>When I saw the price I assumed they were trying to position a premium product.
They are. They are building a product that let's you do anything you want on the device.
Honestly, the phone should be priced at a premium level because it will appeal to a demographic that will pay more for a phone that lets them break free from the closed ecosystems of Android/Apple. It also gives them extra cash to re-invest in the company and doesn't require them scaling their manufacturing just yet.
>That phrase doesn't mean what you think it means. It has nothing to do with planning for a long product life.
It means acting now to best position yourself for the future.
I absolutely agree with you that affordable off-contract phones are going to be a big part of the future. Previous iPhones were premium products that were too expensive to manufacture for that to be viable, but the 5C is designed to be much cheaper to make. While it's selling at premium prices now it's far, far better positioned to become a strong medium end product in future.
> Just take their current flagship smartphone, double the thickness to fit a halfway-between-smartphone-and-full-frame sensor, an SD card slot, ability to export RAWs, and a compact zoom lens, and sell it for like $2000.
And no one will buy it. It has been tried before, by Nokia.
> It was a huge disappointment when I heard about the price at launch. It could not compete on price with the Nexus line.
Sigh. The nexus line is sold AT COST. If you expected a retail phone to compete against a phone that is not trying to make any money you will always be disappointed.
In late November 2017 no-contract SEs were going for $99 at some stores. A year later the price had dropped to $79. I bought one at $99 to use as an mp3 player and camera. Works great. I don't want a phone that's any larger because it won't fit comfortably into my pockets. Still using for day-to-day actual phone use a pretty great similar sized Android phone I bought for much less. I prefer it because it has an SD slot and replaceable battery and uses USB, all better AFAIAC than no SD slot, no replaceable battery and no USB. Phones are cheap and the cheap phones are very good.
> Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone.
A $50 reduction on a $1000 price tag won’t “put it in the hands of everyone”. People who cannot afford it still won’t and it won’t change anything to people who can. $50 over the life of a device is nothing.
Besides, that’s what previous generations are for: usability is pretty much identical to the latest and greatest, and the discount is much more than $50.
The folding bit has no value to me, but even if it did, that price point is unacceptable. A phone is something I carry every day and don't treat like a delicate flower. If it costs so much that losing or breaking it would bring financial pain in addition to the pain of the loss of the phone, it's not suitable for my needs.
That said, I'm being overly cautious because I've never actually lost or broken a phone.
> I find it surprising that people buy flagship phones that don't include an SD card reader.
Because most don't come with an SD card reader and there are other features people want besides that. Buying a $1000 phone is all about the trade-offs one is willing to live with.
> The thing is, price anchoring is a thing, and people are going to look at a phone that costs $400 and needs a $40 Extra Thing and a $500 phone and go "the latter is easier".
Oh definitely. I would too. I dream of the price being only $200/TB.
The biggest storage upgrade for a normal iPhone is +384GB for $300 (Oof). If you upgrade to the Max model you can get +768GB for $400.
A Galaxy S23 can get +128GB for $60, a Galaxy S23+ can get +256GB for $120, and a Galaxy S23 Ultra can get +768GB for $420.
A Pixel 8 can get +128GB for $60, and a Pixel 8 Pro can get +896GB for $400.
If you include the price increase of better base models, to get access to bigger options, then $700/TB is a good ballpark figure.
I think this pricing is a little bit better than when I last looked, but it's still very bad.
The availability of >512GB is growing but still flaky and usually requires extra expensive base models. While in comparison microsd has had cheap 1TB for a good while, and 1.5TB for $150 becomes available later this month.
> Give me a phone with a proper usb port, a couple sim cards, an SD slot, a replaceable battery and a headphone jack. I couldn't possibly care any less about making it any thinner. It's going into a protective case anyway.
Almost nobody wants this phone. Sure you'll get cheered on by some small group of people that wouldn't actually buy this phone either, but it just wouldn't sell well enough to justify its existence. There's probably already a phone with most of these features.
>This makes no sense: manufacturers are competing with each other, if the prices on the cheapest phones will increase more then surely someone will exploit that.
You assume it costs nothing to maintain software for old phones.
The 5C is $100 and it can already be found for $50 in various large stores.
If this is not catering to the low end, I don't know what is.
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