Cheapest iPhone has a more powerful processor than the most expensive Android | Hacker News Reader

Cheapest iPhone has a more powerful processor than the most expensive Android

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The cheapest iPhone is also as expensive as some mid-range Android devices and completely inaccessible to a large chunk of the world's population.

When a device that most will spend $449 on is "cheap" you have to admire Apple's price anchoring[0], they release a $1249 flagship and suddenly what the largest iPhone 5S flagshp cost ($442.09 inflation adjusted to 2020) at launch is considered "cheap."

It is undeniably a nice phone, but we've all lost sight of how much any of us should be spending on smartphones when $449 is celebrated for being a bargain. We've lost perspective.

PS - This isn't exclusively an Apple thing. Google's "bargain" Pixel 3a is essentially the same price.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_(cognitive_bias)

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2013/09/16iPhone-5s-iPhone-5c...

Amen. It's pretty striking when with say the Samsung A30 you get a 6.4" OLED display, and 4000MAh battery, which costs the same as say an old iPhone 7 here in South Africa (which is still for sale!)

I still can't get over the fact that apple is still putting in less than 2000hz batteries. Sure the life is great the first year, but as they make updates and increase the processor usage, suddenly that battery can barely last a day. I know people hate phablets, but if that gets me a 2 day battery life, so be it.

If I recall correctly the iPhone 8 actually lost battery capacity because they needed space for the wireless charging system. So if they wanted to use the same case design (to save money on re-tooling/re-use existing assembly lines) and keep wireless charging it might not be avoidable. We'll likely know more if IFixIt or similar do a tear-down.

I do agree though that even with potential battery savings from the newer CPU architecture, it could be a problem in the latter half of the SE 2's life.

It's what happened to the original SE. I lose like 20% battery on my original SE from 2 years use on iOS 13 just from web browsing for 30 minutes.

Apple has been making some just flat out awful design decisions in terms of their hardware for the past, what feels like a decade at this point but it's much shorter than that. While form can be greater than functionality, why would I ever want a phone that blatantly has printed on it "Planned Obsolescence?" The things I care about on an iphone are not "the best processor" out there. I want efficient ram usage and long battery life. Ram was never an issue with iOS so they just needed a great battery. What did they give us? A better processor...that's going to drain the battery in a year with the next iOS update because they keep pushing software updates that demand more of the system. I won't be shocked if malware get's into iphones any time soon showing how lazy they've been with MacOS in the last few years.

> hz

hopefully mAh

The iPhone XR models should have been the new SE and the iPhone 8 body should have gone. Apple is a joke when it comes to these things.

The entire point of this phone is that it's the iPhone 8 body. Smaller than the XR, still uses Touch ID and home button.

Apple could have easily replaced the screen on the 8 body with one of the XR with Face ID. It’s an admission that Face ID is another failure, along side the dreadful touchbar. None of the macs have Face ID and now a brand new phone without Face ID. Apple has iOS one day someone will replace it and Apple will be buggered.

As a side note, Pixel 3a got discounted down to $300 a few months after the release, which I think is a fair price for a phone of its specs and software support period. It was definitely too expensive for me for its asked release price.

I'm generally a fan of Apple hardware, but the 3a was the best phone I've owned in a long time. It doesn't have anti-features like slippery glass back or notch and has a headphone jack. And the best thing about it is the battery life - 3-4 days with 6 hours of total screen time.

I agree, I have the pixel 3a and it is the best phone I have ever had (I have switched between Android and iPhone). For me it's the size, battery life, and it just works.

Glass back is less slippery if it's polished. New ones (or aluminium ones) are most slippery.

That's misleading. The low prices you quoted required a 2-year carrier contract.

> an unlocked, contract free iPhone 5c will be available through T-Mobile for $549 (16GB) and $649 (32GB). T-Mobile will also have the unlocked iPhone 5s for $649, $749 and $849, for 16GB, 32GB and 64GB respectively.

https://www.engadget.com/2013-09-10-iphone-5c-and-5s-go-on-p...

$449 doesn't seem particularly expensive for something that will last 3+ years. That is $12.50/month (or less). Your data service is easily 3x or 4x the cost of the phone.

The value that you get from that device is extraordinary compared to the cost.

