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Comment by noxToken | Hacker News Reader

>I am not sure if I was suddenly without money, the iPhone would be what I would want to give up.

If you have an iPhone and then become poor, sure. You probably won't get ahead much by getting rid of your iPhone. If you're already poor, then an iPhone (not a smartphone) is definitely a luxury.

There are capable smartphones for much cheaper then an iPhone that could get the job done. That's what GP was likely getting at.

>If anything we should work to get smart phones in the hands of the poor.

I am not aware of a socialized plan to put phone in the hands of poor people, but they are getting increasingly cheaper. You can get Samsung Galaxy line (not the flagship model) phones from cheap, prepaid carriers. Wi-Fi is becoming increasingly available, which makes the limited data plans not that bad of a drawback.

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> If you're already poor, then an iPhone (not a smartphone) is definitely a luxury.

It's not wrong, nor necessarily economically irresponsible, for "poor" people to have a few nice things.

Assuming a lifespan of 3 years, the cost difference between a $600 phone and a $300 phone is barely more than $0.25 per day - and probably even less, considering that iPhones have a higher resale value.

Maybe that "poor person" carrying an iPhone just forgoes $0.25 or $0.50 of other niceties per day so they can afford that iPhone and those $100 shoes - or maybe they just work in a city, because you can literally find that much money on the ground every day if you keep your eyes peeled.

If a person routinely made such purchases, to the detriment of their well-being, certainly that could be a problem. But unless we know somebody's full financial picture we should not presume to make such a judgement.

I don't think the OP's criticism is on the "poor person", but rather on the fact that Apple's business model and marketing scheme is premised on a false need to buy some new "revolutionary" iThing which actually offers little or no functional benefit over a perfectly fine older PC or less-powerful android.

I'm not sure if you have any perspective what being poor means.

This link : http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

Seems quite appropriate and - I hope - illuminating.

I'm glad you posted that: everybody should read it and truly try to put themselves in those shoes.

I do not understand the fact that you seem to have posted it as a rebuttal to my post.

My post was meant as a criticism of another indignity that the poor often face: other peoples' (often baseless, and always condescending) criticisms of their financial decisions.

Their criticisms often carry the subtext that poor people are poor because they are wearing a $100 item of clothing or because they own a smartphone - in essence, those criticisms say that these people deserve to be poor and/or poor people don't deserve nice things.

I find such criticisms of poor people to be incredibly classist and devoid of empathy and my post was intended to address that. I don't know how my words could have been read otherwise.

Thanks for the clarification. I think it was mostly this statement :

  Assuming a lifespan of 3 years, the cost difference between a $600 phone and a $300 phone is barely more than $0.25 per day

that triggered my response. Rereading it: you're right. I'm still glad to have posted the link :)

What really riles me up is that a lot of people have no clue how expensive it actually is to be poor and how hard is it to break the vicious circle. That's in addition that a lot of poor people work equally hard as the rest of us.

I see what you mean. And you're right: not everybody has an extra $0.25/day or $1.75/week for a nicer phone. $1.75/week for some people is the difference between having oatmeal for breakfast and not having breakfast.

That is an excellent, excellent link. And this:

> What really riles me up is that a lot of people have no clue how expensive it actually is to be poor

Yes! This is the one thing I wish everybody could understand about being poor. Not only do you have less money, almost everything is more expensive.

"Simple" things like buying food when it's on sale and freezing it for later aren't possible if you don't have a second freezer, or even a first freezer, or if you're in danger of having your power turned off, or if you live in a terrible apartment where the power goes off for reasons not even in your control.

Heck, a lot of people can't even clip supermarket coupons because they don't have access to a supermarket. (For anybody scratching their heads at this, Google "food desert")

Or another great example:

Cost of a $150,000 home if you're rich and don't need a mortgage: $150,000 (or $0 in the long run, because you can get that money back when you sell it)

Cost of a $150,000 home if you need a mortgage: $500,000+

(Not that the truly poor can even obtain mortgages, but it's a good illustration of how much cheaper things can get as you go further and further up the income scale)

That's a heart-wrenching list. I love Scalzi's SF, but didn't know that side of him. My parents were poor by any US standard. But basically, I was trained for the Cold War, so hey.

