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Ask Slashdot: Why Would Anyone Want To Spend $1,000 on a Smartphone?
Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the $1,000 sticker price for the base model of iPhone X, the latest flagship smartphone from the company which goes on sale next month, is "a value price for the technology that you're getting." An anonymous reader writes: I simply don't understand why anyone would want to spend such amount on a phone. Don't get me wrong. Having a smartphone is crucial in this day and age. I get it. But even a $200 phone, untethered from any carrier contract, will let you install the apps you need, will allow you to take good pictures, surf the web, and listen to music. That handset might not be as fast as the iPhone X or Samsung's new Galaxy Note 8, or it might not be able to take as great pictures, but the difference, I feel, doesn't warrant an additional $800. The reader shares a column: When considering a purchase, comparing the value a product will add to our lives, and its cost is wise. Subjective perceptions affect how we value possessions, but let's consider the practical value of how we use smartphones. Smartphones aren't used for talking as often as the phones that preceded them were. In fact, actual "phone" use ranks below messaging, web surfing, social media and other activities that dominate smartphone usage. Furthermore, statistically we use only six core apps regularly. [...] My point is, smartphones have't changed all that much relatively speaking. Sure they're bigger, faster, more powerful and have awesome cameras. But the iPhone X is fundamentally the same device the earlier iPhones were, and provides the same basic and sought after functions. It's a glass-covered rectangular slab mostly used for messaging, web-surfing, music and social media activity. An individual's perception of self, financial resources, desired or actual social position and love for tech will likely play a role in his perception of the value of a $1,000 smartphone.
Really it's not a massive jump from the competition. Which is not to say I'm going to buy one, but I'm also not buying a new Samsung.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
By pretty much any objective measure, high-end hyper cars like the Bugatti Veyron aren't worth the cost. There are very few places you can use their top speed, and they don't bring much of anything to the automotive experience beyond blistering speed.
But people still buy them, despite their amazing prices tags.
The iPhone X is the same thing: it's a luxury smart phone. With it Apple is finally, FINALLY, experimenting with moving beyond the iPhone. It ditches the home button and replaces Touch ID with Face ID. It's an experiment, which may be a better justification for calling it the iPhone "X" than the "tenth anniversary" reason. Yes, I know they say it's X as in "ten." But X as in "experimental" makes better sense.
And in that case, if you want to buy the latest, highest end, most pointless version of the iPhone - this is the phone for you! Will there be an iPhone 9 that's an incremental upgrade to the 8? I'd bet there will be. Will there be an iPhone X2 (or XS?) that tries to resolve the inevitable issues with the iPhone X? I'll bet there will be!
Experimental phones like the iPhone X are a good thing. They let smartphone manufacturers try out new, possibly dumb, ideas on people willing to pay for it. Features are frequently brought to luxury cars first, and then the ones that work the best and improve the average driving experience the best slowly make it down to cheaper and cheaper cars. The same thing happening in phones is a good thing.
No, you should not buy the iPhone X. No one should. But those who want to pay a lot of money to be beta testers for Apple's next-gen phone designs can, and if they want to, there's no harm in letting them.
Opinion presented as fact.
Why would anyone want to buy a Tesla when a Honda Civic will get you where you want to go for 1/3 the price?
Why would anyone want to buy a MacBook Pro when an Acer will do the job for 1/4 the price?
Why would anyone want to buy a Gucci handbag when a Walmart knockoff will carry your stuff for 1/10th the price?
Why would anyone want to buy a steak at Morton's when Waffle House will sell you one for 1/10th the price?
Why would anyone read SlashDot when you can get better news anywhere else on the planet?
Different strokes for different folks, plain and simple. Some people value a particular feature a lot more than others. Some people have more cash to burn than other people. It's why the world produces an array of products. Apple will still sell a brand new iPhone 7 for 1/2 the price of the iPhone X.
For the target market of the iPhone X, the smartphone is their most used possession by a large margin. Considering how people buy tons of (expensive) crap they don't use, I can see how one might rationalize $1k for a smartphone, even with less expensive (and suitable) alternatives available.
Lifestyle choices.
The smartphone has become a part of our everyday life, it's now possibly more influential than a PC, games console or any other device we use. Have you taken a stroll on a busy city street lately? 90% of everyone is either talking on, or looking at a mobile phone of some sort, either browsing the news, keeping in touch with their friends, gaming, or texting (sms, chat, snap, twitter etc...)
