Also, I think buyers think if you have a cheaper phone strangers may think you are poor. Personally I want people to think I am poorer than I am.
I personally could not even fathom spending $500 on a telephone let alone $1000. It's just not an important enough gadget in my life.
Because sure as hell it's not a working machine.
I’d even question your premise that phones churn more frequently than laptops, especially at the budget end.
For someone with a limited budget, a phone seems wildly more valuable than a laptop.
Your comment just seems needlessly dichotomous. I'm talking about having multiple devices, such that you aren't beholden to any single one. Nobody "requires" a laptop, just like nobody actually "requires" a phone. But if you're using up all your buy-stuff-online time looking through a tiny screen and tapping out search terms like Morse code, rather than being able to comfortably compare skus/stores far and wide, it's likely that you're drastically overpaying. I'm willing to believe this is a trap many people fall into (eg why else is Amazon always pushing Subscribe and "Save"), but we shouldn't be normalizing it as if it's effective rather than pathological and extractionary (cf Vimes's Boots).
And sure, the same trash-treadmill dynamic exists in the low end new laptop market with poor hardware and poor software (eg MSWin also pushes an upgrade treadmill). But this is kind of a weird Schrödinger's argument in a thread about a phone that costs $1,000 - someone who doesn't have enough resources to buy anything beyond a phone, yet also spends an outsized amount to have the latest flagship. My larger point still stands about the longevity of good product choices, but they require research and actualization - once again, the kind better done from a laptop or desktop rather than a pocket porthole.
This is not a helpful comment.
No one argued it was true for everyone!
> I personally could not even fathom spending $500 on a telephone let alone $1000. It's just not an important enough gadget in my life.
This is also not helpful.
Can you imagine why someone else might spend $1000 on a phone? If the answer is no you have a shockingly poor ability to empathize and see things from a different perspective.
I totally understand why some people spend $1500 on a new phone. And I also understand why some people want to spend the bare minimum! These perspectives are not difficult to grasp.
It's a pet peeve of mine how often programmers argue from their niche perspective without even attempting to think of things from a broader or different perspective. It's especially annoying when it goes from "people do X" to "well I do Y so nyah!".
It's not hard or difficult, you just have to try!
It’s also not binary. The biggest UX experts in the world will still be shocked by what people do in a user study! There’s always surprises.
Understanding a very specific individual is pretty hard! But I think understanding that there are literally billions of smart phone users and that some of them will be happy to buy expensive phones and some will be prefer to buy cheap phones is pretty straight forward! The larger the group being considered the less valuable a personal anecdote is!
Now that we no longer upgrade every second year (or, in fact, every third year) and given I usually get 50% of the cost back by sending the old phone in, spending $1500/phone means that I'm typically amortizing a $750 charge over 4 years - or $15/month for the only luxury item I own. I'm probably more concerned about the $85/month AT&T bill than the $15/month cost for the actual phone.
Never having to even think about storage, like literally zero concerns about how much I download is one reason I always grab the high-end model (now around 1TB)
Also - there are lots of weeks, (in fact, sometimes a month) that my mother doesn't touch her (pretty high end, nice 4K monitor) computer system - but I doubt there has ever been a single hour that she wasn't using her phone. The Phone, for many, has become the new computer.
And, with LLMs becoming pervasive, the new knowledge-system. (I can go many days without touching google - but I hit up some combination of Claude/ChatGPT pretty 7-10 times/day) I can already envision the day in which you will be able to run an LLM on your phone - but the H/W specs for that thing will likely be insane and I have a hard time seeing how the first releases of (reasonable speed, reasonable model -I'm aware you can do it today) - in a 2-3 years from now that can run an LLM will go for less than $2000-$2500.
And I will be standing at the front of that line begging them to take my money. Entirely new device at that point.
That's the argument I don't understand.
Like, Taxi drivers don't buy the most luxurious and comfortable car you can think of because they drive it all day, they get Toyotas and sometimes Teslas where EV support is decent.
For a phone, it’s purely esthetic, ergonomic and user friendliness that most people are buying them. Not usually roi based decision.
It answers better on HN? Gives you more value answering messages or watching YouTube?
Which far fetched edge case scenario do you need to justify the very small diminishing returns between a high end and premium phone?
...idk I think people just like premium phones, it's not that deep
I personally try to get flagship phones, but used a few years after their release. That, and avoid upgrading my phone as much as possible :P I'm jealous of Apple folks here, they support their devices for eons longer than Android!
It blows me away that people actually care how much other people spend on something at all. Want a $50 flip phone? Cool. Want a $1300 fancy fold phone? Also fine.
When I had my last kid we got a Snoo bassinet, $1300 or so. Anyone that saw it couldn't help but inform me that their baby survived in a trash bag with holes poked in it or whatever for a bassinet. But I sold it 6 months later for $900, and my overall $400 investment was very worth it. Thing was a miracle.