I do recall, however, a friend who was raising two kids on her own. With some horrible history of migration etc. She did indeed know the cost of everything. And budgeted carefully, down to the penny.

It's nice that Scalzi "made it" and turned his writing into a successful career.

I really like his blog (sorry John, I guess I'm one of your freeloaders; that's because I'm just not that much into SF)

He seems to be a really decent guy and shows an ability, which is sorely missed nowadays:

Comon Sense.

I guess a should have clarified: flagship phones of any major manufacturer can last many years past a carrier's upgrade period with a little extra care from the user. Continuous upgrading to the latest flagship phone is a luxury, but owning one is not necessarily a luxury in its own right.

I try not to make judgments about anyone's spending habits unless it's affecting me.

One of my biggest issues online is forgetting that subtext is easily missed. In cases where it is missed, it can be minutes or hours before you have a chance to rectify it. Sorry about that, and thanks for the criticism.

I think people criticise these financial decisions because they feel their tax money is going to people who can afford things they either can't or have to work harder for. They might be failing to see the bigger picture, but I think it's reasonable to at least look at peoples' financial decisions if they are receiving handouts.

I find it quite annoying when people equate owning a smartphone to not being poor. Phones are regularly sold on 18 month contracts, so there are tons of 2 year old perfectly usable smartphones kicking around and probably given to the ex-owners poorer friends.

That's a good perspective for those of us living comfortable middle-class lives in the developed world currently.

But having seen the other side of the coin in the not-so-developed world, I'm sure the author could (and should) add the words "in America" to that essay's title. Being poor elsewhere is far far worse than what he describes here.

That's being poor in the first world. Being poor in the 3rd world is entirely different.

I guess that is relevant here since Apple is a company that makes products for first world only.

> It's not wrong, nor necessarily economically irresponsible, for "poor" people to have a few nice things.

I strongly agree with this, but if someone does choose to buy an iPhone they should know it's a luxury. It bothers me that Apple doesn't acknowledge this.

I don't want to totally let producers of consumer goods off the hook here: they are certainly not blameless when it comes to the unhealthy consumer culture we have, and Schiller's comment was tone deaf IMHO.

But generally I feel it's appropriate for companies to tell us how awesome their products are; it's up to us to recognize which things are necessities and which are luxuries.

Other responses disagree with you, but I agree with you... and I'm rather anti-consumerist (it's difficult to pull off completely...).

In fact, I feel a bit silly having paid "only" $300 for my Samsung phone, having read your economic breakdown. I was imagining myself having an extra $200 for stuff... but I go through a lot of wasted time having "only" 16GB.. continuously moving stuff off of it... missed photos and videos I could have taken. Perhaps the pix didn't have economic value worth $200 over 3 years, but the time is probably worth it.

I've also heard the perspective on the poor that if they have to be poor, it helps to have at least one nice thing. the nice thing of choice is the phone.

The real question is, imho, how to leverage these choices to get what helps an individual. e.g. use the phone to get jobs, to shop around for the best price, to buy used things on craigslist to save money, to watch inspiring and encouraging videos, to learn new skills to get better jobs, etc.

I really appreciate your reply!

Yeah, sometimes (not always) the more expensive option is actually cheaper in the long run, or is at least a justifiable cost. Looking at the $/day or $/hour cost over the lifespan of a product is one way to get a better understanding of the "real" cost.

The danger is that it can be easy to justify too many of those "well, it's only $0.10 a day!" purchases because they can really add up.

(In fact, car salesmen will often try to sell you upgrades in a similar way. "Well, upgrading to the leather seats will only add $25 to your monthly payments...")

The reason I decided to go cheap with smartphone is because I bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 with the intention of using it for at least 5 years but the utter piece of junk broke stone cold dead after 2 years and 3 months. I basically got robbed for half the value of the phone because of the attitude that old hardware is bad (read unprofitable) hardware and therefore we don't build stuff to last anymore. Same with the iPhone before it but in Apples case their revolutionary new iOS update made my phone basically unusable. So I voted with my wallet and went for a mid range Android option for $250.