People use it to take pictures, look for recipes, look for a restaurant nearby, recommend a store, look for the lowest prices and compare, laugh at other peoples social messages, videos or whatnot - even as a portable television set.
All that taken into consideration - smartphones are now so common, that you can (and will probably) have 100$ smartphones available to you that will perform ALMOST (and in some case better or) as good as one of the expensive high end type brand phones, I know - I got one, and it was bought for a 100$, came out of the factory this august - and sported the latest operating system Android Nougat 7. Came with a 4 core processor, 3D accelerator, Bluetooth, Double Wifi network, 4G, Lte, 3G etc, even an NFC reader to pay the bills or check out cards, and a 5.5 inch screen with almost borderless edges, crazy thin too.
But again - it's a lifestyle choice. If you want the latest iPhone - you WANT the latest iPhone, or an "Edge" model (as the competing opposing brand with Android OS instead), that's the way it is. You'll be able to talk about it at work, at school - get your friends attention, and before you know it - half of your friends have it, and you're downloading the apps of your choice together.
Some people purchase IKEA furniture, nothing wrong with that - some others purchase a brand that is 10 x as expensive, may even be inferior quality wise - but it doesn't matter - because it's a LIFESTYLE choice.
But sure, I agree - I don't think it's worth 1000$ to me either to have a phone that's a little glossier, 10% faster etc. so I'd rather pay a 10th for mine and enjoy all the same features, and I do. That's MY lifestyle choice.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
The iPhone 8+ is $799. So the *real* question is "Why would anyone spend $200 more for their smartphone?" Framing the question is less dramatic (but more realistic) terms makes the answer much more obvious: because it's not a lot of money for most people, so if they like it, it's not a big deal. $200 more on a phone spread over 2 years is about $8 per month. So for the price of one Starbucks coffee every other week, you can have a fancier phone. Big fucking deal.
Coming up next on Dumb Ass Questions from the Internet, "Why would anyone spend $X on a car when other cars exist for $Y?" -- because no one has given that question a moment's thought in the past 100 years and it needs to be discussed NOW. :-/
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
When you look at your computing devices, which one do you use more? MANY people use their smartphone FAR more in terms of time per day than their laptop. In fact, for many people it is THE primary computing device in their lives. People have no problem spending $3500 for a Macbook. Looking at it from the standpoint above, paying 1K for a smartphone if it's my primary computing device in regards to time used per day does not seem that crazy.
"I simply don't understand why anyone would want to spend such amount on a phone... the difference, I feel [emphasis added], doesn't warrant an additional $800."
Well there you go. Some people REALLY REALLY want their phones to work REALLY fast, or have REALLY NICE screens, or take fucking AMAZING pictures, and for THEM, it's worth it. It's not rocket science.
I'm sure you own at least ONE thing that I don't give a shit about that I would not have spent as much money on as you did. Want me to write an article on how I don't understand that different people like different things?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Cheaper phones can be excellent or not. Paying a few hundred dollars more doesnâ(TM)t by you features worth that much more but it does by you no surprises and complete satisfaction that no other purchase would have been more satisfying.
It used to be a saying that nobody was ever fired for buying IBM. Sure that Wang or Digital or Prime computer might possible have had better specs for less saving the company a bunch of money but then the VP wanted to add inventory tracking to the payroll function and wang didnâ(TM)t have an integrated mag stripe reader for the warehouse. You are fired. Should bought IBM.
Peace of mind brings satisfaction.
For many people, perhaps not you , $1000 isnâ(TM)t a lot for a device you will touch 500 times a day. Why not just buy the best ?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Rather than asking why someone would pay over $1,000 for the latest iPhone (an established product as a leader in the cellphone market), one could ask why anyone ever paid over $10,000 for the gold Apple Watch "Edition" when that came out? Why do people pay multiple hundreds of dollars for the latest pairs of sneakers, when a $60 pair of New Balance tennis shoes is most likely every bit as good?
Apple products are recognized as "premium" in today's marketplace, no matter how legitimate you think that really is. That means higher earning people take an interest in what they're selling. Those people can easily afford $1000 or a little more to have the flagship cellphone offering that keeps them in the iOS "ecosphere" -- able to run all the apps they purchased in the past, etc.
Personally? I can afford to buy the new iPhone X if I really wanted to. I'm not rich, by any means, but I'm probably in the low end of the "upper middle class" (thanks to being married to a woman who works full-time in a career job similar to my own). I doubt I'll upgrade at all though, since I purchased the 7 Plus in the 256GB RAM configuration when it came out - and it meets all of my needs.
