Gen Z is ditching iPhones for $100 'feature phones,' and the numbers don't lie
Gen Z and millennials have become the unlikely heroes to revive the slow-fading phone market in the US, according to Counterpoint Research.
No they don't. What a rubbish clickbait article.
All they say is that there's a (niche) trend of a few people using feature phones with expected combined sales of $2.8 million. Versus the $200 billions of iPhones alone.
They weren't entirely wrong. The numbers don't lie. They just don't say what the author claims it does.
That's still more than I expected. But it doesn't look like the dramatic turn of tides.
Thanks. Exactly what I thought.
“tHe NuMbErS doN’t LiE”
“Numbers” are some paltry bs that are “expected to grow in 2023” like BTC was “expected to hit a $100k in 2020”.
Welcome to news in Lemmy
I mean, the title is clickbaity, but what title isn't at this point? The actual point of the article is just that there is a small but growing niche of younger people switching to feature phones. I think that's neat, and I'm starting to consider a feature phone for my next phone myself.
For the past 10 years I never bought a phone for more than 300 euros.
I usually get a new phone every 3 years to have the latest tech and donate or recycle the old one.
For the last year I had an iPhone 13 pro (usually goes around 1100 euro) as a work phone and my personal Redmi Note 11 Pro I bought for 270 euros and not once I told myself: Man, this iphone is at least 3 times better than my Xiaomi. It's clearly a premium product but a middle category budget phone can match most features and even more. I still have a headphone jack, bigger 120 Hz screen, IR blaster and an amazing fingerprint sensor.
iphone is clever marketing scheme to become a status symbol for a generation that no longer has a car as one.
Yup, I'm on the Redmi train as well, got a Redmi Note 10, will probably upgrade next month or this month depending on how much money I have left after all expenses. Had it for 2 years or something and it has a crack throughout a good length of the screen otherwise I'd keep it even longer. Cost me 200 € new.
May just get the same phone you got or a newer one/alternative if I find one until then. - Probably the Note 12 (Pro, if the features are worth it), looking at GSMArena right now. Rooting it again will be annoying though
Had it for 2 years or something and it has a crack throughout a good length of the screen otherwise I’d keep it even longer.
buying cheap screen covers from dealextreme, 20 pieces at a dollar per piece, is what kept my mi max 3 running for 5 years and counting. it still has enough performance for anything i do on it and i don't plan throwing it away anytime soon.
Ya, this pretty much me. I had a bad experience with the budget pixel. Wouldn't recommend them.... But otherwise haven't really missed out on having a top end flagship phone at all.
Cheap smartphones are an incredible value. My wife bought a 180 EUR Realme 7 about 3 years ago, and it's still working great, it's plenty fast for everyday things (she's not a gamer), has 8 GB RAM ...
One thing you really need to compromise on are the cameras. But the problem is that I'm a sucker for cameras, so I keep buying expensive flagships ...
I've purchased several budget/midrange phones as my daily driver, and the long term performance simply wasn't worth it based on the things that I do with my phone.
Now, this is based on cheaper phones with specs from several years so this doesn't hold true anymore.
I though genZ only bought iPhone because of the green bubble or something?
That was never true to begin with
And i thought 90% of them have brain damage in general...
Aren't they all broke as well?
I don't trust these numbers, I really don't trust any article that talks about my generation.
This same BS headline happens every generation. As soon as any small trends form, the media latch onto it like it's gonna be the next big thing...
No, feature phones aren't gaining mass adoption again. No, feature phones aren't going to kill smartphones. It's just a subset of people deciding to downgrade, or who want to buy a secondary phone.
Soon hipsters will be carrying wireless rotary phones.
This is a thing that isn't happening, at least not among Gen Z. What a bullshit article.
As a millennial, the thought of ditching my smartphone is a thought that keeps coming up.
I did it for 3 months. I really enjoyed my time doing it and learned a lot about my usage. It was a cheap $50 experiment. After I went back to my smartphone, I uninstalled ALL social media apps. Turned off ALL notifications but left calls and messages as an exception. My smartphone is now essentially a feature phone. It's not 100% the same since the big screen does lure you in to use it but my usage is still way down and because I don't have any social media there's no reason for me to be on my phone around other people. I wholeheartedly recommend trying it for those curious.
Same. I'm beginning to hate having it.
Eh, I don't like the idea of getting rid of my smart phone. But I did get rid of all the shit I didnt actually like. I use my phone for Music, maps, the camera, messaging a few people, and a few other things. I got rid of all the crap social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, even reddit(and have not put a lemmy/kbin app on there to replace it), there is not shit mobile games installed. Just does what I need it to do, and doesnt constantly bug me about Person X and what they had for lunch.
However, if I ditched the smart phone, I would need a phone still, but then I still need the MP3 player, a camera. And I would much rather have 1 bit of kit that does all that well, than 3 items.