I bought an iPhone 3GS in 2009, that's 6 and a half years ago and my daughter now uses it at school. It even still connects to the App Store. Other than a cracked screen it works fine. Battery life isn't great, but it gets her through the school day.

These things have incredible lifetimes and also keep their resale value very well. So in terms of value, I'm not convinced that iPhones are a frivolous luxury. In my experience they're a reliable long term investment.

Is that relevant to low wage earners? I think so. If iPhones stopped getting software updates 12 months (or less) after launch and ended up in a junk drawer soon after, I don't think they'd sell nearly so well in any demographic range.

Most of the things my family used an original ipad for stopped working after a very short amount of time. It is now essentially garbage that I can't bring myself to throw away.

And my wife and I still use our iPad 2 without issue aside from the noticeable sluggishness switching apps or updating. Anecdotes!

Not sure what your point is. My point was that the original iPad was nearly unusable in less than 3 years. This is not an anecdote, it's a simple matter of fact.

The original iPad was launched in mid 2010. In September 2012 Apple released iOS 6, which didn't run on the original iPad. Shortly afterward, the apps we used all required a forced update to their iOS6 version (which of course didn't work) and it became a doorstop. YouTube lasted a little longer than most, but eventually it stopped working too.

It's quite possible that the iPad 2 you mention has had a longer life than the original iPad, but this in no way diminishes the fact that the original iPad, a not inexpensive piece of hardware was useless for most purposes after a little more than 2 years (assuming you bought it on release, which I did not).

That reminds me of my iPod Touch, bought in 2008 to help me decide whether I wanted to try a smartphone. The hardware's fine. Runs as well as it ever has. It's a paperweight because of the lack of software and the discontinuation of support for its hardware's video codecs (Youtube, Netflix, et al).

The first generation of any entirely new category of hardware is always a bit of a gamble.

"It is now essentially garbage that I can't bring myself to throw away."

I could have told you that before you bought it.

I think most people when left to their own devices (heh) would prefer to purchase something that's more expensive to buy but less expensive to own, and in that vein I think the iPhone is much better value than an Android.

We've got an iPad 2 that is not useless, but much worse after upgrading to ios9. I still play Kingdom Rush games on it but its so slow now its too frustrating to use for internet browsing and other things.

obsoletion built into the product roadmap

And yet Apple devices have longer software support lifetimes than any Android devices and better resale values for a longer time. That hardly sounds like a set of characteristics you'd associate with products designed to become obsolete.

Is Android the right comparison? Because I don't think Android when I think about my barely useful iPad 2 (because Android tablets are tire fires), I think of the Pentium III Thinkpad that I use for distraction-free writing. They're both about as useful to me, and one is as old as a high school sophomore.

Realistically the early iPhones and iPads were an experiment. Nobody really knew what their useful lifetime would be. The same went for Android devices.

In fact the wisely received wisdom was that Android devices would have longer useful lifespans because open source leads to higher quality software that's maintained and updated for longer, which can be customized by users so it meets their needs better. The reality that many Android devices never see a single software update and are junked up with carrier crapware and poor device drivers hidden in binary blobs still hasn't sunk home for everyone yet.

Even now when I buy a new device I think about how useful it will be and what it's support will be like for 2 to 4 years. Beyond that, there's no way to tell. When my kid's original iPad Minis get replaced, if they still work I'll probably just use them as family photo and video galleries.

They are dependent on Apple for updates due to the code signing. Alternative operating systems also cannot be installed once Apple stops supporting them. That ensures obsolensce in the long term, even if it is longer term than their competitors' blob-ridden Android products.

Anyway, plenty of machines sold then and even today are junk, so maybe replacing them is not such a terrible idea. However, I think replacing the software matters more. Linux is an excellent option for these systems in the long term. If Apple made Mac OS X available for them, it would be too.

It's one of the reasons why I haven't upgraded my iPad 2 past iOS6.

