Comment by eyelidlessness | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eyelidlessness | Hacker News Reader

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> Am I cheap, poor, frugal or outdated to find it mildly funny US$400-450+tx are considered cheap phones nowadays?

I can’t speak to whether you’re any of those, but I can say this. Anyone spending significantly more than that (I’m included in this category) is either:

- Buying it for the quality of its camera (me again, not that I’m an especially avid photographer; I almost exclusively take pics of my pup)

- Some mix of spending too much or not realizing they’re in one or more categories below (some large majority, I’d wager)

- Doing a cost benefit analysis that favors spending more upfront for a longer-term investment (me again again, although my phone ownership lifecycle has shortened significantly; it’s still beneficial because my hand-me-downs benefit loved ones)

- Married to the software (me once again, much moreso on mobile than on general purpose computers these days)

- Enthralled by compute power or some other hardware particularity (o_0 I’m probably just getting old but I mostly don’t get this… okay I’m amused that my phone is more powerful in many ways than its current high-end laptop companion)

None of your reasons cover the hordes of people buying the pro models when there’s absolutely no reason to. Especially in India. I live in an upper middle class apartment complex and half the folks living here have a 13 Pro. It costs 60% more if not higher here than in the US as well. You have to be in the 99.5th percentile of salary earners to cover the price of the phone in a single months salary.

It’s all about image and prestige and that’s one of the biggest reasons nowadays if you ask me.

> None of your reasons cover the hordes of people buying the pro models when there’s absolutely no reason to.

I’m fairly certain the second item does?

I have a rule that I spend the most money on things I use the most.

Mattresses, phones, computers, desks, chairs, etc. Is a thousand dollars for a phone a lot? Well, depends on how you look at it. I use it for more than an hour a day, every day, so a 1000 dollars over two years for a device like that doesn't seem insane to me. Comes out to about a $1.40 a day.

I think that’s a good thing to consider when making a purchase, but it’s also very one-dimensional.

To me 1000$ for a phone is a lot because it’s only marginally better than a 500$ phone.

Also phones are big liability. Odds are a good mattress or chair will last ages. A phone lasts 2 to 3 years generally.

I have no rule but my heuristic is to spare no expense on things that matter most to me, but to research them if I’m not already sure what I want. That research often factors in price because “spare no expense” can be absurd when it’s blind. Multiple orders of magnitude absurd when you’re not paying attention and think you have that lack of attention available.

Being taxed $1.40 a day EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE doesn't sound insignificant.

To own my own pocket supercomputer that also functions as a high quality photo/video camera? I'd gladly pay that "tax". It's about the equivalent of one meal a month in a restaurant.

I think you're missing a big one that applies to most people I know:

- Locked into two year contracts where a phone upgrade is "free" every two years, but they are spending $100+ per month for that "free" phone

As a Canadian, I have a $50 plan with 12 gb of data (pretty good deal for here). If I wanted to get a new iPhone 13, I'd have to spend $300 up front (would be offset if i had an old device to trade in), plus an additional $33/month for two years, plus choose a plan that was at least $60 base. So I'd get a "free" phone every two years (as long as I had an old device to trade in every two years, and paid twice as much per month).

I won't do these things, so I have just replaced my $300 all-in phone from 4 years ago with a $400 all-in phone.

That definitely feels like it falls under the spending too much category, but I’ve only once financed a phone (should be mine pretty soon I think!) and hope I never need to again.

That's fair, I just find that the number of people who fall into that specific source of "spending too much" makes it important to specify. Most providers bury the actual phone cost somehow, and only focus on the monthly total - normalizing people spending $100/month on cell services

Your description of that deal doesn't really add up. If you're putting down $300 and paying $33/month, that's just buying a phone.

Yes, but if you have a two year old iPhone then they give you a $300 credit for trading it in. And you're already paying $95 a month (to cover your two year old phone), so the monthly cost ends up being the same. And the only alternative the salespersons will mention is buying the iPhone outright for $1200. So people think they are getting a deal (when they're actually just financing a phone over two years with an overpriced plan)

So, are phones actually more powerful than computers? I know obviously there's a scale, but my understanding is that x86 stuff is an entirely different league than anything built for mobile. I wasn't really acutely aware of this until I started building some small form factor entertainment systems. After doing some research and testing I was getting far better performance out of old model x86 Chromeboxes than even the latest mobile hardware.

A15 in the iPhone SE is far faster than any atom-class CPU which is what you typically find in a chromebook. On JavaScript benchmarks it trades blows with 12th gen Intel laptop CPUs.

My iPhone 13 Pro Max absolutely beats my 2019 MacBook Pro 16” on several benchmarks. Subjectively it also very readily remains useful and responsive for many tasks when the same laptop doesn’t for the same task.

- cares about SW updates

The first generation iPhone from 2016 can still be updated with the latest iOs version.

I think that falls squarely under “married to the software”? At least it was part of the spirit of I intended.

You have to admit that there is some gap between "I want the latest re-rounded corners on app icons" (which fits into that category neatly) and "I don't want 4 years of unpatched 0-days still open on my phone" (which I'd argue does not).

I don’t know why I have to admit this, but sure I’ll grant it. I don’t think the former is a reasonable characterization of “married to the software”, I think it’s a caricature.

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