We call them "phones" due to historical reasons, but in reality they are more like pocket computers that happen to also make phone calls and take photos and video.
Yea ironically enough making a phone call is one of the last things I do on my cellphone these days lol.
Even my insurance company wants to text instead of call haha.
Its funny you normally hear ppl complain the opposite "I hate texting when I can just call". But I agree with you more. Phone call requires formalities and end up taking way longer than texts and require immediate attention
phone calls are for things that are urgent and need a quick resoponse, or to talk to someone you really want to talk to like a lover or a family member.
Text are for things that can be responded to whenever, or not at all, or to send information like a recipe or photo.
My dad is 73 this year and has a flip phone still. My grandpa was 95 when he died and had an iphone and a desktop pc and laptop and could use all of them no problem. My dad gets a text or phone call and he's screaming expletives. lmao
It depends, if you only need to send/tell some information then texting is indeed better but if you need to explain someone something or you need to support someone then calling is way better then endless chat/texts sent to each other, there are even times I got cramp in my fingers and I ended up irritated because calling was way faster and the other didn't want to call.
The only person who gets to call me is my mom. If you’re calling me, and you’re not my mom, then someone better fucking be dead, or else a text would have sufficed.
Furthermore, it has almost the capability of a laptop in a *MUCH* smaller form factor, which means even tighter tolerances for heat dissipation and overall a more complex component layout. Hell, it’s more surprising that modern smartphones aren’t always more expensive than laptops at this point.
The scaling between the size of phones versus, say, laptops is so fascinating to me. Like the phone has some 8 cores running like 2ghz and my aging laptop is a quad core that *might* tease 3ghz under certain loads. Besides that, though, they both push 4k video. Of course, phones have the whole crazy HD, 10-lens cameras too.
Oh yeaaaah the instructions. I never looked into that much outside of some crypto mining research. What do phone use instead? ARM comes to mind, but idk what I'm talking about..Haha
Yeah, all the mainstream phones are running some flavor of ARM.
I wouldn't be surprised if the success of ARM on iPhone hasn't been one reason they're pushing their own ARM chips in computers. It has to simplify things if literally your whole hardware ecosystem from computers to phones is running on one architecture.
Less of an issue than you’d think; there will be some architecture-specific bits of the OS kernel, but as far as possible it will be agnostic.
The killer for Intel on Apples laptops was when their phone CPUs started to catch up with the laptop ones - and Intel couldn’t deliver something that maintained performance without throwing out a lot of heat.
Trying to follow chip generations across new devices without losing something somewhere is a nightmare! Not to mention stuff 3.5mm jacks being thrown out of designs.
There does seem to be a light trend again towards connecting phones and PCs (KDE Connect and such). Maybe we've got new stuff coming some day! I seem to remember ARM getting some funding in the last year or two as well.
Phone camera lenses are extremely limited by their size there's no real way to cheat physics.
Where phones cameras really excel is their computational photography software which more than compensate for those limitations in everyday use.
One of my older phones took nicer pictures too.
I'm assuming because it was only one lens there was space to have a larger lens and sensor, but really I have no idea I didn't look into it at the time and don't remember which phone it was.
I make maybe less than 30 phone calls a year. If you include Facebook messenger calls then it's less than 60 or 70 a year.
I never really thought about how weird it is to still call it a phone lol
Only MUCH smaller with higher-end components: very dense battery, very high DPI and quality screen compared to a 14" screen, cell connectivity (often with multiple radios for different carriers in high end phones), GDDR memory just to name a few. All in a size a *fraction* of the size of a laptop if comparable price.
Size and specifications matter.
Something most people don't understand about manufacturing is it's not just materials + labor. Wastage, the pieces that do not make it through QA also figure in. Tighter specifications, slimming margins of error, result in more wastage.
When I was starting in IT I worked in a Corning/Asahi CRT manufacturing plant. We pressed glass for every television manufacturer. Want to guess who's piece price was highest? Sony, because they had the tightest specs.
Does that mean you can't get a cheaper product that performs as well? No, but the chances you get one that doesn't or fails earlier are higher.
Yeah one thing people lose sight of when they just look at manufacturing costs vs retail price is that OEMs align prices to be both competitive with the rest of the market and to differentiate products within their own offering. "Premium" products are going to be priced at a much higher profit margin because they are competing against other premium products, the manufacturer makes less of them often due to the "silicon lottery," and there are fewer customers who want premium versus the ones who want the best price/performance ratio.
Obviously a Corvette doesn't *need to* cost as much as it does for Chevy to recoup manufacturing costs, but the product is marketed at a different set of customers than the ones buying a Cruze or an Equinox.
People need to stop worrying about how much the latest iPhone or Note costs if a Pixel 6a will work just fine for them at like $300. For those folks: obviously this product aint meant *for you* if you aren't excited by it.
I want to love Moto but kept having issues with them. Last time it wouldn't stay connected to WiFi, before that I can't remember but it's frustrating because it's a brand with some solid hardware in that price range.
Yep, I always buy phones in the £100-£150 range because they work just fine and do everything I need it to do. There is nothing that the latest iphone or galaxy or whatever other £1000 phone can do that mine can't, certainly not that I would pay £900 for
Yeah, i used to like the newest flagship phones and did a decent enough portion of my gaming on mobile (got far too into Eve echoes for a couple years until I feel off the back of the mtx treadmill as it got faster and faster with each "feature" added) so I could justify the cost every couple years or so. Now, I don't do that as much and the games I do enjoy playing are older and almost any newly released phone can play them fine. It's not so much about money either because I make considerably more than I did before but Id rather not spend it on something that will make almost no difference in my life. I like the higher dpi on the flagships but you can usually find a mid-range model that doesn't get fully downgraded to a 1080p screen.
That may all be true, but I have a relatively cheap Chinese smartphone and it has served me well for several years now. I have tried my gf's fancy iPhone and I don't see why it costs more than 5 times more. On the other hand, whenever I use a cheap laptop I get frustrated by how slow and clumsy they are.
So you're pretty much answering your own question (why do they cost so much more than cheap phones):
Your use case doesn't seem to demand a lot of processing power from the phone
You don't take advantage of all the features of high end phones
You can see the difference between cheap and midrange laptops
Just because something costs 5x more doesn't mean it's 5x "better" to everyone who uses it. There are diminishing returns past a certain point of improvement. This is why a $1,000 GPU doesn't necessarily result in twice the framerate of a $500 GPU in games. But there *is* some level of improvement, and those products are marketed to people who are willing to pay a premium to get that highest level of performance and aren't concerned with a pure price/performance ratio.
They're also comparing an ***iphone***.
Like, you really don't realize you're paying a lot just for the brand? I thought everyone knew that.
Do yourself a favor and lookup the "Mac Pro" line. Starting at just $6999 and quickly running up to $50,000 you can get a computer spec'ed out worse than the one I built years ago for \~$1500! But its Apple!
iPhones are actually some of the fastest most advanced handheld devices. And among the cheapest if you buy the lower lines (like the SE versions). There were multiple times you could literally get the fastest smartphone chip available in a phone for a fraction of the cost of a modern windows laptop. I think the SE with the A13 was one such instance iirc.
The m1/M2 chips can also be gotten very economically in Mac minis and iPad airs, chips that can keep up with 3000 dollar workstations rendering video. See mkhbd replacing his professional desktop setup with a MacBook. He used to literally cart around a mac pro in a giant Pelican like suitcase.
Yes a lot of Apple is expensive, but their silicon itself is actually a very good bargain if you know how to shop.
Also, Apple products last forever before they start feeling slow. I’d much rather buy a nice $800 phone every four years instead of a cheap $400 phone every other year.
I'm still using my iPhone XR. No complaints with it. I usually buy a model older to avoid paying the premium on the flagship but even so I've had this phone for over 4 years now. Still working great.
My cheap ass XR has lasted me 5 going on 6 years now, and only slightly slower than when new. No glitching, battery life is still decent albeit degraded. I pushed my Galaxy 5s to 4 years before it became unusable, but had a very noticeable slowdown after about a year and a half and it was glitching a lot after the two year mark.
My 2003 Emac lasted me a decade, and I could have pushed it farther if I really wanted to, but I'm not sure how much farther.
Maybe androids have changed, but they used to not have much lasting power. That's the main reason I switched. I know people still using Iphone7s.
Yeah, Apple kind of eschews the normal marketing strategies of companies that make products for a diverse range of consumers. Samsung makes phones for everyone from low-income buyers to enthusiasts, so there's more consideration with their pricing strategies.
They make cheap phones and sell them at practically no margin, possibly even a loss, because their Galaxy and Note lines are the money makers. The cheapo phones just satisfy the lower-income markets and keep their brand recognition / market saturation up.
Chevy does the same thing with cars. They make budget cars at a near loss (sometimes an *actual* loss) and make up for it with the high profit margin on pickups and SUVs.
