You're must be joking! Look around, if you look past the bitten apple, there are plenty of perfectly capable devices out there for under $300. In fact, I see plenty of people who are on the street corners panhandling AND using a smartphone.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
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If you go for used devices, you can quite easily get an outdated entry level phone for free and a decently useable one for <€30.
You can even get new entry level phones for as cheap as €70.
So it's very much a market where you can spend whatever you want.
A flagship phone is priced like a luxurity toy, because that's exactly what it is.
And an entry level phone is incredibly cheap so that people who have no money can still get one. €70 with 2 years of usage is less than €3/month (realistically though, if you are in this kind of situation, you hold on to a phone for much longer).
Over here, if you are poor enough, you'll even get a free phone plan.
I think it's actually kinda crazy what kind of new phone you can get for 200 dollars. My last phone was a 200 dollar phone that did everything my old flagship phone did. Obviously there are differences if you look deep. I talked to my friend who just bought a 1200 dollar samsung phone and said he "needs" a phone like that, because of the camera. I don't know what that means, because he sells bread at a bakery. His camera was obviously better, but he never goes deep into his settings, like all he does is auto focus and click the button. We went on a bike ride and i'm not a picture kinda guy, i use my camara pretty much only for work related stuff and it doesn't matter how good it is. And i showed someone a picture i took and the guy said: wow that must be a really good canera. Which kinda upset samsung guy.
I don't know anyone who uses their 1000 dollar phone to even a fraction of it's capability. Now i own a nothing phone which is priced somewhere in the middle, and i like it a lot, but i wouldn't say it's much better than my 200 dollar phone.
I was selling phones back when most people thought that Internet on a cell phone was a crazy idea. Phones were advancing by leaps and bounds. The difference between a 1MP and 5MP camera was amazing.(mostly) Every year, the new version had features that last year's wouldn't dream of.
Now, I'm running a five year old flagship Android, because there still won't be much of a difference when I finally do upgrade.
That was insane. I remember reading that 1mp cameras on phones are just years away. I was pretty excited and couldn't believe it. Not two months later they released the first 1mp phone. And that was just the beginning.
The only reason i buy new phones is because it gets really dusty and abused because of work and stuff. So speakers give up, too many cracks to handle and charging port malfunction. It's nice to have a new battery as well. But these super high resolution panels with ridiculous framerates are pretty pointless. I sometimes watch halfeay through a YouTube video and don't realize that it's 480p. And i'm pretty picky with my computer monitor. I want my 2k and my 165fps.
That was a crazy time.
I still have my HTC Universal, which was an absolute flagship in 2005.
My next phone was a Motorola Droid 3, a mit-ranger from 2011.
If you put both of them side by side, these phones could be from different planets.
If he doesn't use any camera settings getting a high end phone will ofcourse give the best results for someone that just wants to point and shoot.
But I've definitely seen similar reactions to pictures I took on my Poco F1 once I had a custom Gcam app well tuned. In good conditions it was close to the best phones of the time.
We can say the same thing about cars or any necessary manufactured good. But in every category, as with phones, cheaper models exist.
Just don't buy crapple
All of them aren't. There are cheap touch screen phones. You just don't get ridiculous features at the price point if $50. The Samsung A30 is a pretty cheap android phone.
If we could fight over legislations to force swappable batteries and operating systems, most people would just buy used. Like how now laptops, desktops, Raspberry Pi's you can buy used cheap, slap a light fresh OS and go.
We'll at least get swappable batteries in the EU from 2027 on. From then on it will be illegal to sell phones without swappable batteries.
I've bought people very nice phones for under $400 multiple times. Recently.
Flagship phones are grossly overpriced. The midrange is super nice and usable these days, though. It's a side advantage of phone tech standardizing so much. And as you said, being a necessity for daily life it's probably okay to spend at least a few hundred on one you're going to use for several years.
Is this going to be another "the US has weird ideas about consumer goods" thread? Because it kinda sounds like one.
I just bought a new phone (originally released in May 2023) for $170. I've used it for 3 days now and it works perfectly. My old phone lasted ~3-4 years and cost a similar price.
