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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

IMHO some major brands have been pricing themselves out of the market with their newest phones. They've been letting the prices creep up much faster than inflation for several years now and they've hit the point where people can't afford the flagship phones anymore. Combine that with the feature sets leveling off and you have a recipe for not upgrading your phone every two years.

The big question we should be asking is "what's the next big thing?" Smartwatches seem to be the answer Apple is going with, but I'm not sure they've broken out of being a niche device yet. They feel more like tablets to me, something that hits its peak way too early and ends up being mostly neglected after a few years.

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I use smartphone as camera. The single most important reason to upgrade smartphone for me is better camera because all the photos you take most likely going to live forever, probably spanning multiple generations. I think there is still lot of juice left in this area. If someone came out with new AI camera that started producing amazing super resolution wide lens images with professional colors, night vision, infrared, UV photography etc - that would be a huge deal. Battery is next most important issue especially when you are travelling and taking pics all day. If someone cracked battery issue or made this more power-efficient that would be huge case for buying a new phone. Headphone jack, non-slipper surfaces, not having to put ugly case on it - is 3rd most important reason to buy new phone. Peripherals, ability to use smartphone for other devices etc is probably the 4th.

But you see the problem... Folks have been rapidly increasing prices while giving nothing that customer wants.

I am using pixel 2 on Google Fi. My monthly bill is around 20 or $30 per month. The phone is rock solid and has no malware or bloatware and I see myself using it for several more years.

I think that could be one of the reasons for sales falling off a cliff.

AR glasses, I'd bet. Interest in smartwatches has remained lukewarm despite years of aggressive improvement. But if a company could put a HoloLens in the frame of a stylish pair of glasses - using AR tech which Apple and Google have both been aggressively innovating on in their respective phone frameworks - I think that could be a very real improvement over these awkward rectangles we have to fumble with and drop and which constantly pull our eyes away from the world around us.

The hardware challenges are significant, but the same was true of the original iPhone. And we know Microsoft and MagicLeap are both making lots of progress - I wouldn't be surprised if Apple and Google are doing their own hardware research.

Personally I'll put off upgrading my iPhone as long as possible just so I can keep a headphone jack. I listen to music on the phone, I hate dongles because I lose them, and I have headphones that cost more than the phone did.

I think Apple is aiming for a cycle of computer, phone, tablet where you get a new one in the sequence every 1-2 years.

Hmm, now that you bring it up...here I thought I was sticking it to the Apple Man by hanging on to my phone, not buying a new watch every year, let that iPad get a few generations behind; don't have to buy every new thing that comes out.

But as you point out, I'm going to be buying something new from Apple every year or so regardless. BTW, isn't AppleTV about due for a refresh?

Tablet -> never got used to them (iPad). Maybe with the new iPad OS Computer -> once every 5/6 years Phone -> every 2.5/3 years

I know that tablets last a long time for most people I know.

And that’s all fine. Why do we need to buy new hardware? No need. At least not for now.

I’d like to buy a new MacBook. One with more disk space than 512gb. Hopefully more than 16gb, but 16 works. Maybe a faster cpu, because things are bloating. But I will wait.. wait until I’m able to get a proper keyboard.

I'm using a 2011 MacBook Air right now for dev, and the only roadblock is that I can't upgrade the OS past 10.10.5.

You sure can: http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

Also: https://github.com/rmc-team/macos-patcher

Ooh, thanks :) Just after I built a new version of Ruby and everything ...

Yeah the watch is underestimated. Close to 100M devices (rough estimate I cobbled together from 2017-19 data) is hardly a niche.

"They've been letting the prices creep up much faster than inflation for several years now and they've hit the point where people can't afford the flagship phones anymore"

I think it's because you don't need a flagship. 10 years ago phones were crap (let's be honest) - slow, small etc. You needed to pay a lot for a phone with a decent battery life, large screen etc. Now you don't. It's like 3d graphics cards back in the day. You needed quite an expensive one for games to look good. For years now though you've been able to play pretty much every game with very cheap graphics cards so long as you're happy to turn some of the settings down a little.

With Android, you know you're phones going to get abandoned with 18-24 months so why not get a £250 phone instead of a £800 one?

Non-Apple smartwatches are handicapped by WearOS development. Apple seems to be ahead of the game and Google is lagging behind with WOS. I'd love it if they focused some more on it, though I do use my watch for fitness and sleep tracking and it's pretty solid in that regard.

Another analog to the tablet market, which Google has more or less given up on at this point. Pretty much the only tablets sold these days are iPads and Kindles.

I really am a big fan of the Apple Watch and have bought every generation since the 2nd one but it's still limited without an iPhone (ie no way to browse the web). They will need to solve the problem of screen size before it could truly be a replacement. Perhaps some sort of folding screen or projection. I would also love for them to embed a camera in the watch near where the crown is.

Everyone has Airpods and an Apple Watch to go with their iPhone now. That's an extra $169 and $399.

I don't know a single person that owns neither, and I know at least a couple dozen people with an iPhone.

4 out of 6 people in my cube farm own airpods. I see them everywhere. These things are incredibly popular with the under 35 demographic.

I do occasionally see people with AirPods, not so sure about Apple Watches though.

Apple sold ~50M Wearables in 2018 ($10B wearables revenue ÷ $200 ASP) vs ~200M iPhone sales. So, less than 25% of iPhone users probably have Airpods or an Apple Watch. Realistically, given that phones last multiple years, the number is closer to 10%.

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