I won’t spend more than $250 on a new smartphone
theverge.com
theverge.com
While the author acknowledges the two year contract, he seems not to actually do a TCO analysis of the phone + monthly service. Given how much cheaper cell service is these days (perhaps 1/3 of what it cost during the early days of the subsidized iPhone), you could spend an extra $500 on a phone and still end up spending less. And if you kept it for 3 years instead of 2 (which is much easier now that the rate of innovation has slowed), you could spend even more upfront.
O dod the math in UK for cost of buy the phone outright, and buying ewuivalent service over two yeats - usually buying outroggt end up cheaper. Sometimesnit doesnt so you can atke the deal.
If you dont want to shell out cash, it's an okay option.
He's on Google Fi. I'm on Google Fi with $20 month plan. You can go a few dollars cheaper if you use very little data and pay by the gig. I'm eligible for the same deal on the Pixel 7a. There is not a company which offers the same service for any where close to $10 a month.
My problem is usually the lack of security updates with phones in this price band (last year's model or whatever) but according to a quick research it should get security updates through October '26.
And yeah, I know that 330€ is one category higher than 250$ - but I still refuse to pay 500+ for a phone that I hardly use. My only problem is that if 2FA and banking require one, I want to have security updates.
We're all familiar with how "low-tier" stuff can cause more trouble then it's worth or even cost more money then if you bought something better.
But I've found the quality of life and other benefits of buying the "high-tier" stuff is sometimes incredible. I bought a 1080ti which was effectively the highest consumer GPU and that lasted 5+ years while have more memory then even most modern GPUs (11GB). I've found the noise cancelling quality at the 350$ tier headphones to be miiiiiiiiiiiiles above the 150$ pair and the 75$ tier (I own three tiers of the sony ones from a few years ago).
Of course just because it's expensive doesn't mean it's better value, or even better in general, you have to be really strategic and honestly sometimes lucky, and obviously most people can't afford the "high-tier" of everything they want. But somethings I'm just really happy I went with the "high-tier".
Obviously if you're just want to watch videos and casually listen to music 20$ earbuds might be all you need. I will say few 20$ earbuds will be rated as "quality audio" even by non-audiophiles, but if that's all you need then that's great!
If you need decent quality audio and high quality noise cancelling for your work in an office and plan to use it for years, then you might consider the "high-end" because it really can make a massive difference depending on your needs.
Sound quality is fine for YouTube (main thing I use them for) and my under 300 dollar phone still has a headphone jack.
Yes, they're right that you don't need to spend more than $250 to get a really capable smartphone - because the cost of the phone is put into your service plan. You can trade in any Samsung Galaxy S and get a brand new Galaxy S23 for free. AT&T will even give you a Pixel 7a for $2/mo, $72 in total - no trade in required. Tomorrow's headline: I won't spend more than $72 on a new smartphone!
And if you want to blast holes in my argument, you certainly can. Plan prices matter. Of course, Visible from Verizon $25/mo unlimited compared to Google Fi's $50/mo unlimited. Visible has a $35/mo plan that has 50GB of premium data and then unlimited deprioritized data after that - which is a lot better than 50GB of premium data from Google Fi and then getting throttled to 256kbps (yea, kilo-bits) - and Google Fi wants to charge $65/mo for that, 86% more than Visible.
Why not buy a $500 Pixel 7a and get $25-35/mo Visible service instead of spending $50-65/mo on Google Fi? The savings are a lot more than the $10.42/mo rebate the author is getting. Plus, Visible has taxes and fees included while Google Fi will mean paying taxes and fees - which could be another $10/mo, eliminating your rebate.
If the author likes Google Fi, I'm more than happy for them. However, the premise that they're getting the Pixel 7a for $250 is just ridiculous.
Because you have 4 or more lines so it is only $20/mo per line on Fi?
I have always kept my mobile plans (yes, multiple) separate from devices - I prefer the flexibility.
With my story being: (N900 [USB port fell off!] ->) Nexus 4 [battery died] -> Nexus 5X [dropped it] -> Pixel [battery died on warranty, sent in] -> Pixel 2 [got as warranty replacement!] _and_ Pixel 3A [bought it]... I'm still very fine with the 3A thank you very much.