I stopped buying "flagship" phones years ago and it's been great. Midrange phones are absolutely the phones people should be buying.
I also get the bells and whistles that are often missing from premium phones. I have an SD card slot for expandable storage and I have a headphone jack.
Oh, man, I switched from Samsung to Sony because they still do all those midrange phone features in a flagship container.
I'd have gone full midrange, but I hang around mobile developers a lot and I was already getting crap for being on a four year old flagship (that was still in working order and I still use for other stuff). Now my Xperia is a conversation starter in those circles, for some reason and I still get to add storage and use my headphones and my screen has no holes in it.
Just like with everything else there's a gradient of price and quality. You don't have to buy a 1300 dollar iPhone, you could get one for only a couple hundred that would serve any use case you can think of where it would be required.
Just because something is a necessity for daily life doesn't mean it's going to be cheap, it can't just be sold below cost simply because it's critical.
A mate of mine has a keyboard flip phone and it's amazing full qwerty keyboard dude can type wicked quick on that thing compared to touch screens
You can get good condition, used, last year flagships on eBay and Swappa all day long. I've literally never bought a brand new phone.
Uhh no? They've gotten really cheap nowadays.
$300 gets you a 5G capable phone with a high refresh OLED and a processor fast enough to play resource intensive games like Genshin Impact.
You could argue that’s a definition of success for a gadget: when it is ubiquitous and necessary.
Time to get in on some new gadget that will soon be a boring ordinary part of life. Electric Vehicles look like they will but still pretty expensive. My vote is home automation stuff
Electric Vehicles look like they will but still pretty expensive.
Expensive and impractical at the moment due to the lack of charging stations.
My vote is home automation stuff
I kinda hope not. I don't need even more devices listening in on me.
Most charging happens at home. There are still some hurdles, but lack of charging stations is not the argument against mass adoption of EVs that you think it is.
Sadly I can't find any hard numbers but this report states "The project shed light on other facets of PEV use. It found that public and workplace charging infrastructure enabled drivers to increase their electric driving range, although most drivers did not charge away from home frequently"
edit: nevermind, there is another report that states "According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 80 percent of EV charging happens at home"
And how many people do you think live in apartments/rentals that cannot just install a charging station at home?
My bet is on VR/AR
I have VR and I don't see how that would ever reach mass adoption. I think it will forever be a toy for people interested in techy stuff, and only be a tool for very specific jobs.
It's just not really useful in any meaningful way to most people. Why would I replace a regular monitor with VR if all I do is organize spreadsheets and write emails?
I've got the hardware to use VR on my gaming rig.
But between the entry cost for the actual VR equipment, and the sheer lack of games that look interesting I don't see the point in it.
Then again, the lack of games that look interesting isn't just a VR problem - to me at least.
Repeating patterns of slight upgrades to visuals, mechanics I grew bored of a decade ago, etc.
I used to rip on Madden/FIFA/Sports games in general for that crap, but it seems to be the trend.
That being said, I've felt jaded about games since I was a teen, and that was a long time ago, but there was always something to keep my attention.
Don't really have any other majornhobbies though, so I'm at a bit of an impasse on that subject. I do spend more time with my wife though, lol.
I remember when the iphone it a grand and people were like. apple is crazy.
Yeah, how else can I troll other from the comfor of my toilet? 1 sec gotta wipe....
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Our devices are old hat now. They're part of our life. Even people who don't understand them have a vague idea how they work.
They used to be like magic. Now we are desperate for new magic.
I fucking hate touchscreens. I have been someone who buys devices with physical keyboards whenever I can and the best phone j have owned in more recent years was the blackberry key two, that phone was fucking awesome but it has got to the point now where there are no longer any good options.
I had a unithertz titan until recently but just got tired of things just not quite working as they should on it. There in the unihertz titan slim which is the same form factor as the keytwo so I feel would be physically great but the software side is just going to be more of the same I had with the regular titan.
I wish there was a decent option. I backed the planet computers astroslide as that looked decent but those cunts fucked over backers, delivered a few devices and have now fucked off not fulfilling all backers devices. That is my first and last forray into crowdfunded bullshit.
