There must be a term for this kind of question. To answer it, yes. Look at Apple’s average selling price and people are buying maxed out iPhone 8s and X’s.

But that question is like the old internet trope - “I haven’t had a television in 10 years. Do people still watch TV?”

I agree. It might be summed up as "Why other people have different preferences than I do ?"

"Why do people buy expensive clothes/cars/watches/tech ?"

Mostly because other people are different from you and will place different value to things than what you might.

Their financial condition might also differ from yours, and maybe $800 dollars are pocket money for them.

It is surprsing in how many contexts the same concept can be applied: "Why so many people complain about bezels ?"

Because other people are different from you, and possibly will place more value on a phone's aesthetics rather than its software or processing power.

TL;DR A lot of other people are different from you. It is surprising to me how this does not seem to be common knowledge.

Apple is known for supporting their hardware for a looong time. You can for example, upgrade a 5S (2013) to iOS11. That 8/X people are buying can be expected to be fully usable through 2023, whereas for Android that's ~2 years.

You can still download older versions of apps from the App Store for iOS back to 4. I recently reset an old first gen iPad and was able to use older versions of Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, Spotify, Plex and the entire iWork suits.

I used to upgrade my phone after 3 years, at that point the phone becomes very outdated and it's worth is hardly $100. So it costs me around the same if I buy an inexpensive phone every year, buy an expensive phone and use it for few years, or trade up a new iPhone every year.

something to consider: if I had had a 32GB og pixel at the launch of the pixel 2, I could have sold it for ~$400. if that trend continues, I would be happy to pay about $250 a year to always have a current flagship phone with monthly security updates. that's only 20% more expensive than just buying a ~$400 phone (nexus 5x launch price) every two years. of course you could also sell the cheaper phone, but the non-google phones seem to lose their value faster.

the real question is, why spend flagship money on anything other than a pixel?

I find this rent-like model very strange. It was the same problem with carrier contracts. Now that contracts, at least in their original form, are gone, not much has changed. Due to a variety of reasons, people still end up paying the same or more than before.

the only thing that makes it rent-like is that I would pay a similar price every year.

Personally, I'm with you. Recently bought a Moto G5 plus for a couple of hundred euro and its fine. However, I do confess if I had a higher income I'd probably be another happy consumer of the super high end phones.

Worth noting that in Europe at least they have a very high resale value, so you will make much of the cost back if selling in a year or so in good condition.

I had cheaper phones before but saving a couple hundred euros in exchange for a couple of years of annoyance is not worth it to me. This way I know she gets currently top experience and I, when I get her phone, get a very well understood one.

In the next week or two I am upgrading my phone and I think I'm going to buy my first iPhone. The only other phone I would consider is one from Google. Because they do such a crappy job with security, I'll never again consider an LG, Samsung, or other third party phone. Apple or Google for me.

Caveat: If you care about a lot about the best possible photo quality, then it probably isn't the right choice. I found it to be good enough for my needs.

Nope, I don't mind how much my phone costs since I use it daily, but I will use it until some component fails in a terminal way. I had a Note 3, swapped its display module once, but it finally died. It lasted maybe three or four years.

This is what I told myself too, but I also upgraded after 3-4 years after being annoyed at just how slow my phone was (or to put it another way, just how much CPU power apps demanded now). The phone still works perfectly fine, it just slows down to a crawl right when you're in the biggest hurry. (e.g. at one point Google Maps took multiple minutes to refresh the screen right when I was driving and trying to figure out the right directions, and I still haven't been able to reproduce it, but I sure as heck don't want to live through that experience again.)

$30/mo is comparable to $20/mo for most people, and they get the newest shiniest thing (and non-tech people don't know that Android phones don't get updates after the new model comes out).

Sadly if you buy an Android phone, don't ever expect it to get updated. You might get lucky, but don't expect any ongoing support

Carriers should not be responsible or even allowed to push updates outside of very limited reasons. Samsung made the phone they should be legally required to actively update it

The iPhone X is the best selling phone since it came out, isn't it?

http://bgr.com/2018/01/29/iphone-x-sales-high-price-supply-c...

>reportedly

Even the source the guy links to is his own article that is also conjecture. Great content.

> Samsung Electronics is to slash production at its OLED panel plant in response to customer Apple's decision to reduce output of the iPhone X following weak demand

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/AC/Samsung-to-slash-OLED-pa...

Trying to read the tea leaves on what supplier changes mean for the overall market is a waste of your time. It’s about as far from unequivocal as I can imagine.

Hence why the majority of new 2018 devices thus far are all coming with Nougat.

One thing it could do off the bat was work with my $50 Daydream VR headset, which only a few Android phones could do at that time.

I am an Android programmer so having a nice phone is worth it for me.