It still streams Netflix great though, but the browser is starting to show its age - I can't load all webpages anymore. :(

Looks like I might need to pick up a new iPad..

"Looks like I might need to pick up a new iPad.."

That is insane. I can load all webpages on any laptop from 5 years ago. A browser doesn't become "slower". Even with bigger pages, they are still web pages, not 3D games.

It means the ipad itself is, for some reason, rendering itself slow. And you can't do anything about it because you can't hack it.

And your idea of the solution to the problem is to buy a new one ?

My god, somebody sell you a self-destructing product in order to force you to buy a new one, and you oblige ?

In the last 5 years, bloat on web pages has increased considerably. Tracking script counts on all pages has gone way up, and I very frequently will find that if I leave some web pages in a background tab, their memory usage will climb into the gigabytes, even for pages that are mostly just text! Since the ram on those older devices is not getting any bigger, of course web pages are going to get slower.

Yes, but it still web pages. Not meteo simulations. And I just tested in on an old asus with a dead battery and a broken screen. It's fine to surf on the web. Watch videos. Listen to music. You could do it 10 years ago already with even older computers. Your ipad is lying to you.

I can't seem to find the link anymore but recently a tool was released which let me downgrade my iPad 2 back to iOS 6 and it's so much faster than it was on iOS 8. Obviously it's not an official Apple tool.

I know Kingdom Rush isn't exactly the latest high-end 3D thing, but I did a double-take at the notion that hardware that's fine for gaming is too slow for internet browsing.

I still have an iPad 1 and I have the opposite feeling. Many websites kill the browser and I can't install another one. I'm gradually running out of use cases (browsing the web in a comfortable position is my main use case) and the device hardware itself is in perfect shape.

I also bought the iPad 1 and was similarly burned. The iPad 2 however has had tremendous longevity. I think the iPad 1 came out just one generation too early.

Define "longevity"? I'm typing this on an iPad 3 running iOS 9 and it's definitely showing its age. The hardware is in perfect condition but it struggles to render many web pages and the wifi (although better than on iOS 6-8) is hideously slow compared to my midrange Android phone.

The iPad 2 was sold side-by-side the iPad 3, 4 and iPad Air in Apple's stores. The iPad Mini also is essentially an iPad 2 in a smaller form factor as well.

So if you had gotten an iPad 2 on day 1, I feel like you would have had a reasonably long life on the device.

Your case with the iPad 3 is a little unique. It was the first device with a retina screen and was arguably underpowered for that task. This is why apple replaced the iPad 3 with the iPad 4 just 6 months later in the same year.

The iPad 1 and the iPad 3 are both underpowered for their typical workloads. The other iPads however have stood the test of time fairly well. My iPad Mini 1 (which is essentially an iPad 2) is a little slow, but serviceable and my wife's iPad 4 still works great.

Interesting, thanks for the history lesson! I got my iPad 3 at a discount when they were running out stock, and chose it specifically for the retina screen. It's done well, all things considered, but it definitely seems underpowered these days. Apps are fine but web browsing is quite clunky.

I basically stopped using my iPad2 a couple of years ago because it's too slow, interactively. I do leave a weather radar app running on it in the kitchen, just as a display. If I had to interact with it, it's painful.

I second you on this. My ipad one is perfect but websites are killing it. Reddit and Hcker News are working fine mbasic.facebook.com too but for other websites I expect a crash as soon as I touch the link. People talk about planned obsolescence but it's webdesigners that killed my Ipad1 not Apple.

You can install goodreader on it and use it for PDFs. The pandora app works ok (crashes once every couple days).

iPhones are still pretty poor value for money compared to cheap androids, as long as you can get reasonable pay-as-you-go contracts as well.

I'm not sure how that situation changes in the US, where there doesn't seem to be the same market for pay-as-you-go sims that is found in the rest of the world.

To add some real-world numbers: The resale value has dropped about £100 per year for the entire line-up ever since launch. So if I can buy a second-hand used model at a price that I can currently afford, and re-sell it in a year's time for £100 less, and buy the next model. Meanwhile, I have had the best (if not the fastest) computer money can buy, with the latest operating system. For £1.91/week, the price of a bus fare or a cheap meal.

