And the $2k Galaxy Folds are for discerning consumers?

No, the 100-200$ Galaxy S mid range android phone with half decent RAM, screen size, actual specs and features that enable practical work, social communication, or entertainment consumption with a reasonable price to lifespan cycle ratio is.

You know, something you can actually buy outright, calculate approximately how much value you got by how many years it lasted before breaking, and not get stuck into a never-ending cycle of slowly frog-boiling raising contract rates.

So wheres the brand new retail sold 200$ Iphone budget entry for the plebs to access the IOS ecosystem on the cheap?

Yeah, I thought so. its called market segregation and Apple knows the exact crowd they made a billion dollar industry pleasing.

Any phone thats >500$ and doubley so for >1000$ are for the people who spend hundreds of dollars a month on contracts renewing them continuously every two years convinced its somehow a deal and don't think twice about it. Different flavor of luxury good gotta get that tribalism social posturing in after all.

If you were a true professional in an industry making complete use for videography, audio recording and editing, music production, I could maybe see it.

But lets be real, thats the statistical outlier for apple users you know exactly what 99% of people do with their phones. Check emails, shit posting on the internet, watch youtube, MAYBE record a quick video or picture without knowing how to manually balance anything or even knowing what an ISO is.

I would argue it is premium, not luxury.

Premium like a flagship Samsung, offering extra features and quality for the buyer, usually for a disproportionately higher price. Luxury is where there is no extra value offered beyond brand recognition, signaling to yourself and the world that your can afford it (like the obscure clothing brands you mention).

Not many luxury phone brands exist, maybe Vertu with gold and diamond set phones. Cars are an easier comparison, premium is e.g. MB, Audi or BMW, while luxury is Bentley, RR or Ferrari.

Rolex is also more of a premium product within the watch market, it is machine made and mass produced to a very high quality level, offering additional value (like better accuracy, less steel corrosion, longer service intervals) compared to other automatic Swiss watches. On the other hand, luxury hand made watches like Patek Philippe or FP Journe are not competing with others by offering better technical parameters, but dominate due to their brand recognition, making rich people beg salespeople to get a chance to buy them.

This of course doesn’t really make a difference beyond marketing, as most people cannot afford a 10k Rolex or a 200k FP Journe either - but they do hold a very different position in their market.

To answer your question, I think most humans are very social, and always seek to stand out with status and personal brand within their group. Capitalism offers the easy way to do this - buy this thing, and show the world what you are worth. It unfortunately works, as it targets our strong primal instincts.

Personally I wish there was a way to just build a phone like with PCs. With the exception of needing to upgrade my SSDs my computer is basically good for another 10 years or so, I wish I could do the same for a smart phone.

That would be awesome, ngl. Maybe someday. I'm pretty sure that if a company started selling itself as a build a phone-company they would become quite successful very quickly. If I had the knowhow, I would straight up try and see if this idea has legs.

So wheres the brand new retail sold 200$ Iphone budget entry for the plebs to access the IOS ecosystem on the cheap?

They used to have the iPhone SE series, which was significantly cheaper than the standard ones. Prices went up on those each generation, though, and they discontinued it for the "e" variants for the mainline iPhones, which are much more expensive than even the most expensive SE.

It most certainly has legs the biggest problem is parts standardization and the lack of any companies actually trying to do that. Even just an early HP style built to order would be a step in the right direction.

Their 1TB version is $1600 because they get away with charging $400 for $40 worth of storage.

It might just be the old, but I’m having trouble thinking of the last time there was any meaningful advance in mobile phones at all. Face ID comes to mind.

Not a day goes by where I don’t feel angry that there are no viable, mainstream FLOSS Linux phones. No Android, nothing downstream of Google at all… just Linux and a nice, touch-friendly UI. Until then, I pinch my nose and pick Apple as the lesser of the available evils.

I don't understand how one can believe it just works. Update fries the phone so they buy a new one from the same company that can't or won't make sure updates don't fry older phones. Apple hates backwards compatibility.

I’ve had the same experience. I had a 6s and an XR, and they both slowed down tremendously overnight after iOS updates (not the same one, 6s happened a few years before). Also, the update for the 6s that caused performance issues also removed/made redundant a lot of the OS features that made use of 3D Touch, because the newer phones didn’t have it anymore. For the 6s, I know it wasn’t a battery issue; I replaced that battery, and it didn’t fix them.

For a minute, battery replacements or repairs weren’t even a reasonable option, with how repair-unfriendly their phones had gotten. But afaik they’ve improved in that regard, providing official tools, parts and guidance. Also, you can call them to have them activate the Face ID module if you replace a screen, which is a big win for right-to-repair. Props to them for that!

I mean, I don't get the love for Apple either, I just didn't agree with the claim that all iPhone users were the types to discard a perfectly good phone for a new one 2 years later just because the new one was cooler.

The fact that someone can buy a new iPhone after having had an old one crash due to updates is their own prerogative.

I personally have a very low understanding of tech, but to me, it just seems like an industry standard to make phones that won't live forever. Everybody does it. They could have given us phones with batteries that never wear out. They could have designed the tech to make sure it would work on all phones. They could halt tech evolution to make sure that no phone is left behind. But none of them do.

I originally wanted a button phone after my prior smartphone died. Then my government decided to force a new ID system on its citizens and make it exceedingly annoying and difficult to function in society without a smartphone. So I had to cave and get myself a new smartphone and wave goodbye to button phones forever.

I don't know how long this phone will last me, but I hope it will survive ten years at the very least. Even though it isn't an iPhone I avoid updates for as long as the phone allows me to because I don't want to wake up one day and suddenly have a phone that doesn't work.

We are all being scammed to some extent. Not just iPhone users.

When android isn’t spyware, I’ll consider switching.

I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t have an XR apart from a test one at work maybe.

My upgrade schedule is about 7–8 years. iPhones do “just work” for that long.

Fanboi: “Apple does everything Android does! They just lie about it!”

Apple is no saint, but they have a different business model with different pressures. There’s little incentive for them to commit the same sins Android does.

I like Apple’s os, App Store and processors better than android’s. I like Android’s everything else better than apple’s.

Ultimately you are getting fucked anyway but you get to pick the guy who fucks you.

Dude I’m still bitter about Apple killing 3D Touch. It’s like companies research what I like and when they find it that’s the tipping point for killing a feature/flavor/model/etc.

Canonical had a really interesting idea for a Linux phone back in the day but it never launched. There are some Linux phones trying to make that happen but it’s just not likely to see the widespread adoption needed to fund development.

We can’t have nice things.

Seems relevant….
https://imgur.com/ZDDnQDB

Let me tell you about our lord and saviour GrapheneOS