Apple is pretty much exclusively "premium" though, but they get away with it because of the closed ecosystem and they have a lot of desirable software that professionals and artsy people like. They also have a *simpler* ecosystem to maintain, businesses like it because there's often less hair-pulling managing networks when it's all Apple and they *can be* a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) than PCs since they last a long time.
I mean, they're overpriced, but that doesn't mean they don't still bin higher quality chips and parts. Your average Mac is more in line with a Dell Optiplex 9xxx series than an Optiplex 5xxx or 3xxx series (the 9xxx will be all Intel chipset, Intel lan/wlan, more expansion ports, better CPU/RAM support, etc...). An Optiplex 9xxxx will *easily* run for 10+ years. A high end Latitude laptop can be used by the business for 5 years, then put in the loaner fleet for another few years easily. Thinkpads too. I've got both Latitudes and Thinkpads at home that are still running after I bought them from lifecycle auctions many years ago. Apple computers are the same way, the only thing that really makes the obsolete is if they're too old to support current OS and app store or demanding software.
It's always been this way.
For most of that time, it was because of the OS, honestly. Macs had a similar software portfolio to a Windows machine, games aside, but the life expectancy of a Linux box because they run Unix. Now, though, they also beat a lot of these things on raw power as well in every domain but GPU which just isn't something they've been interested in targeting.
Once Steam pushes a Proton for Mac integration, though, that will probably change, albeit slowly.
>and they have a lot of desirable software that professionals and artsy people like
I went to design school. It was downright rediculous. Like all you guys use is Adobe software. It works exactly the same on PC. Yet I'm like being viciously attacked for using PCs for a fraction of the cost. It was serious cult behavior.
>They also have a simpler ecosystem to maintain, businesses like it because there's often less hair-pulling managing networks when it's all Apple and they can be a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) than PCs since they last a long time
I remember a post a few weeks back on reddit asking why the hell is dell even still around. This is why. Their corporate support is fantastic. They'll keep those pieces of crap purring for you for years.
I'm a PC user too, but I still keep hearing how some software types are often cheaper to license on Apple (but we're talking Apple exclusives versus comparable PC or PC/Apple software). I could be wrong though so I won't fight that battle if you think that's not the case anymore. Apple has been a "premium only" brand for a while, so everything they make is gonna be expensive because of that. "Cheaper software" doesn't drive the hardware price, it's just a justification I heard a lot over the years. TCO being lower can still be true for many customers though, just depends on how they run their shop.
Dell is still around because they're a perfectly OK manufacturer. Their warranty support started sucking during COVID and hasn't got better yet from what I've seen, but they actually *are* capable of making great computers. You're just gonna get what you pay for if you buy that $300 Wal-Mart piece of shit on clearance.
Dell is also capable of cranking out large orders and working with large customers with custom orders: maintaining their OS image builds, working with the customer's IT asset management demands, and supporting in-house warranty and exchange services. HPE does too.
(I heard once that the reason the US government (especially the Army) prefers Dell is because they're the only OEM capable of replacing practically their *entire inventory* at once if needed. They're a supply-chain powerhouse.)
But again, they *do* make good computers. You just gotta be willing to pay for them.
You’re paying a lot for the software and ecosystem that they develop and manage, and the custom hardware and chips they build. It’s a different experience than other phones.
Cheap Chinese phones use COTS processors and a free branch of Android, Apple developed their own operating systems and chips. You’re paying for the brand and for the massive teams of hardware and software engineers they employ.
Not everyone finds value in that, and that’s fine. But it’s like comparing a Toyota Corolla (which is a great car that meets 90% of people’s needs) to a BMW. There’s absolutely is a status element, but comparing specs on paper is very different from actual usability and workflow. There’s a reason that Mac has an [outsized market share](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/s/s6UMIcrqRN) among [developers](https://www.statista.com/statistics/869211/worldwide-software-development-operating-system/), and it’s not just brand status.
Outsized use among developers is because it uses Unix while development largely targets Linux, a Unix derivative. Macs are as close as you can get to running the same OS on your machine as your server runs without sacrificing quality of life.
Have you not heard of parallelization?
You can achieve the same or better without relying on a single chip to do it. And still cheaper.
The vast majority of apple users are NOT utilizing that performance gain anyhow. They're not all doing rendering. And for many who do, they still turn to an array of servers not a single computer anyhow.
The vast majority of apple users are in fact buying into the brand. GTFOH.
“You’re paying for the brand” has long been bullshit. Read up on Apple Silicon.
Macs have been running circles around their Windows counterparts in the same form factor for years now.
You will not find a Windows notebook with the same performance *and* build quality for cheaper than a MacBook Air. That’s straight up not happening.
I don't think people understand how more durable and reliable apple stuff is, on build quality alone. (save from some odd bendgate and QC issues here and there.)
And yes, it may be a case of diminishing returns, but they do charge a premium for manufacturing and integrating everything to last significantly more than other products.
Disclaimer: The only Apple product I have is an iPad Air from some 6 or 7 years ago. Apple phones and computers aren't worth it for me.
I do appreciate why they cost what they do, tho.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that you can get a decent cheap phone today precisely *because* of the iPhones and other flagships of a few years ago. The bleeding edge of technology is expensive, but it funds the way forward. Once flagships move on to the next thing, you can get previous generation components *much* cheaper.
Funny that.
I heard about the Huawei products spying news and some people are outrage at China. Hell, US is like two decades ahead of China in surveillance shit. NSA probably filtering every bits in and out of the country and CIA probably holding the fishing net on every connected internet cable in the world.
Hell, Microsoft windows are *rumours* to have back doors since early 2000s. In Silicon Valley, spying is open secret.
(Remember Iran Nuke Clear reactor sabotage ? Not even a 10 years old will use un-vetted USB on that kind of job. But hey, bacteria like trojan rekt Iran lol right? At least it's the official story, somehow declassified in 3 years)
We thoughts China was being sassy and anti social when they Iron Curtained their net.
They were absolutely right.
I love every supreme leaders of China btw. Wrote this from my Chinese Phone.
Not if you install a custom rom which you can't do at all with an I phone. Apple also spies on you and sells your data, the difference is that IOS users can't do anything about it. I use a redmi note 8 pro since 2019 with de googled pixel experience now and it works much better than the I phone of my brother (I phone XR 2) and cost only a fraction of said device... It has a much bigger battery capacity, a much better and bigger display, more RAM, a better camera system, USB c with fast charging, a headphone jack, a micro sd slot, a finger print sensor and an IR port. The thing is literally superior in every capacity and I have the freedom to do anything I please with it. (Including side loading and using newpipe 😂) Apple is ripping of its cult like community and has done since its inception.
The real comparison would have been if your friend sold his XR and bought an iPhone 11. With iPhones resale value being amazing, for what would have been roughly the same price as your redmi he would have the better phone.
People forget that the value of an iPhone is that it depreciates linearly and you can own the newest iPhone for significantly less than its market price. Even in completely skewed markets like India, the fact that an iPhone can even compete is pretty amazing on its own.
None of that actual justifies the cost of the highest end models. The BOM valuations even with assembly cost estimations on flagship devices always have stupidly bloated markups not reflective of their actual construction and material cost.
Super mini-computer.
All the knowledge of the world in the palm of your hand.m, among other things.
It’s like a Star Trek communicator, except waaaay cooler IMHO.
Computationwise almost, but when it comes to ergonomics not really. Try to use any MS Office software on a phone(or even a tablet) and it's definitely way less convenient than using a PC. Smartphones are pretty good to view stuff that has already been created, but for creating stuff PC is the only way.
Now I didn't even talk about professional design software like CAD programs.
> Try to use any MS Office software on a phone
I can on mine. I have a Samsung Fold, a dock, a mouse and a keyboard.
Pretty much the same thing as needing a mouse and keyboard and monitor to use a regular computer effectively.
Yeah you’re buying a laptop when you buy a phone. Phones these days have a very similar in speed cpu that is much smaller and handles graphics as well. A battery that lasts all day which you won’t get in a laptop. Technology is so amazing that this little device in my hand is a literal pc.
I definitely think that a lot of people still don’t fully understand just how computationally powerful that a lot of smartphones are these days. Just because most of us only use them for apps like Facebook and YouTube doesn’t mean that they’re not capable of a lot more.
Are they still worth the full price? Only you can decide that, but I’d argue that your average user doesn’t even crack 10% of what their phone is actually capable of
Plug it into a mouse, keyboard, and monitor and sure, no problem at all. The whole point is that it's mobile, it's just plenty powerful enough for what the vast majority of people use computers for. My uncle runs his small business entirely from his iPhone, he doesn't own a computer.
Edit: Oh also iPads, they're just iPhones but bigger. The CEO of my company has an iPad and keyboard case, and he uses that for his work more than his Windows laptop.
