Nexus One Total Cost of Ownership (chart) | Hacker News Reader

Nexus One Total Cost of Ownership (chart)

billshrink.com

63 pointstvon34 comments

why couldn't you buy the unlocked phone and get the $60/mo t-mobile unlimited data plan for a TCO over 24mo of 24*60+579 == $2019?

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/cell-phone-plans-detail.a...

You can, and if you can front the $600 (month one cost), it absolutely makes sense.

Another consideration is that many people buying these aren't going to keep their phone for the full two years, so front-loading doesn't always make sense. In this case, the price difference is drastic enough that the TCO for 12 months is still lower for unlocked ($1250 vs. $1340), but it's not a big a difference. I'm sure some people would be willing to finance $350 over 12 months for $90.

More like $70 a month with tax, which the chart should have guesstimated. Also, the Nexus One is $529, not $579.

Also, T-Mobile offers 1000 minutes for a year for $100, with minutes that don't expire as long as you keep refilling in time. Since the phone has WiFi, and there are likely ways around text messaging, the prepaid option is like getting 333 minutes a month for $33.33 a month, 500 minutes a month for $50, or if you rarely use the phone, as affordable as 83 minutes a month for $8.33 a month.

You can get a good plan for $529 + $200 = $729 for 24 months, which represents out of pocket costs of $30 a month to have an internet-connected 1Ghz "mini-netbook" with you, that can also make and receive calls. Who needs those clunky, heavy $300-800 netbooks now?

I imagine Google Phones will become the new "netbooks", sold for $300-500 at Costco stores alongside actual netbooks, next Christmas.

Will T-Mobile let you do prepaid + $30/month for unlimited data? If so, that's an extremely compelling reason to switch.

If you can use the Sidekick data option ($1 per day of activation), then it might be doable. iPhone users can't use this option at the moment, I'm guessing Android phones are out as well.

Which has the added bonus of not tying you down to a contract.

That's basically what I'm doing. Right now I've got a family plan with 2 phones and unlimited internet on each for $100. Doesn't make sense to do anything else.

Of course they made it easy, but not really giving me an option. You can't buy the discounted phone on a family plan, ONLY that one individual plan. And you only get the full discount as a new subscriber. Odd.

No matter how they carve it up, I feel like a fool. It still comes to ~$1000 a year for a smart phone, this one or another.

It makes me think I should wait a couple of years for data plans to come down in price as voice and SMS plans have done so in the last few years then maybe I will come out far ahead. That way maybe I could save some serious money.

But it is a lovely device. :)

Actually, you're looking at a marginal $500-$700 a year if you already find a cell phone to be indispensable.

And not a single word devoted to the user experience - boggles the mind how geeks continue to ignore the most obvious, the most important part of any consumer device, even after seeing the incredible rise of the iPhone.

Where is this negativity coming from?

No claim is made that the factors they lay out are the only important ones. I'm sure they assume many of the user experience differences are well-understood, and they are just laying out the costs.

What's the top 3/4 of the chart doing there if this is the case? The majority of the chart is pure spec-sheet comparison, and of little relevance if the purpose is a cost comparison.

It seems to be a feature comparison, which I think non-geeks would look for as well.

That's kind of my point - it's spec-sheet shopping... which consumers have proven to not really give a hoot about. The iPhone didn't take its swathe of market share because it had better specs (God knows it didn't), it won by user experience, something no spec sheet will ever reveal.

IMHO this sort of comparison is pointless - it appears on the surface to be relevant, but in our experience we have seen that consumers will base buying decisions on far more subjective parameters. It's really out of touch with what the general buying public looks for when buying such a device.

Take the battery life data for example: hand a phone shopper two smartphones and let them play with it. How much weight do you think he/she would place on a 250h vs. 300h standby time? Compared to how slick/snappy the UI is? Compared to how intuitively they can get around?

The focus on spec-sheet comparisons IMHO is missing the forest for the trees.

You want a real end-user comparison?

How do the facebook apps on each phone compare?

iPhone's is miles ahead, darling.

Whoa. A little familiar there.

I only have android--curious what additional features iPhone has for facebook?

