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Comment by jamesb93 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what people are talking about when they say they get gouged by phones. Mine cost 180 USD in 2016. I still use it everyday and I get over 10 hours screen time. The issue is people conflate everyday devices of utility with fashion products (Apple, Google Pixel).

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They didn't say people are gouged by phones. They said:

>You either consent to being exploited by Google, or you pay a pound of flesh to Apple.

Meaning you're in camp 1, unless you've run lineageos or something similar. Also if you're just on the regular os, a $180 phone from 2016 probably doesn't get security updates at this point.

iPhone SE was released in 2016 and still runs the latest version of iOS.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_SE

It never cost anything close to $180 though. That was my point: a phone that cost that little in 2016 was probably an older android and is unlikely to have current software support.

Not sure about 2016 but I paid $139 for my iPhone SE in 2017, from a prepaid carrier (Straight Talk).

I got burned by Android being out of date (insecure) because my phone had to be updated by the carrier. I was royally pissed that neither the manufacturer of the phone nor my phone provider was taking ownership-- of the thing they took ownership of by not supporting vanilla Android to begin with-- and leaving me with an insecure device on their network.

Total BS.

I switched to iPhone now.

I hate this attitude. My super cheap budget android phone isn't getting updates, obviously the only solution is to switch to an iPhone that costs 4 times as much. Never mind that there are also Android phones that get updated just as long for the same price as the iPhone. Clearly all Android devices are absolutely identical no matter the price.

It's also discontinued and very difficult to buy new.

To give another angle, my iPad Pro cost around 1000€. The iPhone X is about the same price.

Event taking into account miniaturization, waterproofing and just “luxury” tax, it’s insane that both products cost the same when their capabilities are so wildly different.

I know there are reasons (like paying licensing and cetification for the cellular stack, and pure greed), I just feel they are wrong reasons.

I doubt the margins on them are that different. Similar CPU, the XS has a smaller but more expensive-tech screen.

Also, and thats the main thing keeping me from having an iPhone at this point, is that, even after paying a premium price for an iPhone, you have to spend even more money due to the App Store situation.

On my Android, I use a lot of open-source application that, I find, are often really the best app to do X or Y. They are also free, often without annoying advertisement, with the option to pay for a "premium" version (that usually add nothing but its to help the devs).

Because most OSS devs (with the exception of a few big project like VLC) don't have the money to pay for an iPhone and/or to publish their app on the App Store, there is almost no good open-source/free application on iPhone.

So not only do I have to pay a quite hefty price for a phone (which, to be fair, I find very good), but I also need to pay even more if I want to replicate the setup I have currently for free on an Android. Some application, don't even have good equivalent on iPhone.

I really hope one day Apple change their policy regarding OSS and open up iPhone programming like Google did with Android.

Google Play Services is what makes sure i'm staying on an iPhone.

As for OSS, apple allowed free developer licenses for non-profits some time ago. https://developer.apple.com/support/membership-fee-waiver/

I doubt cellular stack certification is what's driving prices up. I used to make mobile phones back in the late 90's, and even then we constructed mobile phones as an n-way system.

The cellular stack runs on a subsystem on it's own, and all communication to that system is done through the good old fashioned Hayes Command set (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set).

This subsystem is responsible for everything cellular, and it is certified by itself, meaning when you make a new phone model, you put in the same certified chip as you did in the last n models, and it's automatically certified (wrt to the stack anyway).

There are still FCC/CE certifications to be passed for all electronic devices, as well as devices containing radio emitters, but those are cheap in comparison.

Apple has always priced their products on a level of what they think people are willing to pay. It is a luxury product, and they (used to) spend a lot of time making sure it feels like it. From the very moment you enter the store, to you open the box, to the onboarding experience.

Most Chinese manufacturers have more of less copied the experience since then.

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