Lots of people are spending many hours a week on their phones. And that time is noticeably more enjoyable with a better-functioning phone. I think it’s rational to compare the cost of phone to the cost of something like a car, appliance, or couch and consider how much value you get out of it for how many years when deciding whether the price tag is worth it. Personally, I’d pay at least a dollar an hour to always use a nicer phone, and that pays for a higher end phone every few years.

Consider the case of someone who is upgrading from the iPhone SE they bought four years ago. $100/year seems like a pretty good deal for their next phone.

I still use my Nexus 7 with LineageOS - daily. It's cost? A hundred sixteen dollars - in 2013. I use it for web browsing, reading and video mostly at 1920x1200 for 7 inches with a battery that still lasts a couple of days of heavy usage - I find it extremely difficult to justify spending over a thousand dollars for something that offers a whole lot of stuff that I don't need. One caveat, if you're largely using your phone for pictures then I can imagine it would be worth the cost for newer tech. I just don't need it.

Maybe Apple's better pricing will give Google the kick in the ass they need to bring back an inexpensive phablet like the Nexus 7.

> I’d pay at least a dollar an hour to always use a nicer phone

That's 75% of a minimum wage in Montana.

Units error and fact error.

Min wage in Montana is $8.50/hr .

And it's probably not healthy to be on your phone 8hrs a day.

But if you are, then a $1000 phone is only 25cents/hr over 2 years, when you can resell your phone for half price.

Saw some map showing Montana min wage is $4. Even if you use your phone 8hrs a day (a ton of people do for work), you own it for 24. So that's $24 a day.

It all a bit pointless math for HN crowd, but it does give some perspective - there are places where pay is very low and you don't even need to look far. People do actual work on their phones there.

The US has a federal minimum wage of $7.25. Maybe some state has a lower minimum wage law, but if so it isn’t in force.

If I were making minimum wage I’d probably be more in the “buy an iPhone SE every 4 years” rather than “buy a top iPhone every 2 years” category.

But if I are going to critique other people’s spending patterns, I’d start with anyone who bought a new car, not a phone.

Someone has to buy them, but I always are shocked how people can afford them, especially at something like 10% interest rate.

But why are phones that expensive to begin with? The actual hardware costs are magnitudes less than the retail price. For the price of a the cheapest iPhone X you can get a high end laptop. It doesn't make sense to me why other mass consumer electronics like PC's continuously get faster, better and cheaper but smartphones continuously get more expensive for only modest and incremental improvements.

My understanding is Apple has a pretty good margin while most other manufacturers are hardly profitable. It’s a competitive industry. Nobody is charging twice as much as they need to because nobody has that kind of market power.

If you are using all the capabilities of your smartphone, it should be adding way more value to your life, than it costs. That's what makes smartphones indispensible - a huge ROI.

Edit: Wanted to share a tip. If you are planning to buy an iPhone anyway, be sure to get Apple Card. You'll get a 3% discount on your purchase, and they will let you pay 24 equal monthly payments with no interest.

Aside from the 3% discount, aren't most carrier plans no-interest payment plans?

Because of well-documented abusive behavior towards customers, I recommend to anyone to really minimize any connections or dependencies with carriers. I don't trust the carrier enough to engage in any "discounts" or "deals" with them. I don't have time to untangle their games.

Fair enough. I've had good experiences with Verizon (their iPhones are all unlocked) but other carriers you do have to jump through some hoops if you want to leave etc.

$20/mo for a mobile phone computer camera seems a good deal to me.

You have lost perspective when you ignore actual costs, including wireless service costs. The $449 SE you buy today will sell for half that price used in 2 years, making its actual monthly cost less than $10.

The cheapest smartphone in the US costs at least $25/month ($300 a year) in wireless charges, and its owner will typically use it for thirty hours a month or more. Trying to save less than $10 a month (maybe a quarter per usage hour) by having a significantly worse camera and a much worse phone experience seems like ignoring the forest for the trees.

If you aren’t going to pay up slightly for a much better phone experience in today’s world, what are you spending your money on?

> completely inaccessible to a large chunk of the world's population.

You can say that about anything considered the “cheapest” in a group

- the cheapest new car - the cheapest new laptop - the cheapest new house

> When a device that most will spend $449 on is "cheap"

“cheapest” is not the same as “cheap”

> Apple is laying out a roadmap for exactly what Google needs to do with its own chips.