In fact the only reasonable argument I've read for replacing a perfectly functional Android device is "when Google stops doing sec patches".
Anyone here has any other good arguments for "replace before it's not functional"?
(P.S. For "fun" I later replaced the battery and antenna in Nexus 4 - it still works today! And I keep Pixel 2 in the drawer as a hot backup. And yes, for both phones I do periodically turn them on, update and charge the battery.)
I’ve bought cheap phones before. My first was a Samsung galaxy. I think it cost about 400usd at the time. Can’t remember. It was ok.
Lasted me for about 2 years before I got an htc phone for about 200usd. The Samsung shattered, so I needed a new one. Decided to go cheap because, why spend the money on glass?
Turns out that HTC is as sooooo bad. Could barely type a sentence. Reception was bad, and it was slow just to use Line app.
Ended up getting a iPhone 6s.
I’m typing this comment now on that very same 6s. My wife is using my iPhone 12 since hers broke.
Conclusion? Buy an expensive phone (within reason) and use it for five years. Or longer.
Too bad androids don’t receive security updates past two or three years.
Google Pixel gets 5 years of security updates, mate.
I also had logic board failure in a MacBook Pro and haven't had a MacBook Pro since, and I haven't had an iPhone since the battery became swollen in my last one. Go figure.
Know what the Apple Store in Liverpool told me when I took my Mac Pro into the city center? Come back in two weeks. No parts.
Know what they told me when I came in asking to buy a maxed out top-of-the-line MacBook? You'll have to buy it online, we don't sell those in-store. Same issue with having them work on it; they just didn't have the parts in stock.
Know what they told me when I took my MacBook Pro in with logic board failure? That'll be £700, despite it being a problem with the NVIDIA GPU, prior to their replacement program becoming a thing. No stock either.
If it works for you, that's great, I'm not knocking functioning solutions to actual problems. I know what works for me, and that's not running a Mac in 2023 and instead same-daying replacement components and even doing the sensible thing of running a matched B-rig for anything mission critical, and keeping a spare phone for when the shit really does hit the fan for any reason whatsoever, ergo I'm never phoneless and never need to worry about going to a store during business hours or worrying if I can source a replacement same-day.
- it will survive falling on concrete
- or if lost buy a replacement for $100- $200
It is one thing keeping a $1500 phone for 5 years. (though I have never seem flagship lovers that kept it for 5 years. They are too obsessed with keynote every fall that they buy new every year...)
Others love buying newer when it breaks.
By which you mean "rebranded Samsung Exynos"?
>In the very fundamentals of what an SoC is, the Google Tensor closely follows Samsung’s Exynos SoC series. Beyond the usual high-level blocks that people tend to talk about in an SoC, such as CPUs, GPUs, NPUs, and other main characteristics, there’s the foundational blocks of a chip: these are the fabric blocks and IP, the clock management architecture, power management architecture, and the design methodology of the implementing those pieces into actual silicon. While on paper, a Samsung Exynos, a MediaTek Dimensity or a HiSilicon Kirin, or even a Qualcomm Snapdragon (on the CPU side) might have similar designs in terms of specifications – with the same high-level IP such as Cortex CPU or Mali GPUs from Arm – the chips will still end up behaving and performing differently because of the underlying SoC architecture is very different.
In the case of the Tensor, this “chassis” builds upon the IP Samsung uses on their Exynos SoCs, utilizing the same clock management and power management architecture. Going further up in the IP hierarchy we find additional similarities among high-level IP blocks, such as memory controllers, fabric IP, PHY IP for all kinds of externally facing interfaces, and even the larger IP functional blocks such as ISP or media decoders/encoders. The fun thing is that these things are now publicly scrutinizeable, and can be compared 1:1 to other Exynos SoCs in terms of their structures.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/17032/tensor-soc-performance-...
Both Google and Samsung promise 5 years of security updates for their phones.
The original 2016 Pixel Phone's support was dropped at the end of 2019.
I would not be shocked to see Apple support this year's iPhone for a decade since the RAM was just bumped up again, and RAM has been the traditional sticking point for getting more OS updates.
But Apple has, for the last 10 years, provided about 7 years of feature updates. Google and Samsung top out at 3 because their phones are designed to be replaced every 2-3 years with a new one when your contract expires.
