desktop is cheaper. for the price of one top smartphone, I can have a top notch desktop that would serve me for 5 years, which cannot be said about smartphones
Am I the only one that wonders how anyone can thinks of comparing a phone with to a high-end desktop system and claim they can fore fill the same need?
On the other hand, although I love my phone's portability, there's no substituting a few hundred watts of processing power and a few terabytes of storage in a decent desktop.
I kept trying to convince myself to buy a desktop but the difference in performance from a laptop isn't so staggering to make up for the loss of convenience. It's easier to move a laptop and I can carry it to places where I don't have an external monitor.
Gotta have fantasies though. "When I'll have enough expendable money" I'll build myself some monster configuration. Which I'll probably use to run Geekbench (proving it's very powerful) and watch YouTube :P
This phenomenon is even more visible in smartphones. Desktop-level CPU performance and RAM / storage to do what? Browse Facebook and send pictures on WhatsApp. I could do that 10 years ago on a much more modest spec'd phone. Oh wait, I can still do that on the very same phone.
Have to agree with you there, smartphones are still seeing 2-3 year turn over that PCs no longer enjoy. Because they are small and visible out and about you have a second motivator for replacement besides straight improvement pressure. People using them as a status symbol/indicator feel the need to have the latest and greatest.
Phones, even the premium tier are a much less costly investment than a desktop PC. In addition to the $1500-$2500 for a decent desktop computer you also have all the supporting bits, a desk to put it on, a chair, maybe a printer, + the floorspace to house it all.
With a phone it's just the phone, and maybe a case. So while a household might be satisfied with a single desktop computer, every member of the household is going to want their own phone. More devices per household + higher turn over frequency = higher volume annual sales even at saturation.
Even if I had a full scale performance in a cell phone with great docking capabilities, I probably would rather have a separate desktop computer for working. Just being able to compartmentalize "social stuff" on my phone, and "work stuff" on a desktop tends to vastly improve my performance.
+1
I hate having to switch between my phone and desktop which feels like a waste of time when I'm already at my desk, which is almost all 7 days a week.
I would like to have my phone only be used for calls and SMS and nothing else. All the messenger apps, email, browsing is better off on my desktop.
Typing on phone and doing anything that involves multiple apps is much more work compared to using a desktop.
Phones are a bit more of a commodity than laptops/desktops are, I think primarily because of the strong evolution you see in comparison over the same timeframe. A laptop from 7-8 years ago largely still is capable of running the latest software (and most of the time Operating Systems), while an 8 year old phone hardly has the performance to do either with the advancements that have been made.
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