I can go up or down a model at any given time, as the hardware behaves as a commodity, and there is little penalty for trading, both price-wise, and restoring the settings and contents of the device. It is a good store of value, with the only cost of ownership the steady depreciation. And if you can buy below market and sell above market, extracting value from folks who are not as thrifty as you are, you can drive the cost even lower, or possibly even make a profit.

I have bought a "4" in spring 2011 (£350, sold for £40; 1 × battery replacement £10, 1 × screen & button replacement for free from a friend's junker), and a "5S" last year (£230, current re-sale value £170+). The actual cost over the five years has been £1.50/week, £79/year).

Cannot say the same for the iPhone 3G I had. Long gone.

> There are capable smartphones for much cheaper then an iPhone that could get the job done. That's what GP was likely getting at.

True enough. And yet, if you yourself are not actually poor, you may not realize the value that a marginal luxury like an iPhone or Air Jordans or a top brand purse (sorry, I don't know what the hot brand of purses is atm) can bring to someone in that situation. Spending a few hundred dollars will not get them a better place to live or a better job or out of debt, but it can get them something that helps them appear less poor to the people around them, who can't see their bank balance or their house, but they can see what phone they are carrying around.

At the expense of being more in debt, or worse, skipping a rent payment or a grocery run.

Skipping a rent payment or a grocery run might very well have much less impact on their lives.

In reply to pc86, yes, exactly. Do you believe everyone should make purely rational financial decisions, or only the poorest people in our society?

It's funny how people generally only make these criticisms of "poor" peoples' purchases.

You never hear people criticizing some middle-class guy for spending $27,000 on a Honda Accord instead of paying for a year of his kid's college education.

You do hear that, if you listen to the right people.

Admittedly, I hear that criticism of middle-class purchases quite a bit, among friends and family.

But when it comes to criticism of strangers, I just never hear it directed at the middle-class stranger in his Honda Accord. It's always directed at the lower-economic-class stranger and his $100 sneakers.

This is really insightful. If anyone's getting hung up on 'not spending that money on groceries' try swapping 'iPhone' for "Suit you could wear to an interview".

Now do you think it's a waste of money? The function is very similar: an item that visually identifies you as part of some socioeconomic group.

The suit will get you a better paying job. How many of those buying expensive shoes are using them in a way that they are expected to pay off like the suit does? I'm not saying it is impossible, only that it doesn't apply in most cases.

The same case could be made for the poor buying golden jewelry. I don't find it very convincing.

The same case could not be made, because gold is much less effective at signaling wealth. Gold plated jewelry is visually identical but much cheaper, so there's a "market for lemons" situation where the signaling value of solid gold drops to that of gold plated items. You can even get gold plated tungsten for the rare cases where weight matters. Fake iPhones are much more obvious.

Poor people don't need to 'seem less poor'. They need to be less poor. And admitting you need to save is the first step to doing so. I wonder if this need to seem less poor so often is actually part of how some of them get poor; wasting money/effort trying to influence perception instead of spending it trying to change reality.

You're close, the poor in most cases have self-defeating money habits. Any time they get money, they spend it immediately on things that have a short term feel-good effect, because their life has so little of that otherwise. This might be junk food, cigarettes/booze/drugs, lottery tickets, restaurant meals, gadgets or other "bling" etc.

They rarely have a person in their life who models delayed gratification and saving behavior, let alone strategic investing, so they never see the benefit of doing that.

No.

The singular defining quality of the poor is that they lack capital.

This makes everything about being poor more expensive.

>They rarely have a person in their life who models delayed gratification and saving behavior, let alone strategic investing, so they never see the benefit of doing that.

I'm not really sure this is correct. If you have a source please do share it.

From what I've read, the reason they have difficulty saving isn't because they weren't taught to do so but because when you constantly have to no to things you want, you use up a lot of energy, or more specifically, glucose. This in turn makes you more impulsive and less rational.

For example see: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/wan...