To ask the question: why would Google make better processors than Qualcomm?

Apple has immense economies of scale at the high-end because that's the only thing they sell. Google's processor would be more niche than Qualcomm's (since manufacturers would need a Qualcomm modem to go with it rather than just grabbing an integrated Snapdragon modem/CPU) and it would be smaller than Apple's in sales since high-end Android phones aren't the main part of that market. This seems like one of those instances where people believe that Google can do better in any market. Google is a great, smart company, but we've seen them fail a lot too. Android Wear didn't take off with Tizen becoming Samsung's wearable OS and Google eventually buying Fitbit. We saw Google buy Motorola just to sell them off as a failed experiment. We've seen Google Fiber stall out as Google couldn't make it work. The Nexus/Pixel line has been ok, but it hasn't changed the industry. Chromebooks seem to be fading.

Why should Google be able to enter the mobile CPU game and do better?

Not only that, but would manufacturers even want something better? Manufacturers want customers to keep buying new phones as often as possible. If Google comes out with a CPU that's 70% better and could last a customer for 4-5 years, would they want to buy it? Apple is really unique in that they're the only company really giving you a good experience for an extended period of time. But part of that is that Apple knows that a good device from them creates loyalty because there's no iOS alternative. If you're an Android manufacturer, you know that a customer's choice for their next device could be any number of different brands offering nearly identical Android experiences.

Does this even matter for Google? What part of Google's bottom line would this help? More people using Android devices certainly helps, but would a better processor convince iPhone users to move to Android?

I guess I'm failing to see how a better processor helps Google enough to justify spending all the R&D on it and why Google would be better at building this processor than the companies already creating mobile processors. For Apple, it gives them a differentiator and the ability to control their platform and their destiny - and likely control their laptop platform in the near future. They can specifically target the CPU and build what makes sense. For Android, this CPU might be 10% of Android devices, but it wouldn't become an assumption. It wouldn't create loyalty for a manufacturer since the same CPU/OS combo could be had via other options. We're just talking about increasing the price and complexity of a device they don't want to continue supporting anyway.

And I still haven't seen why Google would be able to beat Qualcomm, Samsung, HiSilicon, etc.

Qualcomm forces obsolence to keep chips expensive with short lifespans of compatibility with OS upgrades, driving up TCO and killing resale value.

Eventually Google will stand up to them or else lose the phone war in wealthy developed nations.

They’ve never had any meaningful market share on the high end.

i don't care.

what i care about is that the cheapest iPhone has a longer support period than the most expensive Android. it's actually insane and infuriating because I don't even like Apple but there literally is no other choice if you don't want to switch your phone every two years.

It really depends on what support you need - yes, the latest and greatest bling is dropped soon, but Samsung offers 4 years of security updates - that's quite a bit of time. You'll probably have a really bad battery by that point and it's probably worth an upgrade. You won't have all the latest and greatest OS bling, but you wouldn't have the latest and greatest anything but that point, and that's probably OK.

Security updates that get released months after its supposed to?

I don’t understand; bad battery = phone replacement.

Bad battery = battery replacement

Particularly so when you consider the environmental impact of new battery compared to new phone + new battery. The difference in price for the consumer does not reflect the true costs.

Does this apply to all Samsung phones or just flagships?

Apple released a bug fix update last June for phones back to the 2011 iPhone 4s.....

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/07/22/apple-issues-ios-...

False. Check Nokia Android phones.

You mean Android One?

Those only have 3 years of "guaranteed" monthly security updates since first release of phone.

In practice, though, Nokia's delivery is delayed and much less frequent than monthly (I've got a Nokia 7.1).

OnePlus delivers security updates 3-9 months after the pixel, at least on the 7 pro (their flagship from last year).

These promises are simply not being kept.

FWIW, the original iPhone SE is still getting updates, and was released 4 years ago.

Teracube's phone has a 4-year warranty and white glove service. The downside is, they're a brand new company.

Oneplus still releases security updates to oneplus 3. 8 just got released. Its not universal for android not to be updated but I think Samsung has created a bad rep.

