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With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

nytimes.com

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Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#151

Post by ajdlinux »

brianSP wrote: post #87
Yetanfou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your 3 year young iPhone and raise my 6 year old Motorola Defy. I bought it new in 2011 for about 1/4 of what the then-current iPhone would have cost. It still works flawlessly, the battery is fine as well (~5 days of normal use on a single charge or ~7 hours of screen time). If the battery were to fail I could just replace it, no tools required. Oh, the thing is waterproof and 'shock-proof' (although the latte…

I see your 6 year young iPhone and raise my 14 year old Nokia 1100. I bought it new in 2003 80~ dolla. It still works flawlessly, the battery is fine as well (~31 days of normal use on a single charge or ~16 hours of screen time). If the battery were to fail I could just replace it, no tools required. Oh, the thing is bulletproof (although it must be taken with a grain of salt, chuck norrys managed to break the glass…

Alas, if I still had my Nokia 1100 from a decade ago, it would now be useless to me - not because the device has failed, but because Australia no longer has GSM/2G phone networks as of this year...

...actually, it wouldn't quite be useless - I could still play Snake!

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#152

Post by oblio »

a1371 wrote: post #52
racl101 wrote: post #3

If those new Nokias start being sold in my neck of the woods (Western Canada) I think I will pretty much just stop bothering with smartphones and just go with that compromise. If I'm being honest with myself, I just need a damn phone and an ok camera. The rest are frivolities. I can just continue using my table for the rest.

Well, I read something that I take with a grain of salt and so should you, but here it is: Those new Nokias are only carrying the brand name under typical chinese design and manufacturing process. The incentive would be to revive the brand in markets where Nokia had stronghold with its cheaper models and the average phone has poor quality. If that's the case it'd be very disappointing for what you are expecting.

Based on reviews I've read online, the new Nokia phones are still build like tanks. So I wouldn't worry too much on that front.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#153

Post by Kurtz79 »

dannysu wrote: post #51
Yetanfou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your 3 year young iPhone and raise my 6 year old Motorola Defy. I bought it new in 2011 for about 1/4 of what the then-current iPhone would have cost. It still works flawlessly, the battery is fine as well (~5 days of normal use on a single charge or ~7 hours of screen time). If the battery were to fail I could just replace it, no tools required. Oh, the thing is waterproof and 'shock-proof' (although the latte…

That misses a key point I was making: OS updates. Yes, I too have a Nexus 4 (bought in 2012) and it still works fine. But no more updates. I don't consider that on par with say my previous work laptop, which was also 3 years before I upgraded. I also own a Moto E (2nd Gen, $60-ish) and bought a Moto G+ for my brother this year, but I can't count on them to receive OS updates for as long.

Except you are comparing a 749$ phone with a 220$ and 60$ ones.

You could buy a new Moto G every 2 years and you would still have an up-to-date phone that is more economical than an iPhone, if OS-updates are your main worry (on average, I believe Apple supports devices up to 5 years, which objectively is a lot).

That without considering how well old phones work with newer OSs, my iPhone 4 did technically work with the last supported update, but the performance hit was so big it made it a pain to use.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#154

Post by Razengan »

cm2187 wrote: post #31
ihateneckbeards wrote: post #5

Not excusing the price, but people these days spend multiple hours a day on their phones. Phones are as important as cars for example. How high prices can go ? Even higher imo People are ready to pay for expensive cars for a better experience and higher "social standing". Phones are not that different in this regard

Yeah but there was a big jump in performance / new features between early iphone generations. Nowadays the difference is really marginal for every day use. You are only going to take better photos in marginal low light conditions, if you even take lots of photos, everything else will be pretty much the same experience. I'd argue that we are even in removal of features mode (audio jack, touch id) which is putting off…

> Yeah but there was a big jump in performance / new features between early iphone generations. Nowadays the difference is really marginal for every day use.

You can say the exact same for PCs, which could have stopped getting any performance improvements about 5 years ago and the general populace wouldn’t have complained at all.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#155

Post by StudentStuff »

saagarjha wrote: post #129
StudentStuff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its surprising how good a used, $50 phone is today. You can get something on par with a Note 3 or Note 4 from LG and get two solid years of use out of it, perhaps more with ROMs. This is part of why I stopped buying the latest flagship, just didn't make sense for me to worry so much when I could avoid that entirely, and get 98% of the same performance and features.

> 98% of the same performance and features You’re talking about phones with hardware from half a decade ago. How exactly are you getting the same performance and features, let alone even support or updates from manufacturers?

In what world is a chip from 2014 a half decade old? Most of the phones in that price bracket will be using a Snapdragon 410 or similar.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#156

Post by quuquuquu »

Gaelan wrote: post #128
delazeur wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, iPhones are extremely economical. My iPhone 6, which cost $749 at the time, is coming up to 3 years old. Uh, what? I'm on my second ~$70 Android smart phone in eight years. It's a tad slow, but we're talking about literally a few seconds of waiting, nothing truly inconvenient. I have honestly never been impressed by anything a $600+ iPhone can do beyond what my phone can. The only drawback is that it isn't co…

When was the last time that phone got a security patch?