That being the case, I don't really like the idea of labeling poor people as being poor because of their inability to save or their own foolishness. There have also been studies that show that living in poverty actually changes your brain and makes you less intelligent.

See: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poverty-disturbs-c...

It's a self perpetuating cycle as far as I can tell

They should read things like YNAB:

http://www.youneedabudget.com

It is amazing how much money one has when one exercises restraint when spending it.

Budgets rapidly break down when you're regularly faced with unforeseen but necessary expenses that blow your cash reserves out of the water.

A lot of the problems of poverty is that once you get below a certain level, even if you are the most thrifty person around, you lose predictability in ways that end up costing you a lot of extra money.

Suddenly your employer pays you a day late and your carefully arranged bill payment schedule goes out the window and you get charged extra fees, or your car that you depend on to keep your job breaks down and you're forced into ridiculously high interest credit.

The purpose of trying to budget is to stop living from paycheck to paycheck. There might be some people for which this will not work, but the ones leasing new cars every few years (or signing overpriced contracts because of the "free" phone every two years) are not among them. I am sure that many people in such circumstances could find little things that could be cut if they looked (e.g. Cable TV, the landline phone, etcetera). Such things add up.

I have been applying such things to my parents' budget. Just the other day I heard from my mother that she no longer worries when unexpected medical expenses come up because she has found that the savings that my suggestions made more than paid for it. She gets TV for free OTA, replaced her expensive landline with free VoIP through Google Voice using an Obihai ATA, has lower electrical consumption (from various things, but the simplest being putting a lid on the frying pan to reduce evaporative heat loss, which is an efficiency improvement that allows food to cook faster), has a promotional rate for the newspaper she insists on having, has cell phone service that has no monthly fee (through ring plus), obtains heating oil at COD pricing, etcetera. Such things add to a four figure amount each year.

People leasing cars are not who I am talking about - they are not poor. If you are poor you don't get approved for credit to lease cars. At least my definition of poor draws the line well below that point.

I know of poor people in India who lack the ability to get jobs due to disabilities. They either have never had a job to be able to have a pay check or had jobs before they became disabled and are unlikely to see a pay check ever again. I know of a few instances of abject poverty in India through a priest I know. In one instance, the sole provider of a household developed a medical condition that rendered him unemployable. In another instance, people at a shelter for the physically and mentally disabled lack things like wheel chairs and bedding, with some of them just lying on the floor.

In both cases, I know people are sending money to help them. That is especially true in the case of that household in a poor village where the father is a disabled craftsman while the mother is completely uneducated. Enabling the children to study will give them the opportunity to work for a better life, which is an opportunity that their parents will never have.

Anyone who has a paycheck has the opportunity to obtain financial advice from sites like YNAB. Not all such people live as they would like, but being able to imagine something better puts them in a whole different category than actual poor people. They are able to make financial decisions and save for the purpose of making their lives better in the future. The truly poor lack such luxury.

I wonder on what basis you claim "the poor in most cases have self-defeating money habits", because your description doesn't fit for any people I've know with little money.

Seeming less poor is what measurably increases your quality of life in almost every social dimension. Given that social capital is the only capital most poor people have, it counts for a lot.

(As a chap who grew up poor.)

If you asked them, they would say that they definitely need to seem less poor. It brings a measure of status, easing their way through daily social affairs.

It buys them signaling. Why is that a good thing?

Because signalling affects how people treat you in every aspect of your life; everything from customer service to job prospects to your love life.

And we should be providing welfare to help people get better custom service and improve their love life? When we are talking about providing for people's needs, this wasn't part of the agreement. If we want to expand welfare, let's be upfront about it and decide what we expect in return for that welfare.

> "it can get them something that helps them appear less poor to the people around them"

I think it works the opposite -- if I see someone who I think is maybe poor, and they whip out the latest and greatest iPhone or are wearing $200 shoes or overpriced brand-name sunglasses, now I know they're poor. Because it's an obvious status symbol that's not in line with the rest of their lifestyle. Other poor people aren't stupid; they see right through it as well.