And yet, my cheap android phone has two things that are infinitely more important to me: an aux port and an SD card slot. My phone would be fundamentally less usable (for me) without them, while quicker switching between apps etc would be a minor benefit at most.

Chasing statistics (Fastest processor! Most megapixels! Longest battery life!) becomes useless after a certain point. Processors and megapixels are long past being a deciding criteria, while battery life (and picture quality, for that matter) still are important.

My wife currently has an android phone with those two.

I just picked up the new iphone se for her and explained twice “there is no headphone jack”.

She replied: “Cool, so I can keep my headphones plugged in to the laptop and use the other headphones for the phone. In worse case, I have bt headphones”.

With the SD card... I mean, it seems not possible to configure any app to store data on it. She has signal, whatsapp, broswer, spotify and a few photos and the phone is constantly complaining that it is low on storage.

Androind is working well for my mother though. She is 70+. She doesn’t use any apps, simple text messages, phone calls and that’s it. She just has to buy a new battery like every 6 months...

I use the sd card for media storage. Music and podcasts. Significantly reduces monthly data usage.

My car has an aux port. It has terrible Bluetooth that cuts out every couple minutes. I also use the same headphones at my home plugged into my phone and my desktop. This could by avoided with a dongle or two (or three), but honestly, I hate dongles, so I have thus far been able to buy phones that haven't made the decision to remove a (very useful) port.

Honestly, what do you use the SD card for?

Even with movies for flights, I haven’t filled a phone up in years.

To store 4K & 8K videos my phone takes for instance?

Carrier data for phones is expensive. I use it to store media (podcasts and music) so I can pay for minimal monthly data. I bought a 128gb microSD card 3 or 4 years ago, meant I could save several hundred dollars (twice now!) by getting a mid-range phone with 64gb storage.

Edit: for fun I did a quick cost comparison. I drive a lot and listen to music and podcasts. 40,000km a year. If I streamed, I would have to upgrade my plan (+$10 a month minimum) and my phone (+$150/2yrs). Purchase price at the time was $100. So over the 3.5 years I've had this sd card, I've saved a net $620.

I’m not sure this answers the question. I understand why having an SD card feels good, but in practice, you can fit tons of movies, music, and audiobooks in even just 64gb. It’s certainly a balance between all the factors that makes an SD card an attractive choice for you, but I think for the overwhelming majority of people, long-term updates/support are going to be far more valuable, even if they don’t realize it.

The question was, "what do you use the SD card for?". I answered. Other things you mentioned:

* I just checked, and my phone storage is actually only 32gb. I misspoke.

* It's quite close to full with just a month worth of pictures and all my audio stored on the SD card.

* My last security update was 3 weeks ago. The manufacturer who made my phone committed to 3 or 4 years of security updates. That said, Apple does a much better job of making feature updates available for their products.

* The article is about how "powerful" the processor is, and I would still contend that that is irrelevant for any cell phone user I know.

But current android phones support usb otg, right? If I need access to a lot of storage for media, I'll just put it into a usb stick and plug it on the phone when I need it. Sure it's not as convenient has having accessible 24/7 on the phone, but it's not like I'm going to watch movies often on the phone, only occasionally on long trip.

I did not mention movies once. I said music and podcasts that I use daily. My routine would look like following:

1. Get in car, plug in power and aux cable

2. Press play on (playlist or podcast)

3. Press start navigation on google maps

I'm glad that storage isn't a limitation for your use case, but for me they would be a major inconvenience that I can happily avoid by using an Android with an SD card

In places with poor connectivity or where iCloud storage is absurdly expensive (aka most of the world) you'd prefer using dirt cheap SD storage.

Tell me when it can use that powerful processor to run an engine other than webkit

Use an enterprise cert.

What is that?

To sideload what? Is there a non-WebKit browser around for iOS you can sideload with an enterprise managed iOS device?

Sounds interesting...

And then what? Can one grab the source and compile chromium or firefox in such a way that it can use JIT and all the other things? Would that even be "supported" as a compile option or up-to-date branch? I thought PROT_EXEC was limited to Webkit.

Curious what the next steps may be / what details I'm unaware of

Could you expand on this comment more? Engines that run on Android vs iOS maybe? Just curious :)

Very likely more a point about freedom. Apple does not allow Firefox to use it's own engine under iOS

I kinda like the way they're doing things. It reminds me of the IE6 times, but with no decent options. I guess I'm a sucker for nostalgia.