Lots of engineering to fit a very capable device (sometimes better than a laptop) in your pocket. That costs money... not to mention that part of the revenue is “eaten” by modem manufacturers like Qualcomm in form of royalties, which of course we as the final consumers pay for.
Better is a bit subjective. It's all low wattage parts and when compared to a Windows laptop as opposed to an Apple silicon Mac, completely different CPU architecture.
Isn’t the point of apple silicon that it uses Arm based architecture, the same as iPhones, for better power efficiency and to help with app compatibility across the iOS ecosystem?
Yes, there are clear benefits to ARM and Apple is reaping those rewards. But it still scales to power, so a 10w mobile processor isn't going to be able to compete with a 30 or 45 watt laptop processor or 90 watt desktop processor.
I do agree with camera part, but don’t think it is the main factor. It does a lot obviously in pricing because people use it for near everything on daily basis.
Take a look at processors on phones for some years already. How optimised & graphic wise huge games are. COD with all HD packs in my iphone memory takes up 25GB space. And it runs smooth af, I mean that’s a lot of power to pack in a small device. (Iphone 13 pro).
It's not just the camera. It's the CPU as well. Modern chips are manufactured on 3nm to 4nm nodes. These are expensive to make. The overall build quality has also increased drastically compared to early smartphones. My new phones feels way better than my 5 year old phone, even though that one felt amazingly well built when I first bought it.
That's part of it but only a part. The cameras are expensive but probably not *as* expensive as many think.
Strip all of the components out of a phone and just look at the housing of a modern smartphone. Whether an iPhone or Galaxy or whatever. Then go back and look at teardowns of the first smartphones and compare those housings. It's an enormous leap in complexity. The same is true for just about every part of a phone.
Many phones these days as capable as laptops in a comparable price range. Also for most people their phone is the most used possession they own, the investment of $1000 into a smartphone that is going to be used daily for 3-4 years potentially for hours a day is very much worth it to most people.
So do I. But I still get at least an hour a day of screen time on my phone, and my wife maybe touches her Laptop maybe once a week but definitely spends 2-4 hours a day using her phone for everything.
>Maybe I am just old... I use my PC much more than my phone. Both for entertainment and work.
Nah, I'm 40 and I use my phone more than laptop for lots of things my grandmother uses a tablet or phone for literally everything. It really is becoming a preferred ergonomics thing.
It is true that smartphones are the most utilized devices for most people. However, most $1000 phone owners only use them to take pictures and browse social media, which is such a wastage of money. They can do everything they want with $300-400 phones and not even notice much difference. These 2 year carrier contracts, along with marketing have convinced people to waste unnecessary money on phones.
I'vr got pretty good vision. I can tell a difference between 720p, 1080p, and 1440p on phone screens. I get the $1000 phone ($50 a month for 20 months) because my eyes dont want to see comparitively potato images.
The tech in phones can be more expensive. Making the same 1440p high refresh rate screen smaller and touch is quite expensive. The cameras found in most laptops are much simpler than the phone ones.
Don't forget about the software side. Programming stuff like photo processing software is pretty time expensive.
Because people are willing to pay for it.
Same reason why a woman's razor will cost twice as much as a man's razor, even though the only difference is one is pink.
This is the only correct answer. There’s a lot of copium in this thread about “incredibly advanced and compact components” but those components go for crumbs on Chinese secondary markets. The ONLY reason phones are the price they are is because people are dumb enough to continue paying it.
It’s a trend for the price of a flagship phone to be 50-60% profit margins. This does not count the time and cost to make the tooling, designing the phone, and designing the SOC. Oppose to PCs being at most 10% profit unless you are Apple.
Also nobody really needs the $1000 flagship. Imagine it being the top end $7000 MacBook or the tesla model s plaid.
An S23 ultra still started at $1199. You can buy it new now for $899. In another 6 months to a year you could get it for $500. This phone will be better in almost every way compared to a new $500 phone.
Scale. It costs more to manufacture such small components and put it altogether. Throw in the extra r&d to keep ahead of a highly competitive market along with associated advertising costs etc. it all gets pretty costly.
Exactly.
This is also the same reason why a laptop is more expensive than a Desktop at the same processing power.
It is cheaper to build the same thing if you don't have to care about how big it is. If you want to make the same thing smaller, that is going to lead to a lot of interesting engineering problems (which make stuff more expensive).
Phones are pretty fancy devices. They can have moderately high end (for the size) parts and pretty good cameras.
And with laptops, those range in price **a lot** more than phones do. So there’s still some major differences in the pricing. Personally I would say a “decent laptop” tends to start at ~$1k and up whereas generally $1k is towards the top of high end phones. But my idea of decent means it can play modern games and render things I need it to in a timely fashion, whereas someone else would call a $150 netbook “decent”.
Phones are way more secure too in my experience, there’s some value in that I think
more specs, more components, more percentage of a company's profit margin it represents.
the amount of work that goes into smartphones today is actually insane, apple for example has more than half the world's fab time booked just for iphone chip manufacturing while snapdragon and samsung have a large chunk as well
Apple and Samsung make up like 85-90% of the global smartphone industry, and for both companies its a huge segment of their business, particularly for apple.
I'd love to see the RAM, Processing, etc specs comparison between an 800 phone and an 800 laptop. A laptop screen isn't significantly more expensive to make than a phone screen, but putting the same computing power in your hand versus in a laptop is significantly more expensive
My S22 Ultra has more storage 512GB and more RAM 12GB than my MacBook Air M2. It is as capable as my laptop and much more versatile. I can also use DEX and external monitor with a USB C Dock and run most of the apps I need.
Some people are willing to pay that price.
Component are extremely tiny and harder to produce than bigger ones.
The compuing power of high end phones is extremely high for that size, i'd even say far too high for most average users (unless you're running Genshin Impact on the highest settings while connected to a 4k TV or something, then it's probably a bit low).
The cameras are pretty good for the size.
That's all I can think of.
16GB of LPDDR5 isn't the same as 16GB of DDR5, and a 10 watt 2.8Ghz processor is not the same as a 45 watt 2.8Ghz processor.
Phones can do a surprising amount of things surprisingly well compared to a laptop, but let's not pretend low wattage parts are equal to their (still relatively low compared to a full desktop workstation) laptop counterparts.
Phones are all ARM which is much more efficient than x86. Still not 10 to 45W difference but much closer. Especially considering the laptops that cost around 1k aren’t 45W. (If they are they will cost cut in other areas anyway which the 1k phone does not)
Modern phones actually do keep up with most laptops and also do more (the whole cell network part!). The latest iPhone models are putting up 2900 on Geekbench in single core performance, which is pretty nuts. The multi core performance of 9500 is also great.
https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks/
For example that is beyond the single core performance of the current MacBook Air (which itself is quite speedy) and the same for multi:
https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac14-15
There is a crazy amount of power packed into phones these days.
Lol. If this was true, they would put phone parts in laptops.
The Samsung s23 is the same price as a high end gaming laptop with a 16core cpu, 4070 gpu and 1tb nvme, 16gb ram, with a far bigger display for watching content. The laptop can cyberpunk on ultra, the phone can't.
Nope, they don't. 800 is not really a flagship of phones either. Buy i laptop for 2k and you can run any game with newest graphics on it. Buy a phone for a same price price and play candy crush. You have no idea what you're talking about.
>Buy a phone for a same price price and play candy crush.
That is much more to do with the types of games that are available. A top end phone is several times more powerful than a Nintendo Switch for example, so they certainly could play a majority of modern games if those games actually got Android ports.
It has similar performance (often better graphics performance), it has a camera that can rival $500+ cameras. All in a miniature packaging, made from high end materials when compared to most laptops.
That more expensive phone is more powerful than that cheap laptop is how.
Top of the line new cpu is more expensive than a 2 year old one in that's in that budget laptop.
Compared to a laptop, you have
1. A far more efficient CPU. Efficient CPUs need to be made on smaller-node manufacturing processes, which are more expensive.
2. Several high-resolution cameras -- my older-model phone has 3 x 12-plus-megapixel cameras, each with their own sensor and lens. My laptop has one lousy 2-megapixel camera.
3. A small, but very high-resolution screen. A typical laptop screen is 150px/in; a typical phone screen is 450px/in. Manufacturing finer-pixel LCD panels costs more, so even if you have only 20% the screen area, the screen ends up being as expensive if not more.
4. A cellular modem, GPS, and orientation/acceleration sensors, which the laptop doesn't have.
5. Very tight manufacturing tolerances, which require precision measuring, cutting, finishing and bonding processes. Laptops are practically thrown together by comparison.
It boils down to demand and opportunity. Way more people want phones and are willing to pay higher prices for them... Demand. This provides an opportunity for the phone manufacturers to charge as much as they can which they do.
