People use their phones probably more than any other single item besides their home and bed. It’s not really that crazy, especially if you factor in camera upgrades for people that care about it.

One stat that takes me out of my bubble on this one is we are closing in on 2/3 of website visits being done via mobile devices. I.e. it's not necessarily the ultra tech focused folks that make up high end mobile user base, it's people using phones constantly as their primary device that are often spending a grand on them.

This is true, but I don't think the price translates. Most folks use their phones for messaging, internet, videos, camera. That's about it. And the things you do on your phone don't translate to these price tags. You're not getting a bunch more from a 1k phone than from a 500 phone.

I personally try to get flagship phones, but used a few years after their release. That, and avoid upgrading my phone as much as possible :P I'm jealous of Apple folks here, they support their devices for eons longer than Android!

That's a really good point! I spend 10x time in front of a computer as a phone and I don't think twice about buying Alienware or Razer so that makes more sense to me.

In terms of percentage of my day that I spent using X, my smartphone ranks pretty highly. More so than my TV, car, etc that are high budget items that you can spend a lot on.

I think it's true for a lot of people, but not for everyone. There's not much my phone does for me that a laptop doesn't do better, and I probably use some form of desktop/laptop about 10X the amount of time I use my phone. Sometimes I forget where my (8 year old) phone is for days, and life trucks on, but I probably sit in front of a computer for hours a day and that's just for work. I guess I'm turning into an outlier.

I personally could not even fathom spending $500 on a telephone let alone $1000. It's just not an important enough gadget in my life.

There's a very large community of people in which their smartphone might be the only luxury purchase they make (I'm pretty close to that).

Now that we no longer upgrade every second year (or, in fact, every third year) and given I usually get 50% of the cost back by sending the old phone in, spending $1500/phone means that I'm typically amortizing a $750 charge over 4 years - or $15/month for the only luxury item I own. I'm probably more concerned about the $85/month AT&T bill than the $15/month cost for the actual phone.

Never having to even think about storage, like literally zero concerns about how much I download is one reason I always grab the high-end model (now around 1TB)

Also - there are lots of weeks, (in fact, sometimes a month) that my mother doesn't touch her (pretty high end, nice 4K monitor) computer system - but I doubt there has ever been a single hour that she wasn't using her phone. The Phone, for many, has become the new computer.

And, with LLMs becoming pervasive, the new knowledge-system. (I can go many days without touching google - but I hit up some combination of Claude/ChatGPT pretty 7-10 times/day) I can already envision the day in which you will be able to run an LLM on your phone - but the H/W specs for that thing will likely be insane and I have a hard time seeing how the first releases of (reasonable speed, reasonable model -I'm aware you can do it today) - in a 2-3 years from now that can run an LLM will go for less than $2000-$2500.

And I will be standing at the front of that line begging them to take my money. Entirely new device at that point.

Fewer and fewer people own any computing device other than a phone.

Should we be celebrating this, or even talking about it as if it's remotely sensible? Even putting aside that mobile software is designed to undermine your personal interests, getting a laptop that's good for a decade (or more) and then churning your phone less often is likely a win on straight device cost.

Who defines sensible? For most people, a phone is a far more sensible purchase than a laptop. How many sub-$500 laptops have cellular modems? How many sub-$200? How much of the technology that people realistically use day-to-day requires a laptop?

I’d even question your premise that phones churn more frequently than laptops, especially at the budget end.

More and more of societal services “require” a smartphone. I went to a baseball game where it seemed like it was required to install their ticket app (might have been an offline workflow available).

For someone with a limited budget, a phone seems wildly more valuable than a laptop.

The point of my comment was to talk about what is sensible?

Your comment just seems needlessly dichotomous. I'm talking about having multiple devices, such that you aren't beholden to any single one. Nobody "requires" a laptop, just like nobody actually "requires" a phone. But if you're using up all your buy-stuff-online time looking through a tiny screen and tapping out search terms like Morse code, rather than being able to comfortably compare skus/stores far and wide, it's likely that you're drastically overpaying. I'm willing to believe this is a trap many people fall into (eg why else is Amazon always pushing Subscribe and "Save"), but we shouldn't be normalizing it as if it's effective rather than pathological and extractionary (cf Vimes's Boots).