Someone make a good phone with a physical keyboard for the love of god!!!
Someone make a good phone with a physical keyboard for the love of god!!!
Interesting, had a quick look and saved to look in more detail later however I don't think I have the skills to actually build something like this. Maybe I'll give it a go anyway, the blackberry keyboards are chefs kiss
They are really nice. I wouldn't want to go without one of these.
It does require the full set of "maker skills", so it's not that easy to make. If I get some time, I could maybe cut down on the need for soldering.
What you could do, though, is ask someone at fiverr to make it for you.
You need someone with Blender skills to adjust the 3D print file to your phone.
You need to get it printed (you can use any 3D print service for that, e.g. JLCPCB).
You need to order the PCB (that's easy, no need for someone else here).
You need to solder the two hand-solder components onto the PCB. The cheapest way is probably to get a phone/laptop repair shop to do it for you. For someone with good soldering skills, that's like 5min of work. They do that for very cheap.
I have had a more in depth look at it since making my previous post. It isn't like it is completely beyond me, I understand what is going on in the instructions but the main thing I am worried about is that I have very very limited experience soldering things and what I have done before hasn't exactly been great work so I'm not sure I would be able to do a good job on the small stuff that is involved here.
It would be a good learning process though and like you say I could employ some help from various different places.
Do you have a sort of roundabout figure in terms of cost for all the parts? Just to give me an idea of how much they buy in for the project would be before I started fucking stuff up? XD
I do definitely like the concept though and certainly appeals to me so I will be looking more into it. Thanks!
Minimum order quantity for the populated board is 2. That costs, iirc, around €20 for both plus shipping (if you are patient, that's a few more €).
This micro soldering part can by now be ordered to be included in the assembly, so that you don't have to solder it. I haven't tried the process of ordering extended parts from JLCPCB, but if that works, that's another ~€10. Otherwise you'll have to source it yourself and end up with a similar price.
The Blackberry keyboards go for €3-6 on Aliexpress.
A 5-pack of the USB connectors is about €10 on Amazon, but on Ali you can get one for ~€1.
That's all the electronics, so for two of them, that's about €40-50.
You also need a 3D print, which costs around €1 if you print it yourself or get a friend to do it. If you order it, that can be anything from €10 to €50. The cost of these services varies wildly. You might need to print it multiple times to get the tolerances exactly right. So if you get access to a printer, that would save a lot of money.
But all in all, if you manage to build two and both work fine, there are lots of people on Lemmy, Reddit or Crackberry who offered me to pay €100 for a ready-made one.
Cool. Thank you so much for the information and taking the time to reply :D
No problem!
If you decide to make one and need some help on the way, either PM me here or post in the discussion section on the Github repo.
My thumb is basically permanently injured due to touch screens. Bad RSI, can't shake it.
I am so with you brother. I'm still mourning the death of Palm.
I believe there are a few Linux phones with keyboards, but they're not quite production-ready yet.
The problem with Linux based phones is they are just not feasible as a daily driver device right now. Once they are I would happily jump ship over to them but I currently make my life hard enough as it is trying to reject this current trend of having a bullshit app for everything that I don't need to make it any harder right now xD
I'd still be interested in checking out the projects if you have any names of devices I can look up.
The only other production device I know of is the fx tec pro but all of the different reviews and such I have searched out for them aren't super positive so I've never bothered getting one to try out.
I remember the early days of the smart phone with app store phenomenon, when you had things like a flashlight app, or a lighter app. Simple little toys that might have had some utility, and showed off a small fraction of what the thing could do. It held a lot of promise.
Most of what a smart phone is these days is a camera, a video consumption apparatus, and a doom scrolling machine.
I saw deal today at a store:
buy a galaxy fold, get a free 55" tv.
Say your phone is overpriced without saying your phone is overpriced
No, they actually aren't essential at all. You can EASILY get by day to day without a phone/touchscreen.
I want to agree with you without exception, but there are too many variables. People who live in large cities vs rural may have different needs. Think public transport, event venues, digital tickets, etc.
Where I live, no, I don't "need" a smartphone. Unfortunately due to organizational involvements, I still need to use one daily.