4G LTE data, check.
Streaming video and audio, check.
Front and rear camera, both with flash, check.
Shoots 720p video, check.
About 75GB of usable storage, check.
Can store hundreds of videos and thousands of songs, check.
Plays graphics-intensive games, check.
Can run hundreds of fun and productive apps, check.
Can download third-party apps, check.
Runs Google Assistant, every bit as good as Siri.
Don’t see what an extra $750 buys you. And I’m not knocking Apple. There are Android phones every bit as expensive.
Well, without bickering over specific dollar amounts, a few things I see that a higher-end phone brings are:
large amounts of fast storage. Cheap phones use microSD cards which are horribly slow, especially when you have 80 GB of music files on it
screens made of more advanced toughened glass (e.g. Corning’s Gorilla Glass.) cheap phones use plain glass which scratches the instant you take it out of the box
reasonably good battery life. My iPhone 6S is only down about 30% at the end of the day, while any Android thing I’ve had would torch its (higher capacity) battery well before the end of the day.
More expensive phones tend to have better cameras as well. That was a big driver of my decision to get the Galaxy S7 (not the S8, I’m not cutting edge).
Indeed, that last one is a good point – with smartphones and computers Apple makes its money by selling only upmarket product in the “walled garden”, while on the side of Windows/Android-Chrome/Linux due to the delinking of hardware from software you get bottom to top across niches and classes, with their high-end product at times scooping Apple on the bells-and-whistles department.
One other thing about a higher end vs lower end smartphone, is updateability. A higher end smartphone will probably be good for a couple more years’ worth of system updates. And even then for most regular customers they do not need the latest and greatest anyway and can run for years perfectly fine on older versions (My first iPhone 3GS stayed with me for FIVE years, and over a year and a half past end of iOS update support, only changed it when IT at work started warning me that things I needed would stop working altogether AND when guaranteed that my unlimited data was grandfathered in).
High-end does usually give me higher build quality. Is it fivefold higher quality for pricing purposes? That’s something to take up with Mr. Adam Smith. It’s worth what the market will bear.
It will be interesting to see how the upgrade-phone-every-possible-chance crowd will evolve in a world of paying something close to real market price for top of the line Android and iOS gear. Will they discover they can live w/o face ID? Will they say to themselves, exactly what is it I want to look at edge-to-edge at ultra HD resolution? Or, what is so terrible about plugging a wire? Will they hold on a couple of months to make sure the newest fanciest gizmo does not catch fire at random intervals?
Of course the every-year upgraders are who the makers rely upon to create extra demand for the latest features. It has been some time for instance since Tim Cook has announced anything to which I really looked forward in my price range, yet there’s always some writer going “OMG finally” as if it were a longing of the ages. They are not going to make a grand a year from the likes of me but it’s their business plan, good luck with it.
Well, that’s your preference. And it’s mine too, I prefer to stay a model or two behind to save a few bucks.
But look, the judgmental attitude in the thread is kind of silly, because I am very confident everyone who says “I can’t believe idiots spend money on X” spend money on Y, which the folks with new phones would consider insane. I personally have no interest in ever buying a car that isn’t an economy brand but some people like to buy a Lexus and drive a really sweet car. That’s an extra $30K I would no more spend than I’d set my dick on fire, but if someone really likes fine cars, good for them. It’s their money, it’s not “stupid” to spend money on things you like. I spent way more money and time on baseball than most people, but that’s my call.
If I may now offer a more specific defense, an iPhone is no more “a fucking phone” than an F-14 Tomcat was just a cat. Smartphones are ill-named; a smartphone is a handheld computer. That’s what we all have in our pockets; handheld computers. The feature where it makes phone calls isn’t even the third most important thing my phone does.
If you think of your smartphone as what it is, a handheld computer, they are reasonably priced. They are amazingly, immensely powerful devices for their size, and $800 or whatever for a portable computer weighing less than a baseball that make phone calls AND takes high resolution pictures and video, doesn’t strike me as being an outrageous sum.