And sure, the same trash-treadmill dynamic exists in the low end new laptop market with poor hardware and poor software (eg MSWin also pushes an upgrade treadmill). But this is kind of a weird Schrödinger's argument in a thread about a phone that costs $1,000 - someone who doesn't have enough resources to buy anything beyond a phone, yet also spends an outsized amount to have the latest flagship. My larger point still stands about the longevity of good product choices, but they require research and actualization - once again, the kind better done from a laptop or desktop rather than a pocket porthole.

iPad is the new laptop.

For what?

Because sure as hell it's not a working machine.

> I think it's true for a lot of people, but not for everyone.

This is not a helpful comment.

No one argued it was true for everyone!

> I personally could not even fathom spending $500 on a telephone let alone $1000. It's just not an important enough gadget in my life.

This is also not helpful.

Can you imagine why someone else might spend $1000 on a phone? If the answer is no you have a shockingly poor ability to empathize and see things from a different perspective.

I totally understand why some people spend $1500 on a new phone. And I also understand why some people want to spend the bare minimum! These perspectives are not difficult to grasp.

Here we have OP doing an "I have better money sense than you" brag followed by a guy doing an "I have better empathy than you" brag. (Followed by me doing an "I'm more savvy than you" brag.)

Followed by the “I have outlined how a typical conversation on this platform will play out” guy

lol, made me chuckle.

It's a pet peeve of mine how often programmers argue from their niche perspective without even attempting to think of things from a broader or different perspective. It's especially annoying when it goes from "people do X" to "well I do Y so nyah!".

It's not hard or difficult, you just have to try!

Does it get easier over time? I asked the most socially adept person I know about how she's so good with people. She said, "I just picture myself in their shoes." She made it sound easy, so I tried it, and phew! It's tough! It made me wonder whether part of the reason why perspective-taking is easy for her is because she's practiced it so much.

I suppose it’s a skill like anything else.

It’s also not binary. The biggest UX experts in the world will still be shocked by what people do in a user study! There’s always surprises.

Understanding a very specific individual is pretty hard! But I think understanding that there are literally billions of smart phone users and that some of them will be happy to buy expensive phones and some will be prefer to buy cheap phones is pretty straight forward! The larger the group being considered the less valuable a personal anecdote is!

Okay, but just because you use something a lot doesn't mean you need to spend huge money on it.

That's the argument I don't understand.

Like, Taxi drivers don't buy the most luxurious and comfortable car you can think of because they drive it all day, they get Toyotas and sometimes Teslas where EV support is decent.

If you use it for 3 years, $1000 is about a dollar a day. Does a better phone generate that much value each day - about 1/5 of a cappucino? Probably.

By which metric generates more value?

It answers better on HN? Gives you more value answering messages or watching YouTube?

Which far fetched edge case scenario do you need to justify the very small diminishing returns between a high end and premium phone?

Personally I inject probes into my brain to measure the exact dopamine response every time I need to make a new purchase

...idk I think people just like premium phones, it's not that deep

Yeah but when you get into the taxi comparison, it’s based on roi more than anything.

For a phone, it’s purely esthetic, ergonomic and user friendliness that most people are buying them. Not usually roi based decision.

I usually sell my $1k phone after a couple years so I end up paying much less than $1k in the end, while getting a better phone out of it than had I just bought the $500 phone up front.

It blows me away that people actually care how much other people spend on something at all. Want a $50 flip phone? Cool. Want a $1300 fancy fold phone? Also fine.

When I had my last kid we got a Snoo bassinet, $1300 or so. Anyone that saw it couldn't help but inform me that their baby survived in a trash bag with holes poked in it or whatever for a bassinet. But I sold it 6 months later for $900, and my overall $400 investment was very worth it. Thing was a miracle.

> $400 investment

Why is this word used to describe "pure financial loss" so often when talking about purchased luxury goods?

> Investment: the outlay of money usually for income or profit

Because the implication is that there is non-monetary profit. The person is describing it not as a loss but as an investment, because it was an investment in themselves and their ability to sleep at night and an investment in their child feeling safe and whatever other impossible-to-directly-price externalities were realized as a result of the monetary loss.

I suppose the problem is that there isn't a good word for this concept. I just find it interesting that, in my experience, this is only used in relation to luxury goods.

> in my experience, this is only used in relation to luxury goods.

Not really. You can also "invest" in personal relationships, for example, which implies neither a financial outlay nor an expectation of financial return.

When used in the context of purchasing consumer goods, I think it is most often used in the context of goods which are expensive (the financial outlay) and durable (ie, capable of providing enjoyment--analogous to profit--for a long time into the future). And of course those goods are more likely to be considered "luxury" goods.