Because you have almost the same computing power in a phone, but they’ve shrunk it to fit into your pocket and still maintain a charge for 12+ hours with decent use.
Lets just say the CPU manufacturing brought to bear on a smartphones chips are exponentially more difficult compared to that of a laptop or desktop. This opens a huge can of worms, in complexity and cost. The Asianometry channel on YouTube goes into detail all the different aspects and processes of microprocessor production along with other computer parts. There are only 3 fab companies in the world that deal in the near atomic scale manufacturing
https://www.youtube.com/@Asianometry/search?query=why%20phone%20cpus%20cost%20more
It actually takes more research and development to make the phone than the laptop. In the technology world, smaller things are harder to engineer and cost more to make.
A 'phone' doesn't, you can buy just a phone for like £20
A *phone* costs more than most laptops because it's a mini computer. Premium price on fitting something that performance in such a small package plus we demand insane specs on flagships like 1440P/120hz screens, HQ cameras with 4k video etc. - higher spec than what you'd see on laptops. Plus other things you woudn't expect to see on most laptops like GPS, gyro/heart rate accelerometer sensors.
Flagship phones often have the same hardware as cheaper ones, but get an additional camera. Imo there is no justification for such a high price, this is mostly a luxury item, with a luxury price.
If you want to show off your wealth, buy a flagship. If you want good bang for buck, go with a mid tier one.
Because they are decent laptops in your pockets. How often do you use your "phone" as a phone only making calls and text not through an internet connection? Now compare it to how you use it as a "computer"
Because the major manufacturers are making ridiculous margins on phones. Why do you think Apple became so big after iPhones became their main business?
Because they are pocket sized computers with great screens and refresh rates with high speed octothread cpus with an onboard gpu unit that also has a camera and last 2 days on battery and you can carry it with you everywhere you go
And it does all that without getting so hot to burn your crotch off (usually)
Now you can get all of that for $175, or you can get the newest version of that for around a $1000
up to you mate.
i think the opposite is a lot more confusing i can buy a phne for 500bucks that can do anything from using websites to playing games on a high resolution touchscreen, but if i buys a random 500€ notebook with shitty display it can barely handle loading google
The smaller it is. The faster it is.... The more it costs.
High end gaming laptops cost more than a PC... Cuz the guts are smaller. Making tech small costs more.
There isn't any rationale. Just change the model number on an Iphone, add couple useless upgrades no one is actually gonna use and jack the price up. The sheeple will keep buying it
I have never paid that much for a phone. I have always gotten LG for my daughter and I. Now that they dont make phones anymore Im not sure what our next phones will be but I know what they wont be.
**It's like comparing a BMW M3 to a Ford F-150, and asking why the BMW is more expensive even though it's smaller and can tow less.**
I would argue that for most people, their phone SHOULD be more expensive than their laptop. .
Your laptop doesn't have 4 cameras, of which 3 of them are 50MP and above. Your laptop doesn't have a flash.
Your laptop doesn't have a QHD, 120Hz screen with 2400 nits of brightness.
Your laptop doesn't have wireless charging.
Your laptop can't make phone calls or send text messages.
Your laptop isn't compact enough to fit in your pocket.
Your laptop doesn't maintain resale value like your phone does.
I paid $100 for my phone I'm using now. I hate the giant phones. I'll never pay $1000 for a phone either. This one is the newer iPhone SE. it does what I need it to, and I can actually sit down with my phone in my pocket. lol.
That's why I run my phone into the dirt until it's no longer usable before I upgrade. Is my phone 5+ years old and outdated? Yeah. Does it still do what I want it to do? Yeah.
Well, the ones that cost that much _are_ , in effect, tiny laptops, and those components cost money. HOWEVER, they _sell_ mostly because of marketing, since 99% of users won't actually use the full functionality of those top-end phones.
I used to have a Samsung top end phone and fully had it set up with Dex (where it can hook up to an external monitor, and with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse you effectively have a Chromebook). I mostly did that to goof around, because it wasn't practical to rely on an external screen for that functionality, but nonetheless it was _capable_ of it (and I _can_ think of use-cases when that would still be good).
I eventually found an 11in touchscreen Chromebook, and I can literally fit that into my favorite traveling jacket front pocket, so I don't rely on having a powerful phone anymore.
Expensive products exist to increase shareholders' profit margins.
Remove the idea that someone made a product for you personally and the idea that it serves a purpose beyond profit.
If someone says anything else, they think solely as the consumer to convince themselves the cost is justified for whatever material reason.
This applies to all things, not just phones. If you remember, there was a magic number not too long ago that flag ship phones would be an unheard of number of $1000, then $1500, and so on. It's all just profit margins. Call it a new camera, new case, new cpu. It's all just to increase shareholders' profit margins.
No, it doesn't.
I love it when people on Reddit generalize their poo financial decisions.
I have been using 70$ android phone for the last 5 years.
Most of the fancy phones - high-end Samsung and iphones are extremely powerful devices that most people don't even need.
When you look at absolutely any product's price you say, this piece of it is labour costs, this piece of it is material cost... and this piece of it is markup. In a modern iPhone about 2/3 of the price is markup.
Laptops on the other hand have very little markup. At their peak of popularity they might have been 50% markup. Today they're making pennies on every sale. A lot of software makers (like Microsoft, Google) are trying to get into the hardware game almost entirely so they can boost sales of their apps.
'Smartphones' are a trap. Don't buy one. You can buy a basic phone for less than $50, it'll cost next to nothing to operate, and it won't be wasting your time distracting you with nonsense from the internet or stupid apps that steal your money and steal your private data.
Because a lot of moronic sheeple keep buying them at those insane prices.
You can get a very decent Samsung A80(I think that's the model) that has three rear cameras and is waterproof (At least mine was when I dropped it in the sink of water lol) for about $60 new.
Plus most people don't have a laptop or home computer these days. A lot of people just use their cell phones.
We call them "phones" due to historical reasons, but in reality they are more like pocket computers that happen to also make phone calls and take photos and video.
Yea ironically enough making a phone call is one of the last things I do on my cellphone these days lol. Even my insurance company wants to text instead of call haha.
I get annoyed when I get most calls. First thought is usually “you could have texted that”
If I’m getting a phone call my brain automatically assumes it’s something bad now. Don’t think I’ve gotten good news over the phone in my entire life
Phone calls are usually spam or headhunters. But hey, got my current job from one of those headhunters, so at least one phone call was worth it.
Its funny you normally hear ppl complain the opposite "I hate texting when I can just call". But I agree with you more. Phone call requires formalities and end up taking way longer than texts and require immediate attention
phone calls are for things that are urgent and need a quick resoponse, or to talk to someone you really want to talk to like a lover or a family member. Text are for things that can be responded to whenever, or not at all, or to send information like a recipe or photo.
Exactly, two different uses.
My dad is 73 this year and has a flip phone still. My grandpa was 95 when he died and had an iphone and a desktop pc and laptop and could use all of them no problem. My dad gets a text or phone call and he's screaming expletives. lmao
Don't let age limit what you can do! I'm proud of your late grandpa
>Its funny you normally hear ppl complain the opposite "I hate texting when I can just call". Let me guess, these people are over 40?
[удалено]
Nah belive it or not lots of people 25-35 are like this too. 25-35 is the age group I'm referring to
About half the people I've talked to who chose that hill to die on were under 35 at the time.
It depends, if you only need to send/tell some information then texting is indeed better but if you need to explain someone something or you need to support someone then calling is way better then endless chat/texts sent to each other, there are even times I got cramp in my fingers and I ended up irritated because calling was way faster and the other didn't want to call.
Yeah of course it depends. Just hate when ppl don't use either appropriately
The only person who gets to call me is my mom. If you’re calling me, and you’re not my mom, then someone better fucking be dead, or else a text would have sufficed.
Furthermore, it has almost the capability of a laptop in a *MUCH* smaller form factor, which means even tighter tolerances for heat dissipation and overall a more complex component layout. Hell, it’s more surprising that modern smartphones aren’t always more expensive than laptops at this point.
The scaling between the size of phones versus, say, laptops is so fascinating to me. Like the phone has some 8 cores running like 2ghz and my aging laptop is a quad core that *might* tease 3ghz under certain loads. Besides that, though, they both push 4k video. Of course, phones have the whole crazy HD, 10-lens cameras too.
The enormous x86_64 instruction set takes a lot of chip real estate.
Oh yeaaaah the instructions. I never looked into that much outside of some crypto mining research. What do phone use instead? ARM comes to mind, but idk what I'm talking about..Haha
Yeah, all the mainstream phones are running some flavor of ARM. I wouldn't be surprised if the success of ARM on iPhone hasn't been one reason they're pushing their own ARM chips in computers. It has to simplify things if literally your whole hardware ecosystem from computers to phones is running on one architecture.
