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Comment by 988747 | Hacker News Reader

Oh, i can AFFORD any phone i want...but i use a cheap android because my self esteem is not dependent on using money to signal other people about my high social status

The iPhone isn't a good social status signal any longer - the majority of smartphone users in the US have one. If the majority can afford something, it's quite obvious it no longer functions for signaling high social status.

The iPhone hasn't been a good social status signal for nearly a decade at this point.

There's a 'waterfall' effect of status signals. The upper class uses signal A to differentiate themselves from the middle class; the middle class catches on, and starts using signal A to imitate the upper class; the upper class moves on to signal B, to differentiate themselves from the middle class; the lower class use signal A to imitate the middle class; the middle class uses B to differentiate themselves from the lower class and imitate the upper class; from there, it cycles.

ABA->BAB->ABA

The upper class aren't worried about being mistaken for the lower class; that's why 'ghetto chic' exists, and why Zuckerberg wore hoodies. Conspicuous adoption of low-class signals can be a signal of high-class- for a while, till the rest of the culture catches up.

Usual caveats of 'this is a simplified model' etc.

Tell that to school children. "Daddy why can't i have an iPhone ? Everybody has one "

You're projecting. I can't afford any phone I want, I use a 5 year old iPhone and my choice has nothing to do with my social status. My next phone is likely to be an iPhone too.

The op definitely defines their social status via their phone. We all know some people just prefer apple for whatever reason.

lol...projecting? so you are saying that deep down inside I really want an iphone? LOL...ok, dude...

No, I'm saying you are projecting your belief that a phone is a status symbol onto other people.

yeah, you're right...it's really delusional to think that iphone possession is a status symbol...I'd have to be insane to think that!

Absolutely not true. I had an iPhone 1, a 3GS and more recently a 13. After a while with the 13, I have switched back to Android (Pixel 6). Issues I had:

- Irritating keyboard behaviour (autocorrect, having to manually add custom words)

- Inability to organise the home screen to my liking

- Inability to adjust the volume of external devices, such as other Spotify devices

- Poor audio switching - if I have music playing, and play a video on another app, the music will not resume after the video ends

- Inability for third party apps to use the alarm volume - so that if I install a third party alarm app, it will change my system media volume to the level of the alarm. Therefore, if I'm playing music and my alarm rings, suddenly the music volume will increase.

- Inability to change the snooze time (hence having to resort to a third party alarm app)

These are just a small selection of (seemingly minor) issues that I had with iOS, and there were more. I appreciate Apple as a brand for its more favourable data privacy aspects, but iOS has a lot of shortcomings and reasons for a user to prefer Android. However, it's important to note that I'm used to Motorola G phones, and now the Pixel, both of which forego any irritating skinning/custom UI over the top of plain Android.

I was using an Android for years. My mother at one point was nagging me to buy an iPhone, and I relented and bought one just to get her to stop nagging.

6 months later I gave the iPhone to my sister and bought a new Android. I still use Android today.

(Apple does not make iTunes for Linux, seemingly out of sheer spite to Linux users like myself. I ended up having to use a slow paid app to transfer files where previously I used a command line and an SSH connection with RSA keys.)

I don't buy phones on contract anymore.

My 128GB Xiaomi Redmi Note 9S cost me about R5000 in 2020 while a comparable screen sized iPhone with the same capacity would have been R20,000

Easy decision to make when the $$$ is paid upfront - contracts for iPhones here are already like cars heading towards 36 months.

So F-Droid is working on iOS ? /s

Poe's Law in action right here.

I switched to Android because I use a lot of Google products: GMail, Google Calendar, Google Fi, Google Maps.

The deeper integration with my phone makes my life easier and, while there used to be a large gap in quality, I find iOS/Android to be similar these days.

There is a small minority that refuses to buy Apple products because of ideological causes (at least that is the reason for me- I am not comfortable with supporting a company that locks it's users in a walled garden).

Or if you want to decide what applications you install on your phone rather than Apple.

I don’t want the vast majority of Google apps on my android phone, but I can’t remove them. It’s the same on both platforms.

Have you thought about the android phones more expensive than the base iPhone ?

Can't run root shell or QEMU on recent iDevices. I thought this was HACKER news?

check the url

Doesn't change the fact that we are on hacker news and not google news

I personally like my jack 3.5 and I like not spending a whole min wage worker salary on a piece of junk that will be trashed in 5 years tops

> on a piece of junk that will be trashed in 5 years top

Remind me - how long is your Android phone receiving software updates for?

4 years when I bought it a year ago.

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