At least the browsers can freeze, crash and hit more bugs per hour with a faster CPU, so at least it got that going for it.

From your tone I assume that even if Apple allowed you to run Gecko on an iPhone you would find another reason not to buy one.

There are many to choose from.

Because web engine is the only thing people run on their phones?

“Cheapest Porsche has a more powerful engine than the most expensive Hyundai”

You’d never read that anywhere, but it’s true.

Why people on HN care about phones so much is beyond me. Between fanboys and envy, it’s a weird world. I mean, tech is great, but this “mine is bigger than yours” is kinda old. (Or maybe I’m old....ok, I’m definitely old.)

Buy the phone that works for you and be happy with it.

Why are you on HN if you do not expect to see such? And this is not fanboy-ing or envy, it's about economy of compute. I'm sure you'd see that in the forum about car engine enthusiasts.

The SD865 still draws less total power for the same workload.

The A13 is a huge core with better-than-Skylake IPC, that trades blows with Skylake++ 9900K or Zen 2 3950X in many real-world benchmarks, despite the much lower TDP and clock speed:

https://images.anandtech.com/doci/15609/SPEC-S865.png

Huh, they’re still claiming Android phone screens are better because of bigger numbers. How quaint.

https://youtu.be/dcFXEXJicgc

Look at the crap ambient lighting conditions in this pepsi challenge.

Let's be honest, not all Androids are alike, apparently the Pocophone is half the price of the iPhone in that case, and they both have LCDs screens, so they are both behind the curve in terms of screen tech.

Apple A processors are continuously performs excellent since Apple A7. Significantly, A7 is almost first ARMv8 SoC that released before 2 years from first ARMv8 Snapdragon(that's worst SD810).

Sure, but its the same processor as in all current iPhones. I guess "most expensive iPhone faster than most expensive Android phone" isn't quite as click-grabbing. Apple's SoCs have been faster than Qualcomm's for a number of years, so this is hardly news worthy either.

A lot of people who don't know much what iPhone gets you won't care about CPU.

I wanna upgrade my in-laws from cheap, spyware ridden Androids that can't even withstand a video chat. It will be quite hard with the screen that looks like it's half a decade old.

Serious question, has anyone installed Android on their iPhone?

I love the idea of budget iPhone, but I hated iOS.

Does it work as smooth as Pixel?

The great software and drivers (IOS) is why Iphones are so smooth. Not the hardware.

I'm confused by your comment. Which is it? Do they run great software or iOS?

What’s wrong with iOS?

Browsers are limited to using the built-in webkit engine, many default applications are fixed to Apple applications and can not be replaced as the default by a 3rd party app, apps can only be installed from the Apple App Store, support for PWAs is poor, and the UI/UX doesn't provide good discoverability of functionality (This seems to affect most Apple products but for some reason people here seem to think Apple has great user interfaces. For the worse example of this see tvOS.).

Also when switching providers iOS has a habit of sometimes getting into a state where it will refuse to send SMS or MMS messages. This has plagued it over many versions with the only resolution being to wipe the device and not restoring any backups because restoring will then break the functionality again. I know several people who have been hit by this and the support forums are filled with this happening to people.

The latest news is that since version 6 receiving certain email can lead to your phone being compromised even if you don't open the email. Which reminds me of another point. Despite Apple's best efforts there still exists software and/or devices available to governments which can subvert the security protections on iPhones. Also don't forget that time when receiving certain text messages could lock up iPhones.

That is just a short list of a few of the ways iOS is not great. You can argue it is better than some other systems but that still doesn't make it great.

These seem like minor/non issues

iOS is great software.

There's a project that pulls it off, but as you would expect, device drivers are missing for almost everything like WiFi, etc..

This is just clickbait.

Clickbait headline.

Author conveniently forgets to mention that the 865 has hands down better AI performance which is considered a key benchmark for high end devices. Multi-core perf is neck and neck.

https://techyorker.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-865-vs-apple-a13-...

There's no AI benchmark at that URL.

True, but there is a multi-core benchmark. Makes the claims in the headline and article presented here suspect.

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