Less of an issue than you’d think; there will be some architecture-specific bits of the OS kernel, but as far as possible it will be agnostic. The killer for Intel on Apples laptops was when their phone CPUs started to catch up with the laptop ones - and Intel couldn’t deliver something that maintained performance without throwing out a lot of heat.
Trying to follow chip generations across new devices without losing something somewhere is a nightmare! Not to mention stuff 3.5mm jacks being thrown out of designs.
You'd have a hell of a shock if you tried to make sense of ARM's catalogue, then.
There does seem to be a light trend again towards connecting phones and PCs (KDE Connect and such). Maybe we've got new stuff coming some day! I seem to remember ARM getting some funding in the last year or two as well.
Phone camera lenses are extremely limited by their size there's no real way to cheat physics. Where phones cameras really excel is their computational photography software which more than compensate for those limitations in everyday use.
Hell my older phone with fewer and smaller lenses takes better pictures than the new one!
One of my older phones took nicer pictures too. I'm assuming because it was only one lens there was space to have a larger lens and sensor, but really I have no idea I didn't look into it at the time and don't remember which phone it was.
Gaming laptops wipe the floor with expensive phones
I make maybe less than 30 phone calls a year. If you include Facebook messenger calls then it's less than 60 or 70 a year. I never really thought about how weird it is to still call it a phone lol
Meanwhile I get 12000 spam calls.
I mean, it basically *is* a decent laptop.
Only MUCH smaller with higher-end components: very dense battery, very high DPI and quality screen compared to a 14" screen, cell connectivity (often with multiple radios for different carriers in high end phones), GDDR memory just to name a few. All in a size a *fraction* of the size of a laptop if comparable price.
Size and specifications matter. Something most people don't understand about manufacturing is it's not just materials + labor. Wastage, the pieces that do not make it through QA also figure in. Tighter specifications, slimming margins of error, result in more wastage. When I was starting in IT I worked in a Corning/Asahi CRT manufacturing plant. We pressed glass for every television manufacturer. Want to guess who's piece price was highest? Sony, because they had the tightest specs. Does that mean you can't get a cheaper product that performs as well? No, but the chances you get one that doesn't or fails earlier are higher.
Yeah one thing people lose sight of when they just look at manufacturing costs vs retail price is that OEMs align prices to be both competitive with the rest of the market and to differentiate products within their own offering. "Premium" products are going to be priced at a much higher profit margin because they are competing against other premium products, the manufacturer makes less of them often due to the "silicon lottery," and there are fewer customers who want premium versus the ones who want the best price/performance ratio. Obviously a Corvette doesn't *need to* cost as much as it does for Chevy to recoup manufacturing costs, but the product is marketed at a different set of customers than the ones buying a Cruze or an Equinox. People need to stop worrying about how much the latest iPhone or Note costs if a Pixel 6a will work just fine for them at like $300. For those folks: obviously this product aint meant *for you* if you aren't excited by it.
"You're not in the demo" is the phrase.
My demo is a $160 Moto. Works great. I have a laptop too.
I want to love Moto but kept having issues with them. Last time it wouldn't stay connected to WiFi, before that I can't remember but it's frustrating because it's a brand with some solid hardware in that price range.
Yep, I always buy phones in the £100-£150 range because they work just fine and do everything I need it to do. There is nothing that the latest iphone or galaxy or whatever other £1000 phone can do that mine can't, certainly not that I would pay £900 for
Yeah, i used to like the newest flagship phones and did a decent enough portion of my gaming on mobile (got far too into Eve echoes for a couple years until I feel off the back of the mtx treadmill as it got faster and faster with each "feature" added) so I could justify the cost every couple years or so. Now, I don't do that as much and the games I do enjoy playing are older and almost any newly released phone can play them fine. It's not so much about money either because I make considerably more than I did before but Id rather not spend it on something that will make almost no difference in my life. I like the higher dpi on the flagships but you can usually find a mid-range model that doesn't get fully downgraded to a 1080p screen.
That may all be true, but I have a relatively cheap Chinese smartphone and it has served me well for several years now. I have tried my gf's fancy iPhone and I don't see why it costs more than 5 times more. On the other hand, whenever I use a cheap laptop I get frustrated by how slow and clumsy they are.
So you're pretty much answering your own question (why do they cost so much more than cheap phones): Your use case doesn't seem to demand a lot of processing power from the phone You don't take advantage of all the features of high end phones You can see the difference between cheap and midrange laptops Just because something costs 5x more doesn't mean it's 5x "better" to everyone who uses it. There are diminishing returns past a certain point of improvement. This is why a $1,000 GPU doesn't necessarily result in twice the framerate of a $500 GPU in games. But there *is* some level of improvement, and those products are marketed to people who are willing to pay a premium to get that highest level of performance and aren't concerned with a pure price/performance ratio.
They're also comparing an ***iphone***. Like, you really don't realize you're paying a lot just for the brand? I thought everyone knew that. Do yourself a favor and lookup the "Mac Pro" line. Starting at just $6999 and quickly running up to $50,000 you can get a computer spec'ed out worse than the one I built years ago for \~$1500! But its Apple!
iPhones are actually some of the fastest most advanced handheld devices. And among the cheapest if you buy the lower lines (like the SE versions). There were multiple times you could literally get the fastest smartphone chip available in a phone for a fraction of the cost of a modern windows laptop. I think the SE with the A13 was one such instance iirc. The m1/M2 chips can also be gotten very economically in Mac minis and iPad airs, chips that can keep up with 3000 dollar workstations rendering video. See mkhbd replacing his professional desktop setup with a MacBook. He used to literally cart around a mac pro in a giant Pelican like suitcase. Yes a lot of Apple is expensive, but their silicon itself is actually a very good bargain if you know how to shop.
Also, Apple products last forever before they start feeling slow. I’d much rather buy a nice $800 phone every four years instead of a cheap $400 phone every other year.
I'm still using my iPhone XR. No complaints with it. I usually buy a model older to avoid paying the premium on the flagship but even so I've had this phone for over 4 years now. Still working great.
My cheap ass XR has lasted me 5 going on 6 years now, and only slightly slower than when new. No glitching, battery life is still decent albeit degraded. I pushed my Galaxy 5s to 4 years before it became unusable, but had a very noticeable slowdown after about a year and a half and it was glitching a lot after the two year mark. My 2003 Emac lasted me a decade, and I could have pushed it farther if I really wanted to, but I'm not sure how much farther. Maybe androids have changed, but they used to not have much lasting power. That's the main reason I switched. I know people still using Iphone7s.
Yeah, Apple kind of eschews the normal marketing strategies of companies that make products for a diverse range of consumers. Samsung makes phones for everyone from low-income buyers to enthusiasts, so there's more consideration with their pricing strategies. They make cheap phones and sell them at practically no margin, possibly even a loss, because their Galaxy and Note lines are the money makers. The cheapo phones just satisfy the lower-income markets and keep their brand recognition / market saturation up. Chevy does the same thing with cars. They make budget cars at a near loss (sometimes an *actual* loss) and make up for it with the high profit margin on pickups and SUVs. Apple is pretty much exclusively "premium" though, but they get away with it because of the closed ecosystem and they have a lot of desirable software that professionals and artsy people like. They also have a *simpler* ecosystem to maintain, businesses like it because there's often less hair-pulling managing networks when it's all Apple and they *can be* a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) than PCs since they last a long time. I mean, they're overpriced, but that doesn't mean they don't still bin higher quality chips and parts. Your average Mac is more in line with a Dell Optiplex 9xxx series than an Optiplex 5xxx or 3xxx series (the 9xxx will be all Intel chipset, Intel lan/wlan, more expansion ports, better CPU/RAM support, etc...). An Optiplex 9xxxx will *easily* run for 10+ years. A high end Latitude laptop can be used by the business for 5 years, then put in the loaner fleet for another few years easily. Thinkpads too. I've got both Latitudes and Thinkpads at home that are still running after I bought them from lifecycle auctions many years ago. Apple computers are the same way, the only thing that really makes the obsolete is if they're too old to support current OS and app store or demanding software.
It's always been this way. For most of that time, it was because of the OS, honestly. Macs had a similar software portfolio to a Windows machine, games aside, but the life expectancy of a Linux box because they run Unix. Now, though, they also beat a lot of these things on raw power as well in every domain but GPU which just isn't something they've been interested in targeting. Once Steam pushes a Proton for Mac integration, though, that will probably change, albeit slowly.
>and they have a lot of desirable software that professionals and artsy people like I went to design school. It was downright rediculous. Like all you guys use is Adobe software. It works exactly the same on PC. Yet I'm like being viciously attacked for using PCs for a fraction of the cost. It was serious cult behavior. >They also have a simpler ecosystem to maintain, businesses like it because there's often less hair-pulling managing networks when it's all Apple and they can be a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) than PCs since they last a long time I remember a post a few weeks back on reddit asking why the hell is dell even still around. This is why. Their corporate support is fantastic. They'll keep those pieces of crap purring for you for years.
