The Cheap Phones Quietly Winning the U.S

Android phones are starting to get into this territory too. OnePlus 2 is $400. That is 4x the cost of your $100. But it is less than half the cost of my $1000 Note 2. (I don't buy on contract because I have a grandfather plan on VZ for unlimited data). My wife's phone was $700. Next refresh in about 2 years we'll be in the OnePlus store.

The reason I say all of this is that we should all, across every platform but Apple, be looking forward to getting less expensive, higher quality devices.

reason I ask: I'm on my galaxy note 4 probably 40% of time and going up.pc/mac get rest of time and going down.

got rid of all IOS devices.

I think the point where Google and consumers are misaligned would be their preference of Chrome OS over Android. Still, I don't see them throwing away their market power in a play to move users to Chrome OS. They'll just keep mixing them both together until there is no difference.

IMO, a $300 phone doesn't really fit well in that world. Too pricey for an upfront purchase. And once you go monthly, most people aren't too price concious when comparing $15 per month vs $20 per month.

Water gives my 99.9% of the usefulness of Coke (i.e., I don't die of dehydration), but it's also very reasonable for me to spend 10 times more for Cokes because the marginal cost is still small compared to the enjoyment benefit.

Generally, cheap ($30) phone's camera is awful. $200 Android phone's camera is good. iPhone 6's camera is excellent. (Though I am using iPhone 6 Plus, I still think iPhone 6 Plus is too expensive.)

If I have to wait 30 seconds for my phone to get out of its own way each time I desire to accomplish a task (camera, map application, web access), am I actually going to use it for those things, or do I now have a dumbphone with more things that can break?

What would HN recommend as a cheap, durable android device? These ZTE things look pretty good...

Also, what happened to those ultra cheap windows mobile devices targeted at "emerging markets?"

ZTE's success is just price differentiation within an existing market. Their 'innovation' is selling phone technology from 2 years ago at a discount. I don't think that even counts as a sustaining innovation, and the article notes that sales doubled but profits growing only 4 percent-- this implies huge cuts to profit margins. The same article also notes that this 'reduced margins' strategy might be subsidized by Chinese security interests.

You can point at the Japanese automakers as a counter-point. However, I caution that comparison because they rallied around quality. In the early-70s the major American automobile makers were both terrible quality and expensive. The Japanese were able to create the holy union of both a more reliable and cheaper automobile.

Could a Chinese market sprout up to make quality and cheap phone? Probably, but there's no real issue of all the phones are expensive, but terrible devices.

While true, I've found that the price/quality ratio leaves something to be desired.

When I buy a premium iPhone device, I pay for future years of security updates and optimizations. I also pay for kind, instant support online or in a network of certified resellers or Apple stores (if I'm lucky to be near one at least in EU).

Some people like to tinker with their devices or even have to from time to time when an app/service goes amok. I pay extra to not deal with that, because my time is worth more, then wasting it on things like that.

Now compare that to a sub 100$/€ phone.

Where? Europe is a big place. Also it depends very much on which phone you want.

Certainly last time I did the math in Sweden, if you wanted a new high end phone like the latest iPhone or Samsung S6 then it was basically always cheaper to get it on a two year contract compared to paying for the phone and getting a separate equivalent plan or per-paid card. On the other hand if you wanted a sub 100€ phone or where happy with a second hand phone, then getting a phone and pre-paid card or cheap monthly plan separately is almost always cheaper.

I think there are a few reasons why companies like Verizon are so big in the U.S.: they have a good network, they offer plenty of family plans, and they will replace your phone for what seems like subsidized rate under various conditions. Oh, and they advertise constantly.

But not being able to use my phone out of the country? Very limiting. Why would I pay more for that handicap as an individual enrollee?

Where in Europe? In the Netherlands all the calculations I ran every 2 years showed anywhere from slight to major discounts for 2 year contracts paired with a phone, and that's without discounting future cash payments (or valuing money you're paying upfront, either way).

It's still beneficial to phone companies because it makes phones look cheaper than they actually are ($30 a month feels more doable than $720 upfront) and so it's probably easier to sell a $30 a month cost for 2 years than selling a $720 cost even though (ignoring time value of money) they're the same.

And then if you add say a $20 phone plan, it's basically: want to pay $50 a month, or $30 a month and pay $720 now? The latter is probably easier to swallow for most and easier to sell, but that's of course entirely different from being a scam.

So for example, the Netherlands. Apple's shop sells the iphone for 700 euros. KPN (one of the 3 networks) has a one-time 53 euro, 2 year 54 euro plan, so 56 euros per month on average and the phone & plan is included.

A similar plan with the same KPN is €32.50. Add that to the 700 euro cost of the phone over 24 months (€29) and you're at 62 euros, vs 56 euros, more than 140 euros of discount and that's without valuing the financial/convenience value of not having to pay 700 euros upfront.

And this is literally the first, standard plan I looked into, no cherrypicking. (5gb a month plan, no limit calling/texting). Perhaps you could find different results but I've, purely as part of my buying decisions when I bought my own phone, ran these calculations here about every year or every two years at different carriers and it's consistent. So I'd say, it depends on the country.

As for prepaid, it's absolutely horrible here in the Netherlands. It's 30c per minute for calling, 16c per text, 25c per megabyte. Not kidding. That's KPN by the way, the same that offers the above plans. That means if you call say 300 minutes per month, that's 90 euros already. And that's just a little over calling 1 hour per week. Call 30 minutes per week and it's 36 euros. Add a 700 euro iPhone and you're already well over any KPN plan you can get, and you haven't used any data or texts yet. The 5 gigabytes of data the plan has would cost you 1250 euros per month if used in prepaid. Even using just 500 megabytes per month (my plan 5 years ago) would cost you 125 euros per month, prepaid.

KPN's prepaid is disproportionately shitty though, it's meant for old people really. Like my grandfather has it and he mostly just calls for cabs, emergencies etc. T-Mobile's rate in the Netherlands is more sensible, but still 5c per megabyte. A 1 gigabyte monthly data usage still costs you 50 euros, but such a 1 gigabyte plan would cost you less than 20 euros with minutes included. Prepaid here is never, ever a good option, unless you're an extremely light user like my grandfather, or someone who travels tons and doesn't return (as you can freeze plans for vacations etc).