About half of user in the U.S. use an iphone and a large portion of the other half use pixel or samsungs all of which are easily $400+ phones do I think your experience is atypical. (I'm guessing your friends are either young or thrifty)

And the reason for that is that the market for phones in the US is greatly distorted by carriers - the handsets themselves (which are dirt cheap compared to the service), subsidies in the past and pure market dominance.

Canada might be similar, but outside of NA, people know exactly how much they pay for the handset and how much they play for the service (which is 5-10 times cheaper for similar limits), and as a result, most people don’t actually buy a flagship phone.

In the US, carrier subsidies on phones haven't been a thing in like 3-4 years now. The carriers have moved everyone to installment plans, and when buying a new phone, it's laid out pretty clearly how much the device costs up front. They then give you the option to pay for the phone outright, or pay monthly for the hardware (on top of your service.)

Frankly, most people in my life, family, friends, etc, are using flagship phones. I know people who keep said devices for 4+ years, but I genuinely don't know anyone using throw-away cheap Android phones. Those people who keep their phones forever, balk at the prices of new iPhones, fully knowing the "nice" ones go for $1000 or more.

I don't think my experience here is atypical. A few years ago, the price of a phone was heavily abstracted by the carriers, but that really is not the case anymore.

Once the subsidies are gone, the main thing is the price of the plan - compared to which a flagship is small.

In many places in Europe, you can get reasonable monthly plans for ~$10; If you only use data, about half that. If you pay $1000 for 6 years of service, it puts the phone price in a completely different perspective than if you pay that for 18 months (which, last I checked US prices, was the case).

>Most people I know just buy the cheapest Android they can find; those are definitely throwaways

Well there are 100 Million iPhone users in the US (45% of the market). And the Representative that killed the Bill by requesting a year long study I'm sure has no conflicts of interest (Apple stock, Google Stock, hell no interest in the group that will be awarded the government contract to conduct the study)

Some mobile phones are throwaways, and others are not. When someone says that all mobile phones are throwaways that don't need to be repaired, it's valid to rebut their point by pointing out popular expensive phones that people would want to repair.

Most people I know buy expensive phones, and many of them are in need of repair.

> the cheapest Android they can find; those are definitely throwaways)

If you give a damn about the environment, I think it hardly matters how much it cost.

All publication are biased, one way or another (or in multiple different way)

This point is often overstated, so as to almost make it seem like shameless propaganda outlets like RT are equivalent to an actual journalism outfit with standards. Though I'm sure that's not how you meant it.

I think intent matters. It can be argued that any media is biased, in the sense that you literally cannot cover every possible angle, every possible fact, etc. But that is very different IMO from intentional bias.

I'll take your disgarded phones. I'm sure I can find a market.