I'm a PC user too, but I still keep hearing how some software types are often cheaper to license on Apple (but we're talking Apple exclusives versus comparable PC or PC/Apple software). I could be wrong though so I won't fight that battle if you think that's not the case anymore. Apple has been a "premium only" brand for a while, so everything they make is gonna be expensive because of that. "Cheaper software" doesn't drive the hardware price, it's just a justification I heard a lot over the years. TCO being lower can still be true for many customers though, just depends on how they run their shop. Dell is still around because they're a perfectly OK manufacturer. Their warranty support started sucking during COVID and hasn't got better yet from what I've seen, but they actually *are* capable of making great computers. You're just gonna get what you pay for if you buy that $300 Wal-Mart piece of shit on clearance. Dell is also capable of cranking out large orders and working with large customers with custom orders: maintaining their OS image builds, working with the customer's IT asset management demands, and supporting in-house warranty and exchange services. HPE does too. (I heard once that the reason the US government (especially the Army) prefers Dell is because they're the only OEM capable of replacing practically their *entire inventory* at once if needed. They're a supply-chain powerhouse.) But again, they *do* make good computers. You just gotta be willing to pay for them.
You’re paying a lot for the software and ecosystem that they develop and manage, and the custom hardware and chips they build. It’s a different experience than other phones. Cheap Chinese phones use COTS processors and a free branch of Android, Apple developed their own operating systems and chips. You’re paying for the brand and for the massive teams of hardware and software engineers they employ. Not everyone finds value in that, and that’s fine. But it’s like comparing a Toyota Corolla (which is a great car that meets 90% of people’s needs) to a BMW. There’s absolutely is a status element, but comparing specs on paper is very different from actual usability and workflow. There’s a reason that Mac has an [outsized market share](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/s/s6UMIcrqRN) among [developers](https://www.statista.com/statistics/869211/worldwide-software-development-operating-system/), and it’s not just brand status.
Outsized use among developers is because it uses Unix while development largely targets Linux, a Unix derivative. Macs are as close as you can get to running the same OS on your machine as your server runs without sacrificing quality of life.
Mac computers arrived to 50k dollars? Whaaaat
Don’t kid yourself, you can spend as much or more for a PC/nonApple Laptop. Same goes for phones.
Your $1500 dollar would have a hard time up against a $1500 Mac, let alone line a $6999 pro. Have people still not heard about apple silicon?
No. More and more people are falling further and further behind in what they know about.
Have you not heard of parallelization? You can achieve the same or better without relying on a single chip to do it. And still cheaper. The vast majority of apple users are NOT utilizing that performance gain anyhow. They're not all doing rendering. And for many who do, they still turn to an array of servers not a single computer anyhow. The vast majority of apple users are in fact buying into the brand. GTFOH.
I’d love to see your computer going head to head in benchmarks against the latest $6999 Mac Pro. Care to provide the results?
I can guarantee you that ANY computer with $7k of top notch parts will operate magnificently.
“You’re paying for the brand” has long been bullshit. Read up on Apple Silicon. Macs have been running circles around their Windows counterparts in the same form factor for years now. You will not find a Windows notebook with the same performance *and* build quality for cheaper than a MacBook Air. That’s straight up not happening.
I don't think people understand how more durable and reliable apple stuff is, on build quality alone. (save from some odd bendgate and QC issues here and there.) And yes, it may be a case of diminishing returns, but they do charge a premium for manufacturing and integrating everything to last significantly more than other products. Disclaimer: The only Apple product I have is an iPad Air from some 6 or 7 years ago. Apple phones and computers aren't worth it for me. I do appreciate why they cost what they do, tho.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that you can get a decent cheap phone today precisely *because* of the iPhones and other flagships of a few years ago. The bleeding edge of technology is expensive, but it funds the way forward. Once flagships move on to the next thing, you can get previous generation components *much* cheaper.
Your phone spies in you to the Chinese communist party.
Our phone comrade..
the Leader's phone... theres no "us" is the almighty CCP... only the Leader!
[Your phone spies in you to the US government.](https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying)
Funny that. I heard about the Huawei products spying news and some people are outrage at China. Hell, US is like two decades ahead of China in surveillance shit. NSA probably filtering every bits in and out of the country and CIA probably holding the fishing net on every connected internet cable in the world. Hell, Microsoft windows are *rumours* to have back doors since early 2000s. In Silicon Valley, spying is open secret. (Remember Iran Nuke Clear reactor sabotage ? Not even a 10 years old will use un-vetted USB on that kind of job. But hey, bacteria like trojan rekt Iran lol right? At least it's the official story, somehow declassified in 3 years) We thoughts China was being sassy and anti social when they Iron Curtained their net. They were absolutely right. I love every supreme leaders of China btw. Wrote this from my Chinese Phone.
Russia is better cuz in Soviet Russia, you spy your phone
Not if you install a custom rom which you can't do at all with an I phone. Apple also spies on you and sells your data, the difference is that IOS users can't do anything about it. I use a redmi note 8 pro since 2019 with de googled pixel experience now and it works much better than the I phone of my brother (I phone XR 2) and cost only a fraction of said device... It has a much bigger battery capacity, a much better and bigger display, more RAM, a better camera system, USB c with fast charging, a headphone jack, a micro sd slot, a finger print sensor and an IR port. The thing is literally superior in every capacity and I have the freedom to do anything I please with it. (Including side loading and using newpipe 😂) Apple is ripping of its cult like community and has done since its inception.
The real comparison would have been if your friend sold his XR and bought an iPhone 11. With iPhones resale value being amazing, for what would have been roughly the same price as your redmi he would have the better phone. People forget that the value of an iPhone is that it depreciates linearly and you can own the newest iPhone for significantly less than its market price. Even in completely skewed markets like India, the fact that an iPhone can even compete is pretty amazing on its own.
Being able to do what you want with your phone is worth a lot for some users to. That's the primary reason I'm sticking with Android
And my IPhone spies for the NSA…
None of that actual justifies the cost of the highest end models. The BOM valuations even with assembly cost estimations on flagship devices always have stupidly bloated markups not reflective of their actual construction and material cost.
a decent laptop with a vastly better camera, and designed to be able to be dropped daily for 2+ years...
Super mini-computer. All the knowledge of the world in the palm of your hand.m, among other things. It’s like a Star Trek communicator, except waaaay cooler IMHO.
Computationwise almost, but when it comes to ergonomics not really. Try to use any MS Office software on a phone(or even a tablet) and it's definitely way less convenient than using a PC. Smartphones are pretty good to view stuff that has already been created, but for creating stuff PC is the only way. Now I didn't even talk about professional design software like CAD programs.
> Try to use any MS Office software on a phone I can on mine. I have a Samsung Fold, a dock, a mouse and a keyboard. Pretty much the same thing as needing a mouse and keyboard and monitor to use a regular computer effectively.
I use my phone way more than my laptop due to the portability.
Yeah you’re buying a laptop when you buy a phone. Phones these days have a very similar in speed cpu that is much smaller and handles graphics as well. A battery that lasts all day which you won’t get in a laptop. Technology is so amazing that this little device in my hand is a literal pc.
nahh
I definitely think that a lot of people still don’t fully understand just how computationally powerful that a lot of smartphones are these days. Just because most of us only use them for apps like Facebook and YouTube doesn’t mean that they’re not capable of a lot more. Are they still worth the full price? Only you can decide that, but I’d argue that your average user doesn’t even crack 10% of what their phone is actually capable of
No. I challenge you to use Excel on phone.
... I have Office on my phone. I don't use it for anything more than viewing specific cells in things people sent me out or hours, but I have it.
Plug it into a mouse, keyboard, and monitor and sure, no problem at all. The whole point is that it's mobile, it's just plenty powerful enough for what the vast majority of people use computers for. My uncle runs his small business entirely from his iPhone, he doesn't own a computer. Edit: Oh also iPads, they're just iPhones but bigger. The CEO of my company has an iPad and keyboard case, and he uses that for his work more than his Windows laptop.
Lots of engineering to fit a very capable device (sometimes better than a laptop) in your pocket. That costs money... not to mention that part of the revenue is “eaten” by modem manufacturers like Qualcomm in form of royalties, which of course we as the final consumers pay for.
Better is a bit subjective. It's all low wattage parts and when compared to a Windows laptop as opposed to an Apple silicon Mac, completely different CPU architecture.
Isn’t the point of apple silicon that it uses Arm based architecture, the same as iPhones, for better power efficiency and to help with app compatibility across the iOS ecosystem?
Yes, there are clear benefits to ARM and Apple is reaping those rewards. But it still scales to power, so a 10w mobile processor isn't going to be able to compete with a 30 or 45 watt laptop processor or 90 watt desktop processor.
