The amazing thing isn't that phones cost so much but that competition is such that you can get an excellent product with top-of-the-line CPU, radio, RAM, screen, everything for $1,000 instead of $100,000 or $1,000,000.
The really interesting part is that for ~$1000 you get the best product available at any price.
That's the magic of economies of scale in consumer markets, especially technology. It's so incredibly expensive and largely fruitless to step out of the economy of scale, that practically speaking no-one does it.
I don't have a yacht like Paul Allen, I bet my house isn't as nice as Bill Gates' and my bank account looks nothing like Zuckerberg's. But it's quite possible I have the same phone!
> no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good
And coke is not the same everywhere either. My guess is that the prez isn't going to be drinking much watery post-mix coke with his meals.
Similarly, coke in glass bottles is nicer than post-mix coke, and it's more expensive. 'Regular' cokes are in-between. And, for the US with its HFCS coke, you can import the much better-tasting sucrose-coke, which is more expensive to obtain if you're importing it yourself (although a lot of places on the Mexican border already have it).
The US - along with a select few nations - was a pioneer when it comes to mass-consumer economics that leverage a relatively free market to deliver high quality goods to both rich and poor. It required a dramatic leap in productivity, manufacturing output, to get the scale necessary to drive prices down to such an extent. Ford's Model T was arguably the earliest, best example of that. Over eight years post introduction it went from $850 (6k unit sales) to $360 (577k unit sales), eventually bottoming out under $300 (and incomes climbed substantially over that ~16 year total period). Whether we're talking mass production soda, or cars, or radios, or kitchen appliances, the US was particularly a global pioneer at it from ~1880-1980.
> And, for the US with its HFCS coke, you can import the much better-tasting sucrose-coke
To be fair, that's a Warhol quote from 1975. At the time he said it, Coke was still using sugar in the US market. It was 1984 when Coke and Pepsi announced plans to switch to HFCS.
(And I've tried it on 5 different continents.)
I'm not a huge wine snob (most wines I buy are in the $10-$20 range), but I have tasted some rather expensive wines. In a lot of cases, you're not really paying for "richness of flavor" (a lot of cheaper wines have plenty of richness and balance), you're paying for name and for rarity, especially when it comes to older wines.
I'm actually more into whisky, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms, that the best whisky I have ever tasted in my life costs around $400. Now, that is still somewhat expensive compared to the <$100 whiskies I usually enjoy, but it's not outrageously expensive, especially considering how long a bottle of whisky lasts, when compared to a bottle of wine, once it's opened.
And it was immeasurably better than any multi-thousand dollar whisky I've had the chance to taste. With Macallans, Dalmores, Pappy van Winkle and other high-priced spirits, you are absolutely paying for a name, not necessarily for the quality.
It was a Bunnahabhain XXV, the greatest sherry cask dram I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. I am very close to rationalizing buying a bottle, but I know I can buy four $100 bottles of other whiskies that are 95% as good, and will give me a wider range of experiences, for that same price.
What you're saying is certainly true for a $200-500 bottle of wine and possibly even a $2000-5000 bottle of wine, but once you get up to $20k you're buying a rare collectors item as an investment vehicle and not a drink.
I like port, for example. I usually have a bottle sitting in my apartment so that I can pour a glass after dinner and drink it while relaxing.
And even without an "educated palate" I -- and other people I've invited to blind-taste who knew less than I did about it -- can taste the difference between, say, a $30 bottle and a $100 bottle. It's not a subtle thing at all; it's a massive difference.
But that's not because of the price; the price reflects the manner of production and the actual quality of the product. The cheap bottle is a blend of wine from several different years, and possibly different producers, may have been just dumped in steel tanks after fermentation to await bottling, etc., while the more expensive stuff is often going to be from a single year and/or single producer, barrel-aged, and so on. This produces a large and obvious difference in the way it tastes.
Once you get into that tier of well-produced port, you won't see much in the way of big jumps in quality for paying more. The difference between, say, a $200 bottle and a $100 bottle is much less than between the $100 bottle and the $30 bottle, despite the larger price jump. At that point you're mostly hunting for particular years which were known to be good, and are expensive because of that plus their scarcity.
For example, some bars round here sell this cola: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentimans_Curiosity_Cola
According to this review: https://www.androidcentral.com/vertu-constellation it's pretty close to stock android these days with a slightly customized launcher and a few minor tweaks like "Where a typical phone might offer only a few options for title — Mister, Miss, Doctor — Vertu Accounts offer a laundry list of titles, ranging from King and Queen to Sheikh and Lord and His Excellency"
Also the hardware is always a generation behind.
Hey they're improving. They used to be at least three generations behind.
Just kidding. I'd have an android and a squad of engineers to set it up exactly like I want.
The main things I'd give up would be first party Google apps and neat apps like my D&D companion. I'd be giving up SnapChat, but I rarely use it. Not sure if Bill Gates is big into that one!
Honestly for a professional, a Windows Phone would probably work just fine. But you give up big players in social, most banking apps and a vast library of entertainment. Fortunately for some, you can bank on your computer, and distractions on your phone are not desired.
Maybe, maybe not: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/vertu-for-bentley-smart...