I don't mean to sound utterly petty, but most security threats these days seem to be external to the device you are using.

Yes it sucks when a windows xp machine catches a massive virus from a random website.

But here I am with an iphone 5 that cost me $xxx, it gets updates that slow the phone down and break a lot of functionality, and my ssn isn't keylogged from my device, it's just leaked by someone else!

Now luckily my passwords aren't being keylogged but- wait! damnit!

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#157

Post by otalp »

erikb wrote: post #111

You may think this price is ridiculous, but iPhones are slowly dying for two to four generaltions already. The only people still on iPhone are the ones who consider it too hard to switch to Android (low IT skills), or the ones who feel some fan-like loyalty. The price matches that perfectly, exploiting the weak and stupid. PS: Why do I call fans stupid? The company isn't 1% as loyal to you as you are to them. If you…

Eric Schmidt has said he uses an iPhone. Elon Musk uses an iPhone 7. Mark Zuckerburg uses a MacBook Air. Travis Kalnick uses an iPhone. Most people who I know that work as engineers at Google and Facebook in the US use iPhones. But sure, they are weak and stupid and you are enlightened.

The iPhone 7 which released last year is more powerful than the Galaxy S8. Android phones lag embarrassingly behind in terms of CPU performance, disk write speeds, and software updates. If those things don't matter to you, I suppose you could get an Android phone for the AMOLED screen(though the new iPhone is reportedly going to have that too) or customization.

But to say that the only reason people buy iPhones is because they're stupid is embarrassing, really. I mean Apple weren't the company that have customers refusing to give back a phone which literally catches on fire.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#158

Post by funnelsgun »

ihateneckbeards wrote: post #5

Not excusing the price, but people these days spend multiple hours a day on their phones. Phones are as important as cars for example. How high prices can go ? Even higher imo People are ready to pay for expensive cars for a better experience and higher "social standing". Phones are not that different in this regard

I must be the exception here as I spend no more than an hour on my iPhone (6s) each day.

I use Apple Music, WhatsApp, and the camera. However, WhatsApp is available on Android and the camera on the iPhone 6s still doesn't even come close to that of an SLR so I tend to use that and keep the iPhone in my pocket. When I take photos, I have gone out with the intention of taking photos, so there is no convenience factor of an iPhone for me.

However, I also love cars. You can take them out for fun on a weekend, show them off and talk to other owners at meets, drive them on tracks all over the world, and, if you made sensible choices, have the depreciation of an iPhone make a car look like an investment. Meanwhile, everyone and their mother has an iPhone - there is no novelty to owning one.

Thus, until I start getting more out of an iPhone, I can't help but think how a Moto G and an extra $800 in pocket to spend on something else would give me so much more pleasure than the next iPhone.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#159

Post by ubernostrum »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #50
mandeepj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coke is a bad example. Let's talk about a bottle of wine which is $20k. I certainly can't afford that along with a lot of other people.

$20k wine is probably not going to taste any better than $20 wine, objectively speaking. It's just a luxury good for conspicuous spending.

A lot depends on what's meant by "wine" and the price range involved.

I like port, for example. I usually have a bottle sitting in my apartment so that I can pour a glass after dinner and drink it while relaxing.

And even without an "educated palate" I -- and other people I've invited to blind-taste who knew less than I did about it -- can taste the difference between, say, a $30 bottle and a $100 bottle. It's not a subtle thing at all; it's a massive difference.

But that's not because of the price; the price reflects the manner of production and the actual quality of the product. The cheap bottle is a blend of wine from several different years, and possibly different producers, may have been just dumped in steel tanks after fermentation to await bottling, etc., while the more expensive stuff is often going to be from a single year and/or single producer, barrel-aged, and so on. This produces a large and obvious difference in the way it tastes.

Once you get into that tier of well-produced port, you won't see much in the way of big jumps in quality for paying more. The difference between, say, a $200 bottle and a $100 bottle is much less than between the $100 bottle and the $30 bottle, despite the larger price jump. At that point you're mostly hunting for particular years which were known to be good, and are expensive because of that plus their scarcity.

Re: With a $1k Price, Apple’s iPhone Crosses a Threshold

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

tekklloneer wrote: post #65
delazeur wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If two to three seconds of waiting (that's on the high end, and only for certain apps) is breaking your flow, you need to work on your attention span. That's ADHD territory. Edit: For that matter, interacting with your phone for a few seconds at a time is probably an attention deficit issue in and of itself. I admit that it's common, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem.

Or, you're using snapchat, or instagram, or signal.

Or, any other IM program (including text messages). Or getting directions. Or checking departure time of a bus. Or switching a song that's playing. Or turning my Hue lights on/off. Or checking my account balance. Or paying with the phone.

Each of those actions should take no more than couple of seconds (occasionally, a couple dozen). And it can, if your phone is not lagging out after lockscreen or when trying to load an on-screen keyboard.

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