Since manufacturers of Android devices have been behind the 8-ball for the past 10 years, it stands to reason that this is a logical choice- the best Android devices perform like a last-gen 200-dollar iPhone SE. So it's natural that that level of performance would only be supported for the same number of years regardless of it being new or used, and as such Android devices don't get support because they're just not fast enough to bother maintaining.
The iPhone SE is arguably the best you can do for a low-end phone and one of the better phones for minimizing TCO. Sure, you could just buy 3 Samsung phones for 180 bucks each (since those phones will, at this point in the cycle, receive one new Android version), but they're also all bargain basement junk whereas the SE actually has hardware strong enough to support those upgrades and even with the obligatory battery replacement will still come out breaking even here (at $550).
I'm sure Qualcomm will eventually (with its Nuvia purchase) have hardware that outperforms Apple's stuff, but their highest-end chips will never make it into the cheapest phones so it really doesn't matter all that much. Guess it's just a question of incentives- there's no reason Google couldn't update the Android driver model such that the drivers and the kernel was separate allowing them to be easily baked into newer Android versions but it's clearly just not a priority for them.
I'm currently running Android 13 and get security updates every week. The battery is a bit weaker now, and the screen has a few scratches, but other than that, it's as good as when I got it. It doesn't feel slow or underpowered like old iPhones do (my wife has had every iPhone SE because of that).
> HTC
That was a different time. poor cpu.
These days a "almost new or good" phone from amazon warehouse for $250 P6a is good for most people. Even a decent Moto G-series for $150 is good enough for whatsapp, fb, emailing, maps, uber. Common man can live with that speed.
> Conclusion? Buy an expensive phone (within reason) and use it for five years. Or longer.
Buying for class/show off, gaming or every day I photograph/video my life is different. Then you need expensive. Or if you are in sales/marketing. IMHO such people with expensive devices
- scratch it, break it
- They don't go to client with broken device
- No one that wants to have state of the art uses a phone with shattered edges.
- such people also buy new-tech to keep up with tech
- rich/prioritise money to phone (instead of shoe or etc). all OK.
It all depends on user profile.
Depends if you include the community support or not here because nobody beats lineageos at this game.
That being said, I dread having to bump major versions on LOS, but I'm not sure if there's any getting around it. When I upgraded from v18 to v19, it was a massive chore to backup and restore what I had since the upgrade required a full flash, and that meant all data on my device is goong to be wiped. Now there's an outstanding upgrade to v20 available for my device, and the only reason I've been putting it off is the data wipe and restore tedium.
I wonder on how it scores on an ai detector.
The various "reviews" are also unsatisfying. A single photo of a photo, in great light condition on a close, inanimate subject is all we get for supporting the claim of great photography. The rest is lifted straight from the specification page.
Only issue I've been seeing is that some with stickers that say "India sim only" require an Indian sim card to be inside of it for at least 10 minutes, then any sim can be used afterwards. Anyone know of this or any other potential issues should someone outside of India purchase one of these Galaxies?
I consider e-devices the cheapest thing on earth
2009 was a really fucking long time ago, people. Don't be the old man complaining about the cost of a Snickers bar.
These companies make billions in profit each year, something tells me that the price of their toys is overly inflated
https://www.theverge.com/23700094/asus-rog-ally-price-amd-z1...
Don't think too hard, the business model is showing you ads with clickbait.
I have gone for cheaper alternatives eg. $400 mid grade phone no contract, and PPP (which is not that great but cheaper way to get towards samsung dex). I know you can buy older samsungs and get dex that way.
One day when folding phones aren't 4 figures I would like to try one.
I would say you have your priorities straight!
I prefer something really nice for under $100.
5g? Oh, look!...
https://www.dealnews.com/products/Google/Pixel-4-a-128-GB-An...
(I think I want a Pixel 6 pro; I'll stick with my 3a xl for now.)
I do try to not drop it on day one though…
I have been buying 1-2 generation older but still brand new phones last few years- such as OnePlus 7T, OnePlus 8 and Galaxy S10e. All of them were fantastic, capable phones and cost less than $300.
Ah, a wild variant of "you are holding it wrong"
The rest of the cost was in the monthly payments.
Which is the right title to not be confused with usual click baits.