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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

Are Apple phones really more expensive though? Yes you can get cheaper Android devices, but the hardware that competes against iPhones still costs roughly the same as an iPhone. A Galaxy S10 costs $900, an iPhone XS costs $999.

Cloud storage from Google costs $10/TB, iCloud storage costs $10/TB. Apple Music costs $10/mo for one person, $15 for families. Google Play Music costs $10/mo for one person, $15 for families.

You can get Android phones that are cheaper than iPhones, but that's just a function of Apple not competing in the mid and low end of the market. Comparable phone hardware is comparably priced and comparable services are comparably priced. So in that case it's more of a tradeoff of expensive and selling your data vs expensive and not selling your data.

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It’d be interesting to review today’s lowest iPhone (a $450 iPhone 7) against similarly priced Android phones.

My hunch is that you’ll still get much more !/$ for Android.

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

* An iPhone 7 will likely receive timely updates for another 2-3 years, going by Apple's track record. Can the $450 Android phone guarantee that?

* The $450 Android will likely have a mid range chip -- which will likely not run Android very smoothly. iPhone 7, on the other other hand, runs iOS 12 like a charm. Sure, it is not as smooth as iPhone XS, but that is not what we are talking about, are we? And while I suspect that iPhone 7 may not beat the $450 Android on benchmarks (or maybe it can -- at least on single core performance, which matters more than one would think), benchmarks do not necessarily represent the real world performance.

* Resale value of an iPhone is always superior to any Android in my experience.

* While the camera quality varies from phone to phone, I suspect the iPhone is still above average in that regard.

* Sound is still better than most Androids I have seen -- including those costing $100 more.

* Should something go wrong with my phone, I can be reasonably confident that Apple will be able to fix it -- that they will have spare parts available. I can't say the same for Androids -- even flagships do not do well in this area -- I've been burnt too many times.

The only thing you'll miss out on is the latest design trends like bezel-less display and the notch. But I don't see how that counts towards value for money.

I know there are phones like OnePlus which are supposed to be flagship killers, but they come with their own caveats. Search for OnePlus privacy goof ups. And the latest OnePlus is not exactly cheap.

I use an iPhone and an Android on a daily basis -- I am not merely speculating here. I am just not motivated enough to collect data to substantiate my claims.

My experience has been that Android phones have lower capital costs and higher TCO. I buy an iPhone, keep it a few years, sell it for a few hundred bucks and buy another. I buy an Android phone, Google cuts the price by half six months later, and within two years the resale value of the phone is zero. One of the reasons I stopped buying Android phones was because it was an expensive habit.

But ... if you keep your phones until they literally fall apart, the economics are different. Though over a span of, say, five years, it doesn't really amount to much either way.

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