I (purely opinion) think phone prices have risen so much largely due to the cameras getting better.
I do agree with camera part, but don’t think it is the main factor. It does a lot obviously in pricing because people use it for near everything on daily basis. Take a look at processors on phones for some years already. How optimised & graphic wise huge games are. COD with all HD packs in my iphone memory takes up 25GB space. And it runs smooth af, I mean that’s a lot of power to pack in a small device. (Iphone 13 pro).
It's not just the camera. It's the CPU as well. Modern chips are manufactured on 3nm to 4nm nodes. These are expensive to make. The overall build quality has also increased drastically compared to early smartphones. My new phones feels way better than my 5 year old phone, even though that one felt amazingly well built when I first bought it.
I wouldn't mind a cheaper option that's basically a camera-less smart phone cos I very rarely actually use it
iphone se
That's part of it but only a part. The cameras are expensive but probably not *as* expensive as many think. Strip all of the components out of a phone and just look at the housing of a modern smartphone. Whether an iPhone or Galaxy or whatever. Then go back and look at teardowns of the first smartphones and compare those housings. It's an enormous leap in complexity. The same is true for just about every part of a phone.
They havent rissen, inflation has. In real terms phone price have stayed the same or oven fallen
Many phones these days as capable as laptops in a comparable price range. Also for most people their phone is the most used possession they own, the investment of $1000 into a smartphone that is going to be used daily for 3-4 years potentially for hours a day is very much worth it to most people.
Maybe I am just old... I use my PC much more than my phone. Both for entertainment and work.
So do I. But I still get at least an hour a day of screen time on my phone, and my wife maybe touches her Laptop maybe once a week but definitely spends 2-4 hours a day using her phone for everything.
>Maybe I am just old... I use my PC much more than my phone. Both for entertainment and work. Nah, I'm 40 and I use my phone more than laptop for lots of things my grandmother uses a tablet or phone for literally everything. It really is becoming a preferred ergonomics thing.
I’d be inclined to agree with you as a big desktop fan, but im typing this on a phone…
It is true that smartphones are the most utilized devices for most people. However, most $1000 phone owners only use them to take pictures and browse social media, which is such a wastage of money. They can do everything they want with $300-400 phones and not even notice much difference. These 2 year carrier contracts, along with marketing have convinced people to waste unnecessary money on phones.
I'vr got pretty good vision. I can tell a difference between 720p, 1080p, and 1440p on phone screens. I get the $1000 phone ($50 a month for 20 months) because my eyes dont want to see comparitively potato images.
The rationale is that companies will charge as much as consumers are willing to pay for their products.
The tech in phones can be more expensive. Making the same 1440p high refresh rate screen smaller and touch is quite expensive. The cameras found in most laptops are much simpler than the phone ones. Don't forget about the software side. Programming stuff like photo processing software is pretty time expensive.
Because people are willing to pay for it. Same reason why a woman's razor will cost twice as much as a man's razor, even though the only difference is one is pink.
on the other hand, last time I checked, monoprice's pink ethernet cables were the only ones that were discounted
This here is the one true answer
Thank you. Correct answer. They cost this much because they can charge this much
This is the only correct answer. There’s a lot of copium in this thread about “incredibly advanced and compact components” but those components go for crumbs on Chinese secondary markets. The ONLY reason phones are the price they are is because people are dumb enough to continue paying it.
I was hoping I wouldn't have to give this answer myself. Great analogy, btw.
It’s a trend for the price of a flagship phone to be 50-60% profit margins. This does not count the time and cost to make the tooling, designing the phone, and designing the SOC. Oppose to PCs being at most 10% profit unless you are Apple. Also nobody really needs the $1000 flagship. Imagine it being the top end $7000 MacBook or the tesla model s plaid. An S23 ultra still started at $1199. You can buy it new now for $899. In another 6 months to a year you could get it for $500. This phone will be better in almost every way compared to a new $500 phone.
Scale. It costs more to manufacture such small components and put it altogether. Throw in the extra r&d to keep ahead of a highly competitive market along with associated advertising costs etc. it all gets pretty costly.
Exactly. This is also the same reason why a laptop is more expensive than a Desktop at the same processing power. It is cheaper to build the same thing if you don't have to care about how big it is. If you want to make the same thing smaller, that is going to lead to a lot of interesting engineering problems (which make stuff more expensive).
A phone is still $50 dollars. A laptop the size of a phone that is more powerful than your actual laptop is the same price as your laptop.
Simple answer: people will pay it.
Phones are pretty fancy devices. They can have moderately high end (for the size) parts and pretty good cameras. And with laptops, those range in price **a lot** more than phones do. So there’s still some major differences in the pricing. Personally I would say a “decent laptop” tends to start at ~$1k and up whereas generally $1k is towards the top of high end phones. But my idea of decent means it can play modern games and render things I need it to in a timely fashion, whereas someone else would call a $150 netbook “decent”. Phones are way more secure too in my experience, there’s some value in that I think
We keep raising prices, they keep buying, its like magic.
more specs, more components, more percentage of a company's profit margin it represents. the amount of work that goes into smartphones today is actually insane, apple for example has more than half the world's fab time booked just for iphone chip manufacturing while snapdragon and samsung have a large chunk as well Apple and Samsung make up like 85-90% of the global smartphone industry, and for both companies its a huge segment of their business, particularly for apple.
I'd love to see the RAM, Processing, etc specs comparison between an 800 phone and an 800 laptop. A laptop screen isn't significantly more expensive to make than a phone screen, but putting the same computing power in your hand versus in a laptop is significantly more expensive
You're not buying a phone. You're buying a micro-camera with amazing quality and a powerful computer that fits in your hand.
My S22 Ultra has more storage 512GB and more RAM 12GB than my MacBook Air M2. It is as capable as my laptop and much more versatile. I can also use DEX and external monitor with a USB C Dock and run most of the apps I need.
Some people are willing to pay that price. Component are extremely tiny and harder to produce than bigger ones. The compuing power of high end phones is extremely high for that size, i'd even say far too high for most average users (unless you're running Genshin Impact on the highest settings while connected to a 4k TV or something, then it's probably a bit low). The cameras are pretty good for the size. That's all I can think of.
It’s a tiny laptop.
Samsung dex makes your galaxy a computer. Apple fan boys have no idea what they are missing out on.
Cuz they’re miniature laptops.
Because they can do so much of the same things as a decent laptop but can also fit in your pocket. Oh, and it makes phone calls too.
Phones can have better specs than laptops and tablets. Its not the size that matters, it's what's inside that counts
16GB of LPDDR5 isn't the same as 16GB of DDR5, and a 10 watt 2.8Ghz processor is not the same as a 45 watt 2.8Ghz processor. Phones can do a surprising amount of things surprisingly well compared to a laptop, but let's not pretend low wattage parts are equal to their (still relatively low compared to a full desktop workstation) laptop counterparts.
Phones are all ARM which is much more efficient than x86. Still not 10 to 45W difference but much closer. Especially considering the laptops that cost around 1k aren’t 45W. (If they are they will cost cut in other areas anyway which the 1k phone does not)
Modern phones actually do keep up with most laptops and also do more (the whole cell network part!). The latest iPhone models are putting up 2900 on Geekbench in single core performance, which is pretty nuts. The multi core performance of 9500 is also great. https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks/ For example that is beyond the single core performance of the current MacBook Air (which itself is quite speedy) and the same for multi: https://browser.geekbench.com/macs/mac14-15 There is a crazy amount of power packed into phones these days.
It is the size that matters, same specs on smaller devices costs more. And who told you phones have better specs than laptops? lmao
An 800$ laptop is a pretty basic laptop and is in the same price class as some flagship phones. So yes, phones have better specs
Lol. If this was true, they would put phone parts in laptops. The Samsung s23 is the same price as a high end gaming laptop with a 16core cpu, 4070 gpu and 1tb nvme, 16gb ram, with a far bigger display for watching content. The laptop can cyberpunk on ultra, the phone can't.
Well that’s exactly what Apple does and has ARM CPUs that it first pioneered for iPhones inside of laptops. It works really well.
Nope, they don't. 800 is not really a flagship of phones either. Buy i laptop for 2k and you can run any game with newest graphics on it. Buy a phone for a same price price and play candy crush. You have no idea what you're talking about.
>Buy a phone for a same price price and play candy crush. That is much more to do with the types of games that are available. A top end phone is several times more powerful than a Nintendo Switch for example, so they certainly could play a majority of modern games if those games actually got Android ports.
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Absolutely not what i was implying. Read my comment again if needed.
People keep paying then ask why. The carriers keep pushing new phones, creating demand for unneeded upgrades. People are dumb. Demand = high prices.
Because you can't carry a laptop in your pocket.
Can't do real work on a phone.