This turns entirely on what you define as core functions. A huge number of people define security of their information as a core function. A huge number of people define being able to take good photos in poor lighting as a core function. A huge number of people define having apps that only exist or function well in the Apple (or other) ecosystem as a core function. A huge number of people define longer battery life and rapid charging as a core function.
It’s of course the case that many people buy high-end phones as a status symbol or luxury item, or because of some truly marginal quality difference like milliseconds faster processing or a slightly more durable glass.
Where you go wrong is in thinking that there is no one, or only a small number, for whom the exclusive features of the high-end phone are very important.
“horribly slow”?, I have 50gb of music and video on my cheap android on an sd card and I just select it and it plays, not sure how “fast” has anything to do with it.
My phone has Gorilla Glass. And it has no scratches despite the fact that I keep it in my pocket. And in eight years of owning smartphones, both Apple and Android, I’ve never had a scratched or cracked screen. I can download music (my own music files from Google Music) in less than a minute for an album and I can start playback in a couple of seconds. I don’t know what’s horribly slow about that. I won’t argue about the battery life, but I can go pretty long before it goes down below 30%. And I have a couple of little rechargeable external batteries that I hardly ever need to use and a car charger, too. My camera is good enough, I only use it for taking snapshots. And if I don’t like the photo, I can take another. And I have photo enhancement software on my phone. I still don’t see what $750 buys you except for getting to say to people, “See? I have money to spend on an expensive phone.”
As mentioned, smartphones are small computers. Higher priced (better spec’d) ones have faster processors, faster memory, better cameras and other features than cheaper ones. There’s diminishing returns, of course, a $600 phones isn’t significantly different from a $800 phone. And there’s ways to get good specs more inexpensively – there’s a number of Chinese models offering high end specs for a lot less money than Samsung or Google. But the idea that they’re the same is like saying a $279 Dell from Walmart is “the same” as a high end gaming rig because they both run Win10 and can go on Facebook. Even if all you do is watch cat videos, the better spec’d machine will do it better (faster Win10 response, more cat video tabs open, etc); whether you think the cost is worth it is up to you. But you are getting more for your money than the right to say that you spent money.
Saying something is “good enough” doesn’t devalue it for others. My wife loves to take photos and values a good camera on her phone. I don’t and don’t especially care if the camera rises above “functional”. But sometimes we’re at an event and she takes photos that look great and mine are grainy or otherwise trash. The extra money she spent on a phone with a good camera was worth it for her even if I’m not willing to make that investment.
I’m not defending my own $800 purchase, by the way. My phone cost me $250 and is one of the before mentioned Chinese entries. Sadly, the company making it (LeEco) was mismanaged and is in bad shape but the phone itself is rock solid and I’ve been very happy with it.
Ooh, you’re pushing my buttons here. I thought I did my homework, and went to switch to Sprint from ATT a couple months ago. I had bought a (Sprint-model) Galaxy S7 from Amazon for a few hundred, and brought it in. They refused to set it up. No, we had to get new Galaxy s8 on a payment plan. I said, can’t we just buy the phones outright, then, and they goggled at me. Didn’t even understand what I meant. I should have walked out, I really should have…Now we’re **still **paying ATT over my husband’s old phone/upgrade whatever, and I can’t deal with them because my name isn’t the official account holder, and he hasn’t taken the time to deal with them yet. So we haven’t saved **any **money whatsoever. We live in a small town, too, so there aren’t many options (at least if you want to ensure coverage). Also, my old Moto G 100 phone doesn't really seem any worse than my new one (actually, it had expandable storage, so that's better), and my new one is already cracked all over the sides. Whoever thought it was a good idea to make the frame glass as well as the display...#@!%^!
First time I’ve ever felt like saying “get offa my lawn.” I’m too old for this shit.
Getting more for your money is of course only equivalent to getting value for that money, if you need the ‘more’ (I think that was your point, in which case I am agreeing with you).
I’ve been reviewing a number of Chinesium smartphones lately and really, they’re pretty damn good for the money. It’s still often the case that any particular model may be deeply deficient in some way or other (camera quality has been a bugbear for me), but the rate of improvement is pretty phenomenal.
