Touchscreen smartphones aren't even fun or novel anymore, they're just necessities for daily life
yet they're still priced and treated culturally like luxury toys
You're must be joking! Look around, if you look past the bitten apple, there are plenty of perfectly capable devices out there for under $300. In fact, I see plenty of people who are on the street corners panhandling AND using a smartphone.
A quick Google showed me a $40 smartphone from Walmart. Granted it's probably pretty terrible, but it does go to show that they aren't all priced like luxury toys. If you want a luxury branded phone, you'll pay luxury prices.
I went through a time where I weaned myself from phones by using an ancient flip phone, plus an old Galaxy only on WiFi. Then I moved and needed text messaging etc and bought a $40 Kyocera at Radio Shack thinking it would be good enough. It... sort of was. Mainly I regret that it had a really shitty camera, plus god knows what insane Android spyware.
You can get a refurbished SE with an A15 cpu for around $200. That’s more processing power than any reasonable person needs on the toilet.
Of course you can get a used of refurbished ones for less even Apple. I was referring to new devices. As an example, I use a Motorola Edge plus that I bought new for $400. It does everything my wife's iPhone 15 Pro. The camera quality is slightly lower, but perfectly adequate.
I bought a new iPhone 6 for $200 when the 7-8 were new. Totally happy with it and I used it for 3 years. Apple used to be priced at a premium but that hasn't been true for several years... high-end Android phones cost as much as new iOS devices, and you can get old ones or a SE pretty cheap.
Regarding panhandlers with cellphones: https://www.wikihow.com/Get-an-Obama-Phone
If you go for used devices, you can quite easily get an outdated entry level phone for free and a decently useable one for <€30.
You can even get new entry level phones for as cheap as €70.
So it's very much a market where you can spend whatever you want.
A flagship phone is priced like a luxurity toy, because that's exactly what it is.
And an entry level phone is incredibly cheap so that people who have no money can still get one. €70 with 2 years of usage is less than €3/month (realistically though, if you are in this kind of situation, you hold on to a phone for much longer).
Over here, if you are poor enough, you'll even get a free phone plan.
I think it's actually kinda crazy what kind of new phone you can get for 200 dollars. My last phone was a 200 dollar phone that did everything my old flagship phone did. Obviously there are differences if you look deep. I talked to my friend who just bought a 1200 dollar samsung phone and said he "needs" a phone like that, because of the camera. I don't know what that means, because he sells bread at a bakery. His camera was obviously better, but he never goes deep into his settings, like all he does is auto focus and click the button. We went on a bike ride and i'm not a picture kinda guy, i use my camara pretty much only for work related stuff and it doesn't matter how good it is. And i showed someone a picture i took and the guy said: wow that must be a really good canera. Which kinda upset samsung guy.
I don't know anyone who uses their 1000 dollar phone to even a fraction of it's capability. Now i own a nothing phone which is priced somewhere in the middle, and i like it a lot, but i wouldn't say it's much better than my 200 dollar phone.
I was selling phones back when most people thought that Internet on a cell phone was a crazy idea. Phones were advancing by leaps and bounds. The difference between a 1MP and 5MP camera was amazing.(mostly) Every year, the new version had features that last year's wouldn't dream of.
Now, I'm running a five year old flagship Android, because there still won't be much of a difference when I finally do upgrade.
If he doesn't use any camera settings getting a high end phone will ofcourse give the best results for someone that just wants to point and shoot.
But I've definitely seen similar reactions to pictures I took on my Poco F1 once I had a custom Gcam app well tuned. In good conditions it was close to the best phones of the time.
There are plenty of touch screen smartphones out there that cost like $150. The expensive ones are still the norm though because people want status symbols
While some may but them for status, I bought the 22 ultra for screen real-estate, a built in s-pen, and a badass camera. There's definitely reasons to invest in a good device beyond impressing others.
We can say the same thing about cars or any necessary manufactured good. But in every category, as with phones, cheaper models exist.
cars are not a necessity same as phones
Guess that depends on where you live
I've bought people very nice phones for under $400 multiple times. Recently.
Flagship phones are grossly overpriced. The midrange is super nice and usable these days, though. It's a side advantage of phone tech standardizing so much. And as you said, being a necessity for daily life it's probably okay to spend at least a few hundred on one you're going to use for several years.
Is this going to be another "the US has weird ideas about consumer goods" thread? Because it kinda sounds like one.
I just bought a new phone (originally released in May 2023) for $170. I've used it for 3 days now and it works perfectly. My old phone lasted ~3-4 years and cost a similar price.
I stopped buying "flagship" phones years ago and it's been great. Midrange phones are absolutely the phones people should be buying.
I also get the bells and whistles that are often missing from premium phones. I have an SD card slot for expandable storage and I have a headphone jack.
Oh, man, I switched from Samsung to Sony because they still do all those midrange phone features in a flagship container.
I'd have gone full midrange, but I hang around mobile developers a lot and I was already getting crap for being on a four year old flagship (that was still in working order and I still use for other stuff). Now my Xperia is a conversation starter in those circles, for some reason and I still get to add storage and use my headphones and my screen has no holes in it.
All of them aren't. There are cheap touch screen phones. You just don't get ridiculous features at the price point if $50. The Samsung A30 is a pretty cheap android phone.
If we could fight over legislations to force swappable batteries and operating systems, most people would just buy used. Like how now laptops, desktops, Raspberry Pi's you can buy used cheap, slap a light fresh OS and go.