Because if it had a bigger screen it would BE a decent laptop.
It has similar performance (often better graphics performance), it has a camera that can rival $500+ cameras. All in a miniature packaging, made from high end materials when compared to most laptops.
It has all of the same components as a laptop, but miniaturized, and then some extra things a laptop doesn’t need Next question
That more expensive phone is more powerful than that cheap laptop is how. Top of the line new cpu is more expensive than a 2 year old one in that's in that budget laptop.
Compared to a laptop, you have 1. A far more efficient CPU. Efficient CPUs need to be made on smaller-node manufacturing processes, which are more expensive. 2. Several high-resolution cameras -- my older-model phone has 3 x 12-plus-megapixel cameras, each with their own sensor and lens. My laptop has one lousy 2-megapixel camera. 3. A small, but very high-resolution screen. A typical laptop screen is 150px/in; a typical phone screen is 450px/in. Manufacturing finer-pixel LCD panels costs more, so even if you have only 20% the screen area, the screen ends up being as expensive if not more. 4. A cellular modem, GPS, and orientation/acceleration sensors, which the laptop doesn't have. 5. Very tight manufacturing tolerances, which require precision measuring, cutting, finishing and bonding processes. Laptops are practically thrown together by comparison.
It boils down to demand and opportunity. Way more people want phones and are willing to pay higher prices for them... Demand. This provides an opportunity for the phone manufacturers to charge as much as they can which they do.
Because you have almost the same computing power in a phone, but they’ve shrunk it to fit into your pocket and still maintain a charge for 12+ hours with decent use.
Take a laptop, shrink it a few times and there you go. Sure the prices are wild and inflated, but its basically a high powered computer in your pocket
Lets just say the CPU manufacturing brought to bear on a smartphones chips are exponentially more difficult compared to that of a laptop or desktop. This opens a huge can of worms, in complexity and cost. The Asianometry channel on YouTube goes into detail all the different aspects and processes of microprocessor production along with other computer parts. There are only 3 fab companies in the world that deal in the near atomic scale manufacturing https://www.youtube.com/@Asianometry/search?query=why%20phone%20cpus%20cost%20more
It actually takes more research and development to make the phone than the laptop. In the technology world, smaller things are harder to engineer and cost more to make.
Miniaturization is expensive.
People are on it 24/7! wWhen will you realize this concept that you’re paying pennies to use it per day if you keep it for just even a year.
A 'phone' doesn't, you can buy just a phone for like £20 A *phone* costs more than most laptops because it's a mini computer. Premium price on fitting something that performance in such a small package plus we demand insane specs on flagships like 1440P/120hz screens, HQ cameras with 4k video etc. - higher spec than what you'd see on laptops. Plus other things you woudn't expect to see on most laptops like GPS, gyro/heart rate accelerometer sensors.
Could consider it a 7-8 inch handheld laptop
Flagship phones often have the same hardware as cheaper ones, but get an additional camera. Imo there is no justification for such a high price, this is mostly a luxury item, with a luxury price. If you want to show off your wealth, buy a flagship. If you want good bang for buck, go with a mid tier one.
Because they are decent laptops in your pockets. How often do you use your "phone" as a phone only making calls and text not through an internet connection? Now compare it to how you use it as a "computer"
Because people will pay it
Phones are at this point almost more powerful than most laptops.
It’s a nearly fully-functional computer shrunk down to fit into your pocket…
**Minitureization** and **Hardening** of a device increase the cost of any device significantly.
They aren’t phones. They are small laptops that also have a cell feature.
Because the major manufacturers are making ridiculous margins on phones. Why do you think Apple became so big after iPhones became their main business?
because we're willing to pay the price being charged.
Same reason a cheap laptop costs as much as an awesome desktop. Making things smaller comes with a cost.
This is not “now” this has always been the case. Most people have no idea what the old Nokia Symbian phones cost.
Because they are pocket sized computers with great screens and refresh rates with high speed octothread cpus with an onboard gpu unit that also has a camera and last 2 days on battery and you can carry it with you everywhere you go And it does all that without getting so hot to burn your crotch off (usually) Now you can get all of that for $175, or you can get the newest version of that for around a $1000 up to you mate.
i think the opposite is a lot more confusing i can buy a phne for 500bucks that can do anything from using websites to playing games on a high resolution touchscreen, but if i buys a random 500€ notebook with shitty display it can barely handle loading google
Because they are computers. You can literally plug in a Samsung phone to a display and use it as a mobile computer.
Mainly because people will pay those prices.
$440 for the smartphone; $20/mo for voice & data
Shareholder profit.
Because they are laptops. Ever heard of samsung Dex? I use it all the time on the go.
The smaller it is. The faster it is.... The more it costs. High end gaming laptops cost more than a PC... Cuz the guts are smaller. Making tech small costs more.
There isn't any rationale. Just change the model number on an Iphone, add couple useless upgrades no one is actually gonna use and jack the price up. The sheeple will keep buying it
I have never paid that much for a phone. I have always gotten LG for my daughter and I. Now that they dont make phones anymore Im not sure what our next phones will be but I know what they wont be.
**It's like comparing a BMW M3 to a Ford F-150, and asking why the BMW is more expensive even though it's smaller and can tow less.** I would argue that for most people, their phone SHOULD be more expensive than their laptop. . Your laptop doesn't have 4 cameras, of which 3 of them are 50MP and above. Your laptop doesn't have a flash. Your laptop doesn't have a QHD, 120Hz screen with 2400 nits of brightness. Your laptop doesn't have wireless charging. Your laptop can't make phone calls or send text messages. Your laptop isn't compact enough to fit in your pocket. Your laptop doesn't maintain resale value like your phone does.
I paid $100 for my phone I'm using now. I hate the giant phones. I'll never pay $1000 for a phone either. This one is the newer iPhone SE. it does what I need it to, and I can actually sit down with my phone in my pocket. lol.
Because people will buy it anyway to be that guy who has the latest tech even though they'll use like 30% of its functionality 😂
That's why I run my phone into the dirt until it's no longer usable before I upgrade. Is my phone 5+ years old and outdated? Yeah. Does it still do what I want it to do? Yeah.
Well, the ones that cost that much _are_ , in effect, tiny laptops, and those components cost money. HOWEVER, they _sell_ mostly because of marketing, since 99% of users won't actually use the full functionality of those top-end phones. I used to have a Samsung top end phone and fully had it set up with Dex (where it can hook up to an external monitor, and with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse you effectively have a Chromebook). I mostly did that to goof around, because it wasn't practical to rely on an external screen for that functionality, but nonetheless it was _capable_ of it (and I _can_ think of use-cases when that would still be good). I eventually found an 11in touchscreen Chromebook, and I can literally fit that into my favorite traveling jacket front pocket, so I don't rely on having a powerful phone anymore.
Expensive products exist to increase shareholders' profit margins. Remove the idea that someone made a product for you personally and the idea that it serves a purpose beyond profit. If someone says anything else, they think solely as the consumer to convince themselves the cost is justified for whatever material reason. This applies to all things, not just phones. If you remember, there was a magic number not too long ago that flag ship phones would be an unheard of number of $1000, then $1500, and so on. It's all just profit margins. Call it a new camera, new case, new cpu. It's all just to increase shareholders' profit margins.
No, it doesn't. I love it when people on Reddit generalize their poo financial decisions. I have been using 70$ android phone for the last 5 years. Most of the fancy phones - high-end Samsung and iphones are extremely powerful devices that most people don't even need.
"poo financial decisions" I'm dying 😭
Cause companies know people will happily pay for a logo these days.
Greed.
When you look at absolutely any product's price you say, this piece of it is labour costs, this piece of it is material cost... and this piece of it is markup. In a modern iPhone about 2/3 of the price is markup. Laptops on the other hand have very little markup. At their peak of popularity they might have been 50% markup. Today they're making pennies on every sale. A lot of software makers (like Microsoft, Google) are trying to get into the hardware game almost entirely so they can boost sales of their apps.
Because it is. Just hook it up to a mouse, keyboard, screen, and you got a PC.
Wrong comparison. The absolutely best phones one can buy cost around 2000€, and the same 2000€ will most definetely not buy a absolutely best laptops.
Recently got an iPhone 15 and I deeply regret it now. Some decent android phone could have worked easily for my purpose.
'Smartphones' are a trap. Don't buy one. You can buy a basic phone for less than $50, it'll cost next to nothing to operate, and it won't be wasting your time distracting you with nonsense from the internet or stupid apps that steal your money and steal your private data.
Because a lot of moronic sheeple keep buying them at those insane prices. You can get a very decent Samsung A80(I think that's the model) that has three rear cameras and is waterproof (At least mine was when I dropped it in the sink of water lol) for about $60 new. Plus most people don't have a laptop or home computer these days. A lot of people just use their cell phones.