And this is how they get people. You didn't spend an extra $10/month, you spent an extra $400 compared to getting the 8. I don't blame you, I think it's worth it, but that's a terrible way to think about prices.

No, it's the absolutely correct way to think about buying things. I didn't spend $1,000 to get a great phone to use this month, then throw it away next month. In business, you buy equipment, you typically account for it's cost over it's useful life, i.e. amortizing and depreciation. In your personal life, it's no different, you need the right framework to correctly evaluate these decisions.

And secondly, I didn't pay $400 extra over an iPhone 8. I'll own this phone at least two years. Historically an iPhone is worth roughly 30-50% (edit) of purchase price in two years. So my two years cost of owning an iPhone X is going to be (roughly) $300-500, and an iPhone 8 roughly $200-325, only a little more than a $200 average difference. A cheap Android phone only costs $200 but might only be worth $50 in two years, so it's only about $450 cheaper than my iPhone X.

Note that I'm ignoring service costs, because they should be the same no matter what phone I choose.

While this is the economically accurate way to view your actual costs, it can be used in a bad way to think is if you don't quantify your economic benefits. If there aren't any economic benefits, admit you are paying for the badge/prestige. And ask yourself if that's worth it.

In the case of the iPhone X, it's the fastest phone with the best screen, and best camera. Am I going to get $10 a month or so of benefits from them? I think so. Would it be worth $40 a month more? Probably not.

Edit: oh and I just bought a 20 y.o. car. My way of seeing it is useful in this case because I add the (very high) assurance rate, repairs and gas to get a realistic price. I predicted a reasonable car life and compared it with the numbers for a brand new car.

In the case of your car, what benefits are there to the more expensive model? My iPhone X, those benefits are easy to describe, better screen, better camera, faster, better form factor. Amortizing to compare the relative cost between it an iPhone 8 and seeing that it's roughly $10 a month allows me to make an informed decision about whether those benefits are worth the cost.

In the case of your car purchase, if the car salesman says it's only $200 a month more to get the "better" car, are it's benefits worth that much to you? Is the more expensive car safer, more comfortable, and are those benefits worth $200 a month? How much do you drive a month? Do you commute in rush hour traffic, or drive on the freeway? etc. etc.

And if I'm wrong about 50% depreciation being typical over 2 years, I'm not wrong by much. There is not a huge difference between 70% depreciation and 50% in your monthly cost of ownership. Undamaged 64GB iPhone 6s are selling for between $230 and $310 on eBay, so that's 60-70% depreciation. On average the 6s cost about $20 per month.

Consider also the fact that the battery life will be substantially decreased from new and that most people wont be able to replace it themselves.

Something that is overprice is actually more likely to decline because 2 years from now its just a comparatively slow device that no longer serves as a status symbol.

You wanted the best and it wasn't to expensive for you. It might not be a status symbol in the sense that you want others to know you're rich, but it's really hard to justify spending more than 500$ max on a phone these days unless you want something essentially useless (like it being "the best" in some measure).

My Nexus 5x is a few years old by now, but it's still hard to see the utility of upgrading it to something flashier for me.

Geeks always seem to want to erase the human factor out of everything.

it's likely that they have to rationalize their inability to understand/connect with "regular" people by feeling superior about not caring about "status symbols" or the like.

What I saw on launch were lots and lots of people Tweeting and posting about having placed orders and then posting pictures of the box. Forgive me, but that’s not something you do if you just bought the phone for utilitarian reasons.

A big reason is that in a case it's hard to tell which phone you have, I've yet to have anyone notice I've got an iPhone X.

The iPhone X offers significant enhancements over an iPhone 8 and 8 plus. The difference in cost is relatively minor when amortized it over your ownership life-time. For some people, like my wife, it's still not worth it (esp. if you prefer TouchID). For me it was.

Then it's interesting that you felt the urge to post about it - are you absolutely sure your motivations are what you think they are?