In the case of a relationship, maybe it could be argued that you are profiting, in the currency being used: you get more positive interactions out than you put in. ;)

> this is only used in relation to luxury goods.

It isn't. People say it in regards to quality goods of all kinds - shoes, mattresses, food.

Because the value the item brought you was worth more than the money you exchanged for it. My Bose QC35s were one of the best investments I've ever made, lasting many years and very many loud plane rides. Or would you consider groceries a "pure financial loss" as well?

> Or would you consider groceries a "pure financial loss" as well?

Being healthy results in me being able to make more money, so it literally is an investment.

Investing in a luxury purse or basinet has no concept of profit, but can happily result in high value. Profit and value (or satisfaction) are not the same.

So goofy that you asked this with the "usually" right there in your own quote.

Investment in x% higher likelihood of your child's safety.

> It blows me away that people actually care how much other people spend on something at all.

It's an idle discussion thread about consumer electronics. Not an attack on the core of your personal identity.

It blows me away that even with the investiture of 100% of your intelligence and effort, at the peak of your personal ability, that you couldn't realize that I only said "It blows me away" because I was mocking the comment I replied to.

> It blows me away that people actually care how much other people spend on something at all

Well you can dislike this fact but there is nothing seems to be blown away about it. Because this is such a mundane fact about people.

Bro I'm not blown away, I just copied the parent comment to be equally hyperbolic about said mundane topic.

Have you looked into leasing your phone? You pay more per month but always have the latest upgrade. I'm curious about it too and am hoping you've done the numbers on it.

No I haven't. I typically just buy them up front every 2 or 3 gens and use them on whatever cheap provider I'm on at the time. Currently using Spectrum (also my home internet provider) for service.

>I usually sell my $1k phone after a couple years so I end up paying much less than $1k in the end, while getting a better phone out of it than had I just bought the $500 phone up front.

Yes, there are different ways to go about it. I buy the best phone of last year or the year before, and run it into the ground.

But is it just me, or are the changes so incremental now it's hard to justify a new model of any brand? Sure the processors get better etc, but I use my phone to browse the web, text/phone and email.

For most people the amortized cost of a phone over its life is pretty small. If you spend $1000 on a phone and it lasts you 3 years, that's ~$28 a month. A lot of people spend that on coffee each month. The value they get out of their smart phone dwarfs most other big expenses.

Tech is a really weird field; I think because of the high salaries, a lot of people are rich without realising they're rich. Tech is the "Nouveau rich". $28 a month on coffee is rather large amount to spend on coffee.

No, $28 not a large amount to spend on coffee. That's a McDonald's medium coffee 3.5 days a week. How is that a lot to spend on coffee? That's just silly. A lot to spend on coffee is $150/mo with a $5 latte at Starbucks each day and that's certainly more common than the house painter getting a McDonald's coffee on half his workdays.

Ok, "decent amount": Buying a coffee at McDonald's 3.5 days a week is a decent amount to spend on coffee. $150 is absurd. The "house painter" is making their own coffee before work.

The value they get is identical they would get if they spent half of it.

Unless, idk, you're so deep into the Apple ecosystem, e.g. that it makes sense to stay in the gardened wall and lower any kind of friction.

> The value they get is identical they would get if they spent half of it.

I'm pretty sure that the camera on my Pixel is twice as good as the OnePlus that it replaced.

But the photos are nowhere near twice as good.

Eh, they are when motion is involved.

Rationalizing a purchase because the monthly payments are small is a terrible way to approach shopping. If you don't have the money to pay for it upfront, you can't afford it. Full stop. People actually finance their phones, believe it or not. It boggles the mind.

They're not saying finance a phone. They're saying $1000 is not that much for a device you use throughout every waking hour for several years. The monthly framing helps understand cost as a rate, as we experience value as a rate.

People making an average hourly don't think of things that way. Paying $28/month for a phone provides much more liquidity for the unexpected, when the other option is spending over 25% of your months income, you're SOL if your car breaks for whatever reason, or you get a flat tire, or your water bill was unusually high.

Something something cheap boot vs. expensive boot something something…

OP wasn’t talking about a loan payment.

I assume, then, of course, that you bought (or would buy) your house in cash only? After all, "If you don't have the money to pay for it upfront, you can't afford it. Full stop."

So I get pixel because of security and less software bloat, along with good custom ROM support.