We'll at least get swappable batteries in the EU from 2027 on. From then on it will be illegal to sell phones without swappable batteries.
Just like with everything else there's a gradient of price and quality. You don't have to buy a 1300 dollar iPhone, you could get one for only a couple hundred that would serve any use case you can think of where it would be required.
Just because something is a necessity for daily life doesn't mean it's going to be cheap, it can't just be sold below cost simply because it's critical.
They’re also full of the most compact and advanced sensors developed to date. It’s amazing what they’re capable of, but I agree they’re just a matter of fact now
You can get good condition, used, last year flagships on eBay and Swappa all day long. I've literally never bought a brand new phone.
A mate of mine has a keyboard flip phone and it's amazing full qwerty keyboard dude can type wicked quick on that thing compared to touch screens
Uhh no? They've gotten really cheap nowadays.
$300 gets you a 5G capable phone with a high refresh OLED and a processor fast enough to play resource intensive games like Genshin Impact.
You can get a decent smart phone for $0 on a contract here in the US. Same as it was back in days of dumb candy bar and RAZR flip phones.
And like the old days, there are phones you can spend a lot of money on. But these are also a fast portable computer and a killer camera.
IMHO, the pricing makes total sense to me. Hell, before cell phone cameras got good, people commonly spent $400+ on nice point and shoot camera.
Here in Europe you can also get pretty good phones with such contracts. But the contracts are insanely overpriced for sometime 30€/month for 2gb. Where you pay 10€ for 2gb without a phone.
I know phones cost money but when they lock you in a shitty contract for 2 or even 4 years, is it even worth it.
A contract like that doesn't make the phone free.
You just pay for it over time and pay more in the end.
They just incorporate the price into your subscription and lock you in it, making it overpriced.
You could argue that’s a definition of success for a gadget: when it is ubiquitous and necessary.
Time to get in on some new gadget that will soon be a boring ordinary part of life. Electric Vehicles look like they will but still pretty expensive. My vote is home automation stuff
Electric Vehicles look like they will but still pretty expensive.
Expensive and impractical at the moment due to the lack of charging stations.
My vote is home automation stuff
I kinda hope not. I don't need even more devices listening in on me.
Most charging happens at home. There are still some hurdles, but lack of charging stations is not the argument against mass adoption of EVs that you think it is.
Sadly I can't find any hard numbers but this report states "The project shed light on other facets of PEV use. It found that public and workplace charging infrastructure enabled drivers to increase their electric driving range, although most drivers did not charge away from home frequently"
edit: nevermind, there is another report that states "According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 80 percent of EV charging happens at home"
My bet is on VR/AR
I have VR and I don't see how that would ever reach mass adoption. I think it will forever be a toy for people interested in techy stuff, and only be a tool for very specific jobs.
It's just not really useful in any meaningful way to most people. Why would I replace a regular monitor with VR if all I do is organize spreadsheets and write emails?
Rockid, Xreal and RayNeo watching closely.
I fucking hate touchscreens. I have been someone who buys devices with physical keyboards whenever I can and the best phone j have owned in more recent years was the blackberry key two, that phone was fucking awesome but it has got to the point now where there are no longer any good options.
I had a unithertz titan until recently but just got tired of things just not quite working as they should on it. There in the unihertz titan slim which is the same form factor as the keytwo so I feel would be physically great but the software side is just going to be more of the same I had with the regular titan.
I wish there was a decent option. I backed the planet computers astroslide as that looked decent but those cunts fucked over backers, delivered a few devices and have now fucked off not fulfilling all backers devices. That is my first and last forray into crowdfunded bullshit.
Someone make a good phone with a physical keyboard for the love of god!!!
Someone make a good phone with a physical keyboard for the love of god!!!
I believe there are a few Linux phones with keyboards, but they're not quite production-ready yet.
The problem with Linux based phones is they are just not feasible as a daily driver device right now. Once they are I would happily jump ship over to them but I currently make my life hard enough as it is trying to reject this current trend of having a bullshit app for everything that I don't need to make it any harder right now xD
I'd still be interested in checking out the projects if you have any names of devices I can look up.
The only other production device I know of is the fx tec pro but all of the different reviews and such I have searched out for them aren't super positive so I've never bothered getting one to try out.
I am so with you brother. I'm still mourning the death of Palm.
My thumb is basically permanently injured due to touch screens. Bad RSI, can't shake it.
I remember when the iphone it a grand and people were like. apple is crazy.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Our devices are old hat now. They're part of our life. Even people who don't understand them have a vague idea how they work.
They used to be like magic. Now we are desperate for new magic.
I saw deal today at a store:
buy a galaxy fold, get a free 55" tv.
Say your phone is overpriced without saying your phone is overpriced
Yeah, how else can I troll other from the comfor of my toilet? 1 sec gotta wipe....
I remember the early days of the smart phone with app store phenomenon, when you had things like a flashlight app, or a lighter app. Simple little toys that might have had some utility, and showed off a small fraction of what the thing could do. It held a lot of promise.
Most of what a smart phone is these days is a camera, a video consumption apparatus, and a doom scrolling machine.
No, they actually aren't essential at all. You can EASILY get by day to day without a phone/touchscreen.
I want to agree with you without exception, but there are too many variables. People who live in large cities vs rural may have different needs. Think public transport, event venues, digital tickets, etc.
Where I live, no, I don't "need" a smartphone. Unfortunately due to organizational involvements, I still need to use one daily.