Upper range iPhone and Android are comparable in the US, but Android covers a much much larger price range in my experience.

These days with the iPhone SE you can get a $400 iPhone, there’s $300 Androids which the iPhone doesn’t hit but below $300 an Android is gonna be so bad it’s not really in consideration in the first place for most people.

> with the iPhone SE you can get a $400 iPhone

Which is an absolute joke of a phone unless you just value the apple logo that much, which most of Europe doesn't. 720p screen? 4gb ram? What decade are we in again?

Yes, Europe absolutely detests having a phone that fits in your hand.

That's a weird take. There are better phones that fit on your hand.

It's like saying that people don't like licorice because people absolutely detest eating.

Maybe it is because it tastes like shit to them.

This is the weirdest take I’ve seen on iPhone hating yet.

I never said anything bad about the actual size of the screen because I don't think it's a bad thing. The problem is that the phone has a tiny screen, tiny specs but a not-so-tiny price.

Every time someone complains about ram in the iPhone it’s evidence they don’t know what they are talking about and chase the numbers trends of android.

If you're not paying for numbers, what are you paying for then? What reason could there be to pay $400 for a 2022 iphone that doesn't provide anything that a $400 android from 5 years ago doesn't?

Well I’m not paying for ram. Obviously everything is subjective but iOS is better than android, better camera, better eco system, better privacy and security, better battery life over time, better lifetime support, etc etc etc.

iPhone runs well on 3gb, 4gb, 6gb. It’s far more optimised than android.

The same cannot be said for android. Over time lack of ram cripples it.

the battery life on the new SE is dreadful from day 1. Everything else is broadly true.

> If you're not paying for numbers, what are you paying for then?

Oh honey...

a smug sense of superior and/or very long term OS updates

Granted, I am a weird tech literate guy who wastes his time on hacker news, but what other capabilities does a phone require? I check my email, browse a few websites, use something for messaging, and call Uber/Lyft. How would superior phone specs improve my life? At this point, the next step is to slim down the software, the hardware is more than sufficient.

If all you use your phone for is browsing websites and checking email, you can get a cheap chinese android for half the price that does all of that just fine.

A cheap phone would work for that. But they are noticeably laggy and kind of grotty to use, especially once you’ve used something nicer. Kind of like going back to an ancient PC.

It's more like running Windows 11 on an ancient PC. If it ran Windows 3.1 when it came out, it's probably still pretty snappy if you run Windows 3.1 on it today.

The cheap phones we have now could totally blow away higher end phones from the past...

But security updates, and lack of support on old phones essentially means you can't do that. Because they're gonna bundle in a ton of bullshit with the security updates.

Hilarious. A fair few techies like me are on SEs because we either get them from work, or use big screens all day so don’t value a large phone because it’s strictly a functional device. Works perfectLy fine. Anyway, why anyone would ever care about the RAM on an iPhone is beyond me.

> because we either get them from work

We're discussing prices so I don't see how this is relevant in any way.

> use big screens all day so don’t value a large phone because it’s strictly a functional device

Then you don't need a $400 phone.

I’m my case I could choose to BYOD and some do, so price and preference absolutely both matter.

You should pull up some benchmarks on performance of the joke phone vs $1200 Android flagship devices

For laughs

I’m not sure I agree. The people buying a $400 phone aren’t getting sweaty about the specs, the phone is just a tool for them. They probably don’t even know what 720p is

That's where you are wrong. The truth is that for a for a massive chunk of the population a 200€ phone straight from China like a Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 [1] is plenty enough.

Not great, but not terrible camera. Not flagship, but not sluggish processor. Nice bright 90Hz AMOLED display. 33W Fast Charging. Runs TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Chrome and so on without a hiccup.

What else do you really need?

[1]: https://www.mi.com/uk/product/redmi-note-11/

IMO it’s all a matter of perspective. I typically keep a phone for around two years. Ignoring for a second that iPhones are typically more future proof than Android phones, the $200 difference between mid-tier Android and iPhone SE is $8.33 a month.

Is the iPhone a superior experience? IMO, yes. Do I need it? No. But do I use my phone enough that $8 a month is worth it for the improvement? Absolutely.

Sure, I agree, I use an iPhone myself.

But I do agree because I'm very tied to the ecosystem, I use lots of Apple products, the whole experience is worth it.

For your usual non-tech professional using your typical five free social media apps, taking a couple pics for Instagram and doing a few calls? I don't think it's worth the extra $8. Better get coffee.

I can't think of anything as bad in terms of specs / money spent in the android world as the Iphone SE. You would have to go out of your way to avoid most known brands to find it.

Just compare that to an S10 which is roughly in the same price range now

But it’s not about specs per money spent, it’s about the experience you get.

I would take that S10 for the experience ;) (I used to hate TouchWiz and other vendor's customizations, but One UI is fantastic).

Specs do matter for the experience as well when it's low enough? The iPhone SE has a 720p screen, a single camera with very poor recording quality (1080p/25fps) that has to matter for the experience at some point.

Furthermore, if you're trying to save money, you can hold on to an iPhone for a lot longer than a budget Android and you'll come out ahead after amortization.

> [...] below $300 an Android is gonna be so bad it’s not really in consideration in the first place for most people.

You really ought to look at Motorola's mid-range; as an example, you can the 2021 G-Power at sub-$150 prices.

Moto phones are fantastic

That's what I buy for broke family members. They're practically indestructible and can do everything you need for $180 or so

Are the $150 phones slow? I’ve never tried a Moto but the $150 Samsung I tried was so slow it was nearly unusable.

No,they are not slow.

Also the SE will get 4-6 years of official OS updates.

The $300 Android is lucky to get 1, maybe a few critical security patches after that and then it's abandoned.

The Pixel 6a has been on sale for $300 and gets 3 years of OS updates and an additional 2 years of security patches.

Google has promised it gets 3+2 years. We'll see in 2025 how that actually panned out.

Meanwhile my mom is on her second iPhone, the first one lasted for 6 years with OS updates, the current one (SE2020) will most likely get updates until 2025. Two phones in about a decade isn't too bad IMO.

My Pixel 3a held the promise. It got versions 9 to 12 from 2019 to this September before I traded it in for a 6a 2/3 off the MSRP.

While true, most people in Europe that buy phones for pre-paid card don't care.

I have seen people disable updates, because they change how the apps look like, and devices are anyway mostly space constrained.

Well an iPhone SE is €560, and an iPhone 14 is €1020 (basically the same amount of USD, we're at parity now).

A Samsung A13 is €156, a Xiaomi 9A is €100, a Google Pixel 6A is €365, a Samsung A32 is €250...

So yes Apple is significantly more expensive than most of the Android phones, at least looking at the ones that sell well.

Do those sub $300 phones sell well in the EU? My only experience with a $150 USD phone, Samsung A10, was that it was so slow it was nearly unusable. I wasn’t really sure who the market is for that phone. Maybe at €250 the A32 is a much better experience, and I know the 6a is great but that’s also nearly the price of the SE

I am under the impression that they do because Europeans tend to buy phones unlocked up front at retail much more often than their American counterparts. Sadly a lot of phone manufacturers trying to break into the US market still don't know a vast majority get their phone in installments via their carrier.

Yes those phones sell well in Europe. In fact I got the list by looking at top selling phones on some online retailers like Amazon.

Most of them aren’t very good you’re right, but most people aren’t willing to pay more. Keep in mind that the north in most of Europe is to pay for the unlocked phone upfront, not finance it though the carrier.

And the SE is €200 more expensive than the Pixel 6A as I detailed. Not even the same ballpark.