Whereas if I see someone who looks poor and they whip out an old Moto X and are wearing shoes from Payless, I assume they're comfortable with whatever economic/social status they have and don't need to try to signal. I view them as immediately more trustworthy and am more willing to cut them a deal, because I assume they're capable of long-term planning rather than impulsive spending.

This might not be 100% accurate, but I find it's a generally effective rule of thumb, and I think a lot of people use it to evaluate.

>I am not aware of a socialized plan to put phone in the hands of poor people

"Since 1985, the Lifeline program has provided a discount on phone service for qualifying low-income consumers... The Lifeline program is available to eligible low-income consumers in every state, territory, commonwealth, and on Tribal lands."[1]

[1] https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons...

>If you're already poor, then an iPhone (not a smartphone) is definitely a luxury.

Depends where you get it. I've known some teens who have managed to pick up iPhones on the second hand market really cheap. There are enough people always wanting the shiniest new thing that more enterprising individuals can pick up a generation old iPhone for less than many cheaper Androids.

The luxury is being able to pay full price for a brand new device.

I think the real problem is that new updates to iphone software are not capable of being run on old iPhones. Thus, the older, yet still physically capable, phones are softly obsoleted.

There is no reason there shouldnt be a 3G, 4, 4S capable of owrking and in the hands of "the poor"

Why not a turn-in system where older yet still functioning phones are given to anyone who wants them.

I personally am guilty of not properly handling my old phones. I've had every single generation of the iPhone since the initial launch. I've broken 17 of them to date. I have no clue where the other 16 are now, aside from one.

I'd happily have contributed my old phones to some program where either poor or kids can have them freely.

> I'd happily have contributed my old phones to some program where either poor or kids can have them freely.

I asked a Roman Catholic priest I know to give my household's old iPhones to the poor during his trip to India last year. I had originally planned to sell them when I had a chance after upgrading myself and my parents, but I changed my mind when I heard he was going to visit his village in India where there are many poor people.

You could ask your local Roman Catholic parish if any of the priests plan to travel to poor places. They tend to be from all over the world, many are from poor places and they tend to visit family every year or so. They would definitely be able to give your phones to the poor.

Just make sure that the phones are unlocked, supports GSM internationally (if it is a US phone) and have a charging cable. In my case, I neglected to realize that the NEMA outlets used in the US are not typically used in India and included the US chargers. Compatible AC to USB chargers are cheap enough that it was not a big deal.

Also, models like the Virgin Mobile iPhone 4S whose baseband is programmed to only connect to US CDMA networks would only be useful for parts in many other countries. Phones that are locked to CDMA in the US, but support GSM when unlocked for international use, like the Sprint iPhone 5 will work fine, provided that they are unlocked before they are sent.

If it is a CDMA only phone that is not locked to the US, you could check to see if the country where the priest is going has a network compatible with it, although it is hard to find coverage maps for CDMA outside the US to know if those networks would actually be relevant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CDMA2000_networks http://www.memphissoftware.net/img/coverage1.jpg

Unfortunately named website, but: http://www.obamaphone.com/what-is-the-obama-phone

> I am not aware of a socialized plan to put phone in the hands of poor people

https://www.fcc.gov/general/lifeline-program-low-income-cons...

Google/Android has the Android One Program. https://www.android.com/one/

The problem with those cheap phones is that your private information will be mercilessly sucked into the Google cloud. Some of that is disguised as perfectly innocent and helpful features: contacts syncing, back-ups, connecting more easily to WiFis, etc.

The end result though is that your entire digital life will be on some Google server. Preventing this requires significant effort and technical expertise.

We got windows phones at work: the activation process is a comical list of "turn off this", "deactivate that", "say no to so and so" data sync policy. But, I guess you can in the end disable the thing.

iOS is probably the least bad in this respect. I won't say it's good or anything, but at least they show some respect towards customers.

The conclusion is that the poor will get abused either way, be it through price gouging or in more difficult to recognise ways.