As a few people pointed out already though? These days, a lot of people use their cellphone more than almost any other electronics device they own. If you judge "value" based on how much you use something -- $1,000 or so might make it a bargain. It always amazes me when I think of how many separate gadgets I can eliminate because of my smartphone. Not that long ago, I would have had a separate MP3 music player, alarm clock, pocket calculator, flashlight, ruler or measuring tape, notepad, camera, camcorder, guitar tuner, tape recorder ... not to mention all the paper coupons I would have clipped in lieu of digital alternatives. These days, the phone even substitutes for carrying credit cards in a wallet.
The writer of the 'article' doesn't seem to understand a few things.
1) The entire 'luxury goods' industry exists. Long after $5 quartz watches were introduced, you can still buy yourself a $25k Rolex and enjoy it. Fancy plates and real silverware don't function any differently than Corning Ware and Oneida. Yet they still exist.
2) Think of how often a typical cell-phone using person uses his/her phone. How many times a day does said person interact with his/her phone? Two thousand?
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Based on that, if you have the phone for two years and it's valueless after that (which is not the case), then to a lot of people it's worth spending extra money on a 'premium' device that works a lot lot better than cheaper devices that are slow and you have to reboot constantly. That's only $0.0004 (or 0.04 Cents) per touch different than a cheap cell phone. Or, $1 per DAY. For someone that uses his cell phone a lot, $1 per day to have a reliable device that will be quick and snappy and not need rebooting constantly, that's enough.
3) Some people just like having the latest and greatest gadgets. That's fine.
In short, the OP doesn't understand how anyone would live different than the way he is living now.
It can't be found via reason and analysis -- or imposed.
If it could, planned economies would work.
That is, nothing costs x units, instead, it costs y% of your salary.
If you make $10,000 a year than even $100 for a smart phone is a ridiculous expense. 1% of your salary is too much.
If you make $100k a year, than $200 for a smart phone makes sense. It's about 0.5% of your salary.
There are clearly enough people making $1,000,000, then $1,000 is just 0.1% of your salary and it makes sense to spend that much on a smart phone.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Well, the other reason is that $1000 seems like a lot, but it's really not. Lets suppose that you use your phone for 2 years before you get a new one. The hardware is going to cost you $1.40/day, whereas you're probably paying $2-$3/day for service, and $5-$10 per day for coffee.
For something one uses every day, an item which serves as a watch, alarm clock, entertainment hub, GPS, communication hub, camera, calculator, news source, weather report, traffic report, fitness tracker, journal, to-do list, etc., etc., etc. is well worth $1.40 every day. That's not say that one costing under $1/day can't do all those things just as well, but trying to save $0.50 per day can be done pretty easily a number of other ways. If an extra $0.50/day is a deal-breaker, you're going to save far more just switching to a pre-paid service than you will buying a cheaper phone.
The daily cost of owning a phone pales in the face of how much it can do, and how much time and energy it can save. Avoiding traffic jams and accidents, finding out if somewhere is open before driving there, keeping a list of groceries handy so you don't over-buy "just in case", etc., etc. I bet the grocery list alone pays for itself for me - it's just too easy to throw $20 worth of crap into the cart that I don't need.
$1000 seems like a lot, but if you told me 15 years ago I could have a mobile computer the size of my hand around at all times, connected to the internet, playing videos, games, taking high quality photos, and providing sat-nav, I'd have happily canceled my $1000+ computer building plans and jumped on that offer.
If you re-phrase this, "Why would anyone want to spend $1000 on a computer?", I bet we all could come up with really good reasons. Even if it changes to, "Why would anyone want to spend $1000 on ANOTHER computer?", I bet we all could still come up with some good reasons. These aren't flip-phones we're talking about here. Integrated computer and monitor which replace a solid dozen previous tools and items. Why is that not worth spending $1000 on? I think we've collectively forgotten how utterly amazing technology has gotten.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I don't think that most of them are investments, they are toys. And just like kids, sometimes what people really want out of their toys is just to have them, not to play with them. I have heard of people buying two of some models at the same time, just so that one of them is always out of the shop (many are made for performance, not reliability).
My guess is that when you figure in maintenance and storage costs (many get stored at professional garages), that even ones that are kept in "mint" condition cost their owners far more than they eventually sell for. So they are not an investment by any stretch of the word.
Real geeks use whatever they want to use and couldn't care less what the smug wannabe technorati on /. thinks.