US smartphone shipments fall sharply, but Android more than iPhone

> Despite inflation numbers falling through the quarter and ongoing strength in the job market, consumers hesitated to upgrade their devices amid market uncertainty.”

> Apple’s resilience was driven by strong promotions across postpaid and prepaid. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile continued to offer $800+ promo credits for the iPhone 14 while old-generation iPhones were also steeply discounted across prepaid. We are seeing no weakness in the overall promotional activity.

Perfect storm, especially for a broke-ass like me. When it stops being about features and starts being about "cheap"...

Then again, I'm going dumb phone next month, which is _even cheaper_. Take that, smartphone market!

I was due for an upgrade and switched to Android this cycle. Acquired a unlocked Pixel 7 that was on sale in June and immediately reflashed it with GrapheneOS.

Ultimately a very smooth experience. The difference in tracking is very evident as is the amount of data streaming out of the phone.

I finally convinced some in-laws to get an se2 after telling them it wasn’t really cheaper to keep buying terrible no name Samsung phones every other year. They have also both become photographers now and can FaceTime easily to see grandkids. So mark me down for contributing 2. Your welcome Apple.

I'm going to be getting a Nokia 6300 4G. Smart enough to have google maps, dumb enough to stay out of my head.

I've been recommended to "just get a GPS" -- they're like $300, and I'm cheap :) so my dumpy little phone will have to do the job. That's like, the #1 thing I _really need_ out of a phone; the rest is distracting trash.

The best part is that you can pay _ridiculously low_ prices month to month through various carriers. Like $15 / month in the US, on top of the phone being $70. Good stuff in my opinion. I thought I was getting off good with ~$45 a month for Google Fi.

I have a love/hate relationship with Verizon. Okay, more often hate/hate, but still. They have the best network in this area when we're out in the sticks. But their pricing is pretty high. They'll offer $800 on a new iPhone, and then the credit comes one month at a time over 36 months. Meanwhile, you're paying $70-80 per phone. You might as well take the upgrade when available, if you're going to stick with them, because otherwise you're just paying for other people's upgrades.

I'd switch to Visible (the Verizon prepaid) and pay half the price, except they don't yet support standalone Apple watches. So we continue to pay almost $200/mo for a family of four (with only two real smartphones), because of those watches. Some day the kids will be old enough that my wife will let them have smartphones, and we'll switch to some plan that costs half as much.