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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

The original iPhone was $499 in 2007. That's $800 today with inflation per https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm. The cheapest model is "from $799", so… the price is basically unchanged for two decades.

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Inflation calculation doesn't quite work like that. Mobile phones are part of the basket of consumer goods prices that are tracked ( with weightings applied to compensate for increasing complexity and capability ). So they help to define inflation, rather than being the outcome of it.

You'd really need to compare to average salary or purchasing power instead.

It's a perfectly useful way of looking at it, but if you prefer:

Average salary 2007: $40,405.48; 2023: $66,621.80.

https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awidevelop.html

This logic doesn't make sense. The opportunity cost (i.e. the basket of goods you forego buying) of buying an iPhone is exactly the same as it was when the device first launched. No single good in the basket is such a large component of overall measure that you can't use inflated prices to understand, in relative terms, the cost of a good.

The first iPhone in Denmark was 5500DKK in 2008 (at least that's the number I can find). In 2022 I could get the iPhone SE for 4500DKK, så the price actually went down a bit

It was $499 with a multi-year contract with AT&T.

AT&T most year offers me a free!* iPhone pro every couple years now so it has actually gone way down.

You're likely paying a lot for your phone plan. Unlimited plans these days are in the $25-35 range.

I have their cheapest unlimited plan.

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