If I was not disabled with way too much time to burn, and where the weight of a phone is ideal, I would go back to a dumb flip phone like this. Smart phones are an addiction that, at best, must be consciously managed. Heck, I'm beside my workstation procrastinating right now.
It's after 1AM and I'm meant to be sleeping...what the heck am I doing? I'll put the phone down now, just after I post this comment and maybe just refresh my front page one more time.
As if we needed another sign that ZDnet was trash…
I fucking hate these obviously bullshit articles. “Gen Z is using feature phones”, “Gen Z are using paper maps”, “Gen Z is doing XYZ”.
No, they aren’t. At best some sad excuse for a journalist found a handful of tweets and wrote a whole article on it like it’s a “trend”.
Look, I know “journalists” are being squeezed to produce at an unreasonable rate but if you write drivel like this then you have no business calling yourself a journalist, hell I don’t even think you can call yourself a “writer” or “contributor” either. It barely passes as writing and you are contributing nothing to society.
These articles of "Gen Z is doing X" is always wrong lol.
If only that's allowed as a choice.
So many places assume you have a smartphone, and so many stuffs require one
There's no rule that says flip phones aren't allowed to have google pay. I think it'd be cool to see what a current year not-smartphone would look like.
There is flip phones with android.
This I wish, but I doubt. I still have my old Garmin GPS and play with the idea of a flip phone but I’ve been spoiled by the smaller things like iMessage not dealing with MMS. It’s an idea I come back to occasionally, but I also think about going back to my Palm with AAA batteries for my PIM needs. Had one in semi-regular-use as recent as 2018!
I'm looking at my Palm T|X or my Psion Revo as two potential revives. The Psion was quite awesome.
I used to have an orange Handspring Visor PIM, which ran the Palm OS. If I’m remembering correctly the original team that developed the Palm Pilot left to start Handspring. My friend topped me by buying the phone module for hers. It seemed almost breathtakingly futuristic at the time.
Havent seen "$100 feature phone" since 2017 when my grandpa upgraded his phone
\
gen z
The games are better for one.
I'm so tempted to do this.
I did it for a few months and really enjoyed it. At the end of 3 months, I realized I could achieve nearly the same thing by turning off all notifications except messages and calls and uninstalling all social media. I realized... if I have the willpower to use a dumbphone I have the willpower to keep the distraction off my smartphone. Phone usage is now 100% intentional with the right setup.
Nice!
They all realized a $100 phone does the same shit as a $1500 phone... There is nothing they add to the expensive phones that justify the price
A $200 smartphone does the same, but the article is about feature phones.
Hell, with all of the features that are being removed these days, there's no justification for the price.
Now that LG is out of the market, I had to get a Nokia smartphone just to get an external microSD card slot and aux port.
$1000+ phone with capped internal memory for the purpose of pushing subscription cloud storage? Or a $300 phone with expandable physical storage?
It's more about wanting to take a break from looking at a screen and watching shitty ads for so many hours per day.
People need to (re)discover adblockers and alternative apps.
We have the tools and technology, its just a matter of people making the move, but that's hard because of the network effect.
Get this removeded clickbait garbage off my feed OP
Personally I switched to a Qin F22 Pro to curb my smartphone addiction. Only have the essential apps installed on it. So far it has worked out well (I used to have a screen time of over 6 hours every day, now just minutes). Life feels so much more peaceful without all the notification spam I used to get, and my mind is definitely more clear now.
Does it run telegram and google hangouts?
It runs Android so yes. Don't use Google Services myself.
and the numbers don't lie.
Righto Scott Steiner.
I’ve considered doing this in combination with a Pine phone or other impractical but cool linux phone so that I don’t have to worry about not having at least reliable SMS and calling.
Anyone know if there is a tiny dumb phone out there that doubles as a 4G/5G hotspot?
I use a TCL Flip 2, bought it unlocked on ebay for $40. It has hotspot, mms, and emoji support (can't remember if the included keyboard has any emoji, since I use a custom one that has some, but the system can recognize and display most emoji people send). It actually runs a slimmed down version of android and you can root it and run some stuff, though most things are a pain to use. I've got signal, jerboa, and adaway running on mine, though I haven't found another browser that plays nice yet.
These retro-style phones offer limited functionality, lower costs, and are gaining popularity due to digital well-being concerns. Counterpoint projects feature phone sales to reach $2.8 million by 2023, driven by minimalist movements, cost-effective B2B sales, and budget-conscious consumers.
I want an Android phone with a full physical keyboard, blackberry style. Not sure if I want to 'digital detox' but I don't value a lot of what our common phone design has to offer.
Ooh running that shiny new Android 10! I wonder if it's easily updatable and/or if there are images available.
Ooooo! Thank you!