  The problem with those cheap phones is that your private information
  will be mercilessly sucked into the Google cloud. Some of that is
  disguised as perfectly innocent and helpful features: contacts
  syncing, back-ups, connecting more easily to WiFis, etc.

if you truly value your privacy (most people don't; which solves the problem for them), it is trivially easy: buy a cheap phone (i.e. Moto E/G) and install a custom ROM like cyanogenmod without the gapps on it. then just run a Card-/CalDAV server (radicale, owncload, ...) on a computer in your home network (can be your laptop/server/raspberry ...) and you get the syncing you want without the google part.

of course it's extra work, but it's not rocket science. so if you really care about privacy, it's trivial to do. but as pointed out: most people don't, no matter if they have a cheap phone or not.

I think you grossly overestimate the technical aptitude of... 99.8% of the population?

no, not at all. I know most people are not capable of setting this up. but this is not the point:

the parent claimed that you pay for these cheap phones with your private data, which is not true. if you care about that (which > 99.8% of the population don't do) you are able to use those phones with those features without handing over your data to google.

> mercilessly sucked into the Google cloud.

Hyperbole much?

>Some of that is disguised as perfectly innocent and helpful features: contacts syncing, back-ups, connecting more easily to WiFis, etc.

Disguised? Um... That's how those features work.

Your personal information is a currency that you have to budget. Want timely weather information in your location? Guess what? You have to spend a little location currency to get that.

Edit to add:

> The conclusion is that the poor will get abused either way, be it through price gouging or in more difficult to recognise ways.

Why are you picking on the poor here? What are you trying to generalize about?

What an aggressive answer. Should I come back in a few hours when everyone's had time to cool off?

I don't have anything against these features per se, but I can't help but notice when it's almost imposssible to turn them off and dark patterns are used to guide customers onto certain paths where more data is shared. Then one starts to wonder for whose benefits are the features developed.

You are commiting an error when thinking that it's solely the responsibility of customers to take care of their privacy. There needs to be a strong legal framework and incentives should be set in such a way as to encourage respectful handling of customer data.

Because otherwise we end up in a situation where powerful corporations do as they wish as long as they stay within the too weak legal requirements (which they lobbied for) and it's the responsibility of the customer to:

* protect their privacy when everyone is trying to screw them and grab their data. Now they're a tech expert.

* protect their health because corps want to produce cheap goods and some ingredients cause e.g. birth defects or impotence. Now they're a chemistry expert.

* be careful what food they buy, because food nowadays is mass produced with bleach, antibiotics and hormones, pesticides & other nice stuff. Now they're an agricultural expert.

* and so on and so forth.

I hope it's clear that this doesn't work and the average citizen needs someone to have their back. In the USA they don't, so every corporation is trying its best to gather and mine private data.

And I am not picking on the poor at all, check your reading comprehension please. In fact I seem to be one of the few that is concerned about how the non-technical, and yes the poor too get screwed over by people recommending them that they use cheap products. If you want to recommend Android, take the time to educate people on what they are trading away for that affordable phone and tell them how to maintain their privacy.

Aggressive? How? My hyperbole comment? How could I not call you out for that?

I in no way said privacy was solely in the hands of the customer. I said your personal data is a currency that the customer must budget. That is not the same thing.

But you know that the iCloud is moving from aws to the Google Cloud at the Moment?

Yes but the data is encrypted by Apple and Google can't read it.

So..., Apple can read it? How is it any better?

No, Apple can't read it either.

Actually, Apple does retain the ability to provide iCloud data to law enforcement.

I don't think they want to for that reason; the reason they can gain access to such data is that if it's entirely in the user's hands (and passwords) then there's no way to recover the data for the user if they forget the password.

As for the grandparent comment: I trust Apple with my data more than Google because Apple doesn't want to use it, has no financial incentive to do so, and has no track record of subverting my privacy unlike Google (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/08/googl...).

Because Apple isn't an advertising company.

Just never enter your Google password into your Android phone.

The problem is: Access to the App Store. Not sure, if you can work around this.

You could use alternative app stores (Amazon's comes to mind, although of course you have to sign in to amazon for that) or download APKs directly.

F-Droid is the free app store.

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