There's another thread on this same topic about how a mere feature list doesn't capture the experience of using an app. It's faster and prettier, for one thing, it has a friends list that is browsable like the iPhone contacts app -- the Android friends list is just a flat list where you cannot jump from place to place easily, so if you want to scroll to z it's going to take a while. You can't handle requests or send Facebook messages with the Android app as far as I can tell, nor even read your inbox. But a mere list of features doesn't capture the entire difference.

> The iPhone didn't take its swathe of market share because it had better specs (God knows it didn't), it won by user experience, something no spec sheet will ever reveal.

It still had a base level of features that it needed to gain popularity, and user experience is not everything. If you need feature X and the iPhone doesn't have feature X then it is worthless to you regardless of how great the rest of the user-experience may be.

> Take the battery life data for example: hand a phone shopper two smartphones and let them play with it. How much weight do you think he/she would place on a 250h vs. 300h standby time? Compared to how slick/snappy the UI is? Compared to how intuitively they can get around?

People 'flocked' to get the Motorola Razr because it looked slick, that doesn't make it a good phone. Most people make impulse buys. How many people do you think bother to look at anything more than 'how many megapixels does it have?' when they want a new digital camera? Things like battery life are always going to be secondary considerations because people (in general) are very poor at planning ahead and making careful, considered choices. Things like that will (most of the time) end up as complaints about the phone after they have purchased it. Now I realize that most people (even after contemplation) may not want/need that extra 50 hours, but there is a difference between ending up with what you wanted and/or needed due to blind luck or due to weighing of your choices with your wants and/or needs.

you can only compare the cost in a meaningful way if you know the product features are similar, otherwise it's a apples and oranges comparison.

The image is from a financial services site (not a geek site.) Some of us out there find money very important, even if you don't.

Source: http://www.billshrink.com/blog/nexus-one-vs-iphone-droid-pal...

This isn't a strict cost breakdown - in fact the vast majority of the chart is spec-sheet comparison. Clearly this chart is meant for a lot more than just "here are the overall costs to owning the following phones", yet fail to include IMHO the most important aspects of picking a consumer electronics device.

"Some of us out there find money very important, even if you don't."

Hi, I'm a human being behind this keyboard - and would appreciate if you'd lay off the smug condescension, especially since I have shown you none.

Paranoid fanboy?

The basic problem is how do you even adress the "user experience" on a chart like this? All you'd end up doing is throwing your personal opinions about the device into the mix, which would ruin the objectivity of the chart.

You're right - which makes comparisons like this even more pointless. I like that there's a cost breakdown - math like this is important, but doesn't run through your average consumer's head (not this precisely anyhow). Besides the price tag, the only remaining thing to do is go out and play with one.

It's a little like doing car comparisons by mere horsepower and cargo space - sounds relevant on paper, but in reality not so much... the only valuable advice is "test drive them all". In the end your satisfaction with your car probably has little to do with the fact that it has 20% more cargo space than the nearest competitor.

Keep fighting the good fight. Making documents that highlight relatively unimportant aspects of a device when talking about the device's value in general is an implicit endorsement of those qualities as the important ones. If this sheet was a titled "raw material breakdown" or something like that, it would be fine. As it is, this piece communicates something entirely different than the raw specifications.

Some people might want a pure and objective cost comparison. This comparison is therefore not pointless.

Every other review mentions usability, why does this one need to? since the writer probably hasn't used them all anyway.

In Germany I can get a mobile flat for 15€/month (or even 10€ if I were willing to go to O2, I think). That would be slowed down after 1GB of traffic, but I think for the time being I would be fine with it. So the TCO numbers are really nonsense - why mix up the price of the phone with the individual whims of network operators? Besides, the network costs should be identical for all smartphones.

what would keep you from going to O2? network performance? i'm curious and have no idea how to compare the providers' networks.

Just my principles. I used to be their customer, but then they refused to exchange a faulty phone they gave me. If it weren't for that, I'd probably still choose them.

One Mistake - the plan only has 500 minutes and costs $79.

Also, initial pricing not quite as straightforward as presented:

http://www.google.com/support/android/bin/answer.py?hl=en...

ie, $179 only if you are a new customer switching to t-mobile.

It would have been nice if they also included a lowest price option, something like prepaid voice and data. Or maybe prepaid voice and unlimited data.

Does the iPhone now include turn by turn navigation?

Could you get the $40/month unlimited data only plan and then use Skype for calls?

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