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Comment by noncoml | Hacker News Reader

I don’t see anything justifying the price bump.

My understanding was that there'd be a constrained supply of the OLEDs in particular, so this is priced to sell at lower volumes than the SE/6S/7/8.

But the funny thing is that this pricing will backfire and the scarcity of the X will move it into the Veblen zone.

I've wondered about this myself (although I've never heard the term "Veblen zone" before!). $999 is a big jump from $699 but it's not a crazy high jump. If you're paying for it monthly over two years it's $29.17/month vs. $41.67/month, an $12.50/month increase.

Still expensive, but very much an attainable status symbol.

Phones are not conspicuous enough to be a Veblen good. Unless buyers start wearing it on their belt or around their neck.

https://www.networkworld.com/article/3092446/smartphones/we-...

Which is disproportionately weighted by heavy users. The average user isn't flashing their phone often enough to be conspicuous: https://blog.dscout.com/hs-fs/hubfs/blog_posts/Mobile_Touche...

Did you not see the array of cameras and sensors in the front? Or the longer battery life? Or the 4+2 core chip? Or the reengineered OLED? Were you actually sleeping during the announcement? Serious question.

You both can be right: you are talking about costs and noncoml is talking about perceived value to hirself.

>Did you not see the array of cameras and sensors in the front?

If they don't add any value to me, I don't really care.

> Or the longer battery life?

Doesn't justify $300+ price bump

> Or the 4+2 core chip?

New chips come out every day and they are priced at the same price or lower than the older generation at the day it was introduced.

> Or the reengineered OLED?

You mean the one similar to Samsung S8?

> Were you actually sleeping during the announcement? Serious question.

Why do you have to be offensive?

You asked what justified the price bump, and he told you. Whether you care/will use the things that are raising the price is irrelevant. If you have no need for those features, then buy the cheaper version.

The price of products is more a function of the perceived value for the consumer, than a sum of the cost of the components.

Adding more expensive components to a phone, doesn't make its value go up if it doesn't add some extra functionality or durability or something.

The array of components for FaceID are just replacing TouchID, so for the consumer the net value is 0.

I don't care what they have to add to make it work, what matters to me as a consumer, is what value I get out of it. And at the moment it looks like a net of 0.

You see why I say "I don't care"?

truth, cost twice as much as S8 and I fail to see justification for double price - slightly smaller bezels top and bottom bezels (but huge bezel/frame all around), telephoto (OK, though pretty ueless) and inconvenient face id (overfingeprint)?

anything which cost more than S8 must have serious benefits over S8

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