That being said, at least for me, my phone is the device I spend the most time with, whether articals, emails, books, podcasts etc.

It is at least 5 hrs a day.

This is probably an argument to spend less time on my phone, but the will is weak.

But if I am spending a significant percentage of my waking life interacting with this single electronic device, a price difference of 500 dollars is not much, especially amortized over a 3 year period.

A galaxy a54 is like 50% of the price of an 24 but with like 80% of the specs and better battery life

I don’t like spending $1k on a phone, but my iPhone 11 Pro lasted 4 years and the only reason I upgraded was because the 15 has USB-C. It would have needed a battery upgrade otherwise but modern phones do have much better longevity.

You'll get the same mileage out of a €300-€400 Samsung.

In terms of camera performance? You will not.

True

Cheap phones tend to have a lot more lag/jank than iPhones (or other $1k phones)

Depends how cheap. Midrange phones are fine and cost half the price of the equivalent iPhone.

My cheap Android phone is in a cheap black case, nobody can tell how poor I'm not.

The lack of iMessage blue-bubble is a good tell. Instantly makes you lose dates with gold diggers.

That's a feature. Gets the vapid idiots to select themselves out of your life.

Somewhat tangentially, your comment made me realize there can be non-vain reasons to try and appear less poor than you are. Of course, when you’re really poor it’s probably unwise to use a new iPhone to achieve this deception.

You can say that about anything: cars, headphones, appliances. To each their own. I can’t imagine using a 500 device in place of my 800 iPhone even though it would be “almost as good”. I can justify extra even for very small convenient features.

Since only Apple, Google and Samsung provide some realistic assurance of security updates, there aren't so many options left. If you don't want to spend 1k there is the Pixel 8a for half that price.

Most people spending $1k on their phone are either trading in their old phone if they upgrade often, or are upgrading every 2-3 years, which makes the cost not that crazy given how smartphones are often essentially a part of us nowadays with how much we rely on them.

> It blows me away that people will spend $1k for a phone when there are good options for $500 or less

Wait till you see how people spend $60k on a car when there are perfectly good options for $30k.

And people also spend much more time with their phones than in their cars.

I don't disagree but.. 1) To me there is a lot more variety in cars than phones. An SUV is very different then a sports car or some luxury car. Phones vary a lot in OS (but people don't cross shop), a little in battery and a lot in camera.

As a thought experiment, if you put me in a civic I will know I am in a civic and not a BMW in one second. If you gave me an iphone 10 or an iphone12. Or a google 8 vs google 10... You get my point. Yes Android is different then iOS but people are usually locked in.

2) In general people spend way too much on cars, either to buy capability they don't really need or can't use. Or to try and say something about themselves.

Apple does not have a monopoly. They sell 27% of all smartphones. Samsung sells 24%. Xiaomi sells 12%.

what are your favorite $500 or less options

Google Pixel 8a is a great phone IMHO. Refurbished ones are available.

It is! If you also need service, Google Fi has had a promotion for a while that gives you the $500 purchase price back over 24 monthly bills.

In fact, they also have a promotion right now where you can get $800 back on either the Pixel 9 or 9 Pro, spread over 24 months; that makes the 9 free and the 9 Pro only $200.

OP here- my last two phones have been Moto G Power. I think the first one only cost $200! I value battery life and simplicity. As an Apple shareholder I prefer you buy an iPhone.

I have a 5G Stylus rn, it's totally fine except I ruined the camera 3 days in so it takes TNG soft focus photos... love the G Power line, battery for days is not to be underappreciated

I have been trading in my phone every year to get the new Samsung S2x (now S24) model since S21. There were always new model deals plus some regular cashback. I ended up paying <200 USD every year.

It's like a manual phone upgrade plan. Not sure how long it could last. Last year the Google Fi deal wasn't as good and I almost missed the budget target.

It's crazy where phones are at now. My $160 Motorola phone has 8GB of ram

The camera is terrible though photos upon closer inspection appear smeared/blurry. My older Motorola which I paid more for has a better camera.

Yeah, I have a Moto G84 12GB RAM for $180 - and it has features that these Pixels do not have:

- SD Card up to 1TB

- 3.5mm headphone jack

- Unlockable bootloader?

You can get flagship Android phones for $500 or less if you are a bit patient and have a good carrier.

I just ordered a Galaxy S24+ from Google Fi for $450 and it's a better phone than the $1100 pixel 9 pro XL imo.