I could spend four times the price on a phone that has better gaming performance, or a 2K screen, or some such, but those features are not value for my money if I don’t need them. That’s the deceptive part of the ‘premium’ end of the market - expensive features you’ll never use are worthless except for bragging rights.
We agree there. But some people seem to act as though there’s no difference between a $100 phone and a $700 phone aside from price tag and slapping a prestige logo on it which simply isn’t the case.
You’re right about cameras. My phone launched with the same Snapdragon 821 processor as the flagship phones at the time but the camera is, to be polite, on par with those disposable cameras they used to set on tables at weddings. That was a place I was personally willing to cheat to get a $250 phone but it’s also a legitimate difference between mine and the Samsung models running for $600 at the time. Not worth $350 to me but if someone really cares about their camera quality, it might be to them (to be fair, there’s more difference than just the camera for $350)
You’re probably already aware but, if you’re looking at Chinese models, the One Plus seems to be the best regarded.
It is perfectly fair to argue that people often pay for features they don’t actually use. This is a given in tech circles. Some people just have the latest, regardless of whether they really plan to use it. It’s no different than the audiophiles.
And it is also good to point out that the phone companies encourage this. Even your cheapest option is far above the actual cheapest phone you could actually buy to get basic function. They limit you to higher prices, even if you’re someone who doesn’t use it. I can grab a phone that lets me do all the stuff I want for like $50. For two years, that would be just over $2 a month. But do the carriers give you that option? No.
That’s not to say some people don’t actually use all the features on their devices. Some people do shop around for the best. But many, many people don’t. It’s a boon to the tech industry that people largely don’t understand what they actually need for what they plan to do with a device.
I mean, most computer users could just use a $50 PC or cheaper. But that’s not what most people buy.
Well, they won’t put you on a $2/mth plan but most will let you come in with your $50 phone and activate, it barring technical limitations (CDMA/GSM, etc). If I wanted to get my old LG G2 back on my T-Mobile account, I could. I’m in an urban area though; maybe it’s worse in further out areas with less options and you’re at the mercy of the local provider.
I think that, like with PCs, there’s an amount of software bloat that drives people to higher spec phones regardless. While I could run the browser and Google Maps and YouTube, etc on my old G2 I probably wouldn’t enjoy it very much because all those apps require more space and power now than they did in 2013.
I pay $37.77 a month by the month. I dont understand why people get on contracts (contracts suck-aside for them making money on it, contracts should be banished from all services like cable, satellite, etc)
Plenty of data and coverage. Couldnt say for the camera since I dont use it often.
The big four carriers usually give discounts for multiple lines of service. If you have a family, it can be well worth it to get four lines of service for $120 a month.
This last time around I found a definite trend towards capped data; during the previous five years I’d been with the same Sprint reseller, the data allowance had always been unlimited. For once in our lives, this time we were in a position to buy our phones outright, so in comparison to what we had been paying in the past for “free” on-contract phones, I thought we would see a major reduction in the monthly rate. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out that way. Any rate reduction was minimal and that was with a 3G monthly data allowance. By going to a competitor and buying a new phone from them up front, I cut my bill in half and could have unlimited data for what I’m paying. The only reason I don’t is that I’ve been adding 2G extra every month for $10; IIRC unlimited data is actually a buck or two cheaper so I should probably switch to that.
Not to put words in anyone’s mouth, but I suspect they are referring to the internal SD card that came with the phone and hosts the OS and most of the apps you would want to download and install on your device. You can certainly buy and use a top-rated external SD card, assuming your phone provides a place to install it. But you can’t replace the internal card that came with the phone.
Yes, he’s calling the external SD card “horribly slow” compared to the phone’s internal storage. More expensive phones come with a bigger memory, 64 or 128 Gb, or what have you so there’s no need to buy a micro SD card. Some higher end phones don’t even have a slot for adding external storage, so everything runs from the internal memory.
Novelty Bobble and I are just saying we don’t find playing music from the external card to be noticeably slow. My phone has 16 GB of memory and I added a 64 Gb SD card for storing my media