Why is this word used to describe "pure financial loss" so often when talking about purchased luxury goods?
> Investment: the outlay of money usually for income or profit
Not really. You can also "invest" in personal relationships, for example, which implies neither a financial outlay nor an expectation of financial return.
When used in the context of purchasing consumer goods, I think it is most often used in the context of goods which are expensive (the financial outlay) and durable (ie, capable of providing enjoyment--analogous to profit--for a long time into the future). And of course those goods are more likely to be considered "luxury" goods.
It isn't. People say it in regards to quality goods of all kinds - shoes, mattresses, food.
Being healthy results in me being able to make more money, so it literally is an investment.
Investing in a luxury purse or basinet has no concept of profit, but can happily result in high value. Profit and value (or satisfaction) are not the same.
Well you can dislike this fact but there is nothing seems to be blown away about it. Because this is such a mundane fact about people.
It's an idle discussion thread about consumer electronics. Not an attack on the core of your personal identity.
Yes, there are different ways to go about it. I buy the best phone of last year or the year before, and run it into the ground.
But is it just me, or are the changes so incremental now it's hard to justify a new model of any brand? Sure the processors get better etc, but I use my phone to browse the web, text/phone and email.
Unless, idk, you're so deep into the Apple ecosystem, e.g. that it makes sense to stay in the gardened wall and lower any kind of friction.
I'm pretty sure that the camera on my Pixel is twice as good as the OnePlus that it replaced.
That being said, at least for me, my phone is the device I spend the most time with, whether articals, emails, books, podcasts etc.
It is at least 5 hrs a day.
This is probably an argument to spend less time on my phone, but the will is weak.
But if I am spending a significant percentage of my waking life interacting with this single electronic device, a price difference of 500 dollars is not much, especially amortized over a 3 year period.
Oddly enough I end up buying Google phones because I do not wish to put up with Google's shit.
I see no reason why should I buy new phone. Seems like all those new features are just gimmicks.
I would probably consider buying a new one if it had better video recording, but this Pixel only has 4k at 60Hz which wasn't impressive two years or so ago.
$500 extra dollars for a better device people use everyday for at least a year or more. Especially around here, many make plenty of money that a $500 difference isn't that significant.
Only Google Pixel devices tick those boxes, but at least you can buy older gen Pixels rather cheap (Google Pixel 6 Pro with similar camera setup as the Pixel 9 for example)
In fact, they also have a promotion right now where you can get $800 back on either the Pixel 9 or 9 Pro, spread over 24 months; that makes the 9 free and the 9 Pro only $200.
More than anything, I'm most impressed by Apple's OS support. I'm pretty convinced that SE phones are some of the best deals in the industry if you keep them until they run out of support. They have the same guts (minus cameras) as tier 1 flagship phones. Apple is a bit tight with ram, but the processor is faster than any Android phone.
And the support - 7 years is standard right now, and it could very well go longer.
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1. I think I paid $150 for it. It has a small crack in the screen, but just the part that's over the chin, not anything that affects the display. If I wanted a pristine phone, I'm sure I could have found one for a bit more. But after several years, I'm happy with my decision.
I think the SE never really turned any heads from the flagship causing the second hand market to be lively. With these new touted SEs, they're looking to be as good as iPhone 14 (maybe pros) which has a very wide reach.
The camera is terrible though photos upon closer inspection appear smeared/blurry. My older Motorola which I paid more for has a better camera.
- SD Card up to 1TB
- 3.5mm headphone jack
I just ordered a Galaxy S24+ from Google Fi for $450 and it's a better phone than the $1100 pixel 9 pro XL imo.
6 months from now and on days like Black Friday you'll be able to get the pixel 9 for less than $500.
Don't even have to pay a fee to use a cellular smartwatch, as long as it is made by Google or Samsung.
It's like a manual phone upgrade plan. Not sure how long it could last. Last year the Google Fi deal wasn't as good and I almost missed the budget target.
Wait till you see how people spend $60k on a car when there are perfectly good options for $30k.
And people also spend much more time with their phones than in their cars.
As a thought experiment, if you put me in a civic I will know I am in a civic and not a BMW in one second. If you gave me an iphone 10 or an iphone12. Or a google 8 vs google 10... You get my point. Yes Android is different then iOS but people are usually locked in.
2) In general people spend way too much on cars, either to buy capability they don't really need or can't use. Or to try and say something about themselves.
Spending £500 on a new one hasn't really entered my thoughts. The last time I went shopping for an (Android) phone with and for my girlfriend it was a nightmare - so many absolutely shit giant phones that don't feel right in the hand
That said, I think it was 600ish. So, yeah, I don't know that I understand the high end market. At all.