6 months from now and on days like Black Friday you'll be able to get the pixel 9 for less than $500.

Are you including the extra $50/mo you pay your carrier for this privilege? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch; you can either pay up front or pay over time (and often more than you would otherwise).

The only thing I have to do is keep using the phone for 120 days. Monthly price for service is $20 plus $10 for each gig of data, unchanged by their phone price promotions.

Don't even have to pay a fee to use a cellular smartwatch, as long as it is made by Google or Samsung.

My iPhone SE is $429 apparently.

iphone se 2022 is $429

Hoping the SE 4 in the new year will be sub $500/£500.

I got the SE 2 used, a year after it came out for a serious discount[1]. If that's something you're comfortable with, you can get a really good deal if you pay attention to what's posted on FB Marketplace.

More than anything, I'm most impressed by Apple's OS support. I'm pretty convinced that SE phones are some of the best deals in the industry if you keep them until they run out of support. They have the same guts (minus cameras) as tier 1 flagship phones. Apple is a bit tight with ram, but the processor is faster than any Android phone.

And the support - 7 years is standard right now, and it could very well go longer.

---

1. I think I paid $150 for it. It has a small crack in the screen, but just the part that's over the chin, not anything that affects the display. If I wanted a pristine phone, I'm sure I could have found one for a bit more. But after several years, I'm happy with my decision.

That's a cracking result! I'll definitely keep an eye out and hopefully the second hand market is healthy.

I think the SE never really turned any heads from the flagship causing the second hand market to be lively. With these new touted SEs, they're looking to be as good as iPhone 14 (maybe pros) which has a very wide reach.

ditto, I bought a 2020 SE refurbished for <$200 and it's been totally fine. If it were better, I'd be using it more, which I don't want.

Not GP, but I just got a Sony Xperia 10 VI, and I'm loving it so far.

Sony seem to be abandoning the NA market which is kind of unfortunate. Their new Xperia 1 VI isn’t available in either the US or Canada.

I bought a "renewed" iPhone 11 from Amazon a month ago for $230 and have been seriously impressed with it.

I think phones really stopped differentiating a few years ago. A $200 Motorola is extremely capable and does 99% of what normal people need. I bought a Moto G Power for my kid who always forgets to charge it because the battery lasts 3 days. That's more valuable than having 3 cameras and an AI chip.

It blows me away that people will spend $500 for a phone when there are good options for $150 or less. :0

Is there a new, $500 or less, phone with 256 GB of Flash, an unlockabke bootloader, and good GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, or LineageOS support?

Oddly enough I end up buying Google phones because I do not wish to put up with Google's shit.

Graphene only supports pixels.

Why would that blow you away?

$500 extra dollars for a better device people use everyday for at least a year or more. Especially around here, many make plenty of money that a $500 difference isn't that significant.

Some of it is a status symbol. I don't know any well to do tech friends that buy expensive watches or jewelry, but are happy to drop 1k+ on a new phone every year.

I have S21 Ultra and bought it refurbished for less than $500 few years ago.

I see no reason why should I buy new phone. Seems like all those new features are just gimmicks.

I would probably consider buying a new one if it had better video recording, but this Pixel only has 4k at 60Hz which wasn't impressive two years or so ago.

My phone (£500/$500) was released in Nov 2017, bought in Feb 2018, and it's still just fine. Only recently have I been noticing the battery life is getting a bit pathetic.

Spending £500 on a new one hasn't really entered my thoughts. The last time I went shopping for an (Android) phone with and for my girlfriend it was a nightmare - so many absolutely shit giant phones that don't feel right in the hand

ifixit has exclusive deals with some manufacturers where you can get an OEM replacement battery + tools for ~$30-50. can easily double the lifespan of a well-maintained device

Recently did that with my laptop. Replaced the battery and fans and reapplied thermal paste to the processor for £100.

I splurged for one of the flip phones not long ago. Thought I qualified for a discount that I evidently didn't qualify for. Oops.

That said, I think it was 600ish. So, yeah, I don't know that I understand the high end market. At all.

I have a lot of data on my smartphone I want to be secure, plus I like the OLED screen for reading ebooks/watching videos and I also want to make great photos.

Only Google Pixel devices tick those boxes, but at least you can buy older gen Pixels rather cheap (Google Pixel 6 Pro with similar camera setup as the Pixel 9 for example)

iPhones are 10x better than $500 Androids, so a steal at 2x the price.