Nine in 10 adults think buying latest smartphone is ‘waste of money’, report shows 📦

64    11 Oct 2020 03:06 by u/Lukginzis

I think it depends.

30 comments

26 u/_Account_amj 11 Oct 2020 03:09
You could keep up when the latest flagship phone was $500 and meaningful improvements happened every generation. Now you're paying $1500 for who gives a fuck.
21 u/_Account_vz5 11 Oct 2020 03:28
I think the dirty little summary is that Phone innovation is pretty much over. The hardware and software has peaked. Where do we go from here?
3 u/Lukginzis [OP] 11 Oct 2020 03:33
I respectfully disagree. There is still a ton of innovation that can occur with the iPhone such as 5G, high refresh screens, faster internals, and so forth.
17 u/tommijones 11 Oct 2020 04:34
All points that are technically innovative, but remain largely irrelevant to the majority of users.
3 u/Hirohito 11 Oct 2020 06:01
Until they bubble down to the large majority of phones.
15 u/None 11 Oct 2020 08:44
Still irrelevant for most of the users, even if grandma gets the 120hz phone screen do you think she'll even notice?
1 u/_Account_vz5 12 Oct 2020 03:53
Nah I doubt she will. From here you are only enticing photographers or gamers.
11 u/McDoogals 11 Oct 2020 06:27
I don't consider that an innovation. At best it's marginal improvement.
4 u/BV141 11 Oct 2020 08:12
It hasn't peaked but it has matured and there isn't meaningful difference in one model year vs the next one or two years.
1 u/LeutnantStabil 11 Oct 2020 11:16
It's not completely over yet. Foldable phones are still in their infancy and some years from now they'll get into the mainstream. But the **big** innovation stopped when the phone market shrank to a few big players.
5 u/None 11 Oct 2020 11:22
Foldable phones are a useless gimmick. Remember, we already had those about 1.5 decades ago. Re-introducing mechanical elements with all their problems and disadvantages is no way forward, it's leaping backwards.
1 u/LeutnantStabil 11 Oct 2020 11:27
I don't think so. I think it will be a great advantage for customers, once all the kinks are worked out. Phones will fit so much better into pockets and bags. I said 5.5" phones are a useless gimmicks and nobody really wanted those. Nowadays I can barely find <5" phones. The market is unpredictable.
1 u/None 11 Oct 2020 11:58
Problems with durability and mechanical failures are inherent property of the "technology", not something that can be worked out. Moving parts are prone to breaking over time, certainly more so compared to non-moving parts anyway. Useless gimmick and market success are orthogonal metrics. Things can be both at once.
1 u/LeutnantStabil 11 Oct 2020 12:21
Even though, flip phones and slide phones got really popular in the late 00's, despite having many moving parts. And my phone never seriously broke.
2 u/None 11 Oct 2020 12:33
They did, because they solved a problem we no longer have (to squeeze a mechanical keyboard and a display into a small form factor). Mechanical keyboards are long gone and the advantage of a flip construction is not there anymore.
20 u/kek 11 Oct 2020 03:11
What does the latest iPhone have that the 3-4 previous models don't? Considering most usage I see is casual social media and camera use, what is the point?
4 u/LeutnantStabil 11 Oct 2020 11:14
Man, I had high hopes for the Ubuntu phone. They had a kickstarter for a phone that could be used as a normal phone (Ubuntu touch instead of Android), but could theb be plugged into a docking station and then be used as a full Ubuntu PC. It's a shame they couldn't get the funding.
3 u/None 11 Oct 2020 14:59
Yeah this was honestly the last time I was excited for a phone too. I gotta agree with kek here... My phone is 5 gen behind now and I don't feel like I'm missing ANYTHING.
1 u/None 16 Oct 2020 14:10
Ubports have this project now and it's pretty good with Pinephone. Pinephone is pretty close to become a daily phone with 100% Linux (Ubuntu but different distributions is available and works).
9 u/shiftedbits 11 Oct 2020 04:03
No shit. Just give me a bigger battery and a metal case. I don't need a 1500 pocket computer to occasionally take a photo and check my email.
1 u/RootHouston 11 Oct 2020 18:33
I can add a metal case, but that's pretty much why I just bought my moto g power for like $250 over spending tons of money on some other phone that will give me minimal utility.
9 u/R_Shackleford 11 Oct 2020 06:42
I basically just want another whatever the fuck it is I have right now. Edit: except for the horseshit pre-installed dogshit apps holy fuck Samsung I never asked for Facebook you bunch of godless fags
7 u/Leg0z 11 Oct 2020 03:31
with the 25 different 2FA codes I have on my phone, I won't upgrade for at least another 4 years because it's such a giant pain in the ass to do so. Pro-tip, get a smart plug, and set up a tasker profile to kill your charger when your phone hits 99% and turns back on when it drops below 90%, that way you won't be maxing out your phone all night and your battery will live 3 times longer.
3 u/None 11 Oct 2020 08:45
At that point, why not cut the charge at 80 and restart at 40 for even more battery longevity?
2 u/LeutnantStabil 11 Oct 2020 11:18
I think Apple let's their phone hover at 80% and only let's them fully charge to be at 100% when your alarm goes off. It's pretty smart.
1 u/RootHouston 11 Oct 2020 18:34
In the future, try to use Authy if you can. You can actually migrate to another phone by confirming it through a text message to your number.
5 u/LeutnantStabil 11 Oct 2020 11:12
Maybe it's because I'm a programmer, but what are people using their expensive phones for? I don't know a single app that'd make full use of 8-16 cores. The 2-4 GB of RAM are only justifiable for Chrome though.
7 u/None 11 Oct 2020 11:24
User data collection, tracking, ad targeting etc. Also, how else would you raise a whole generation of incompetent programmers who rely on a 8GB framework just to print "hello world"?
4 u/Typhoon8 11 Oct 2020 03:16
Yup.
4 u/None 11 Oct 2020 04:26
Well, duh. But I'm sure all the ad companies of major OEMs are trying to figure out how to get more people to buy smart phones every year.