I just got a $99 Motorola phone a few weeks ago, the E4, and it's been amazing. Latest security update on Nougat 7.1, and very close to stock. I put a microSD card in and it formatted it as internal storage. Cheap Android is great.
The super budget phones like the E4 are pretty bad, but you can get a pretty decent camera on a midrange Android phone. I've got a Moto G5 Plus that is a pretty solid phone with a decent camera(only real short coming is very low light). That phone is $230 for the base model, and I think it's about $40-$50 less if you get the Amazon ad supported version(which I think the aforementioned $99 E4 is).
The G5+ comes in 2 configurations, in the U.S. (UK/Europe and India are different.) 2 GB RAM / 32 GB flash, and 4 GB RAM / 64 GB flash. Both take a microSD card of up to 128 GB or 256 GB, depending on whose specs your reading -- I'd be cautious, if it makes a difference in your purchase decision, and believe the 128 GB.
It is described as being compatible with all 4 of the U.S.'s major networks.
Currently, it's on a fairly recent version of 7.0 . Interesting that the E4 is ahead of it, on 7.1 . Typical Motorola/Android inconsistency.
The 2/32 version has an ad-free price on Amazon of $230, and an ad-full price (Amazon ads, like they've had on Kindle and Fire phones) of $180. However, a week+ ago, Amazon was putting the ad-free version on sale for $180, in typical Amazon fashion: On again, off again, on again... Until their inventory of the ad-free version sold out.
The 4/64 version has been consistently holding at $300, for the ad-free version. I've read a comment or two about someone getting the ad-free version on sale for $40 or $50 off, but I haven't seen such a sale. The ad-full version has the Amazon discount price, but that wasn't of interest to me.
I've also read comments stating that the 2/32 ad-free version has been at CostCo for $180, but I don't have a CostCo membership.
Oh, and that if you want to root the thing, you should get the version free of Amazon's ad platform.
My Nexus 5x bootlooped, and I ended up getting the 4/64 version of the G5+. Supposedly, there is a G5S+ version coming soon, with an upgraded camera package -- dual 13 megapixel cameras that enable some depth-of-field trickery and whatever else. The G5+ has a single 12 megapixel camera (as well as the "selfie" camera).
The G5S+ is supposedly launching in Europe this August, and in the U.S. at some unannounced time in the fall. Pricing's also not known, but some think both models will be offered concurrently, with the S's pricing a bit higher.
As for me, I needed something now, so I bought the G5+. I got frustrated with Amazon's pricing dance, and I figured 4/64 would provide a longer life as a second phone or experimental device. My purpose was/is to tide me over until the Pixel 2 launches, although I'm hesitant after my 5X experience. Thereafter, to have a backup device as well as one I can root and play with.
The G5+ is a decent phone. Decent IPS screen. Battery can go all day with moderate use, plus perhaps a bit more. Has a fingerprint sensor, making having a locked device more convenient (the whole unlocking "coercion" concern, aside).
The processor/GPU combination is not high end, but it's enough for email, browsing, Facebook, watching video, and the like.
The camera's ok. The Nexus 5X's takes more attractive pictures. The G5+'s gets rid of the momentary lag that both the 5X and the 6P exhibit when the "shutter" is triggered.
The Motorola camera app has a professional mode with significant control (ISO-equivalency, exposure control, etc.). One thing it doesn't seem to have is the ability to turn off taking photos at the screen's proportions. Essentially, it is discarding the top and bottom pixel lines built into the sensor, in order to match the screen's dimensions. I installed the open source, well-regarded app Open Camera to get around this. (Which it does, but I've been running into some typical single guy / small team project bugginess as I use it more.) Some of the Motorola app's pictures also exhibited some significant JPG-type low-quality distortion. (Perhaps it was lower light and/or moderate zoom, contributing.) I'm not sure, but maybe Open Camera does a bit better, in this regard.
So, I got into a pretty good ramble, here.
I'll be damned if I'm going to pay a grand for a phone. And if I did, it would have to be with a good warranty and some decent loss/damage/failure insurance (if affordable). And I'd need a guarantee of support. At least Apple devices tend to get good support for 3 - 4 years, unlike Android's crapshoot of too-often abaondon-ware.
I'll see where the Pixel 2 prices come in. Although, no SD card... And now no headphone jack...
True but even the best phone in the world couldn't reach the quality of a cheap dedicated camera. Megapixels don't count. Functions aside, it's all about the sensor, light, image distortion and noise. The smallest the sensor is, the more noisy (grainy) images will be due to the higher level of amplification needed (If your day photos are wonderful but night ones aren't that's the reason). To correct this phones should have large sensors, which is hard to do because there's no space to spare, but sadly they would also require larger and thicker lenses to avoid image distortion. All those requirements are incompatible with any phone form factor, so that at least today a 500 bucks phone is easily outperformed by a decent camera costing an order of magnitude less.
I don't think this can last. Smartphones are a commodity now. I just moved from a 5c to a Samsung A5. Android is a clunky piece of crap compared to iOS (Google can't get predictive text right?!), but I can't possibly justify paying hundreds of dollars more for a device that isn't really any more featureful. Sure, the iPhone would have a better camera, but most midrange Androids have cameras that are good enough now.
It will probably last in my opinion. Just look at cars. They are, for the most part, commodities too. A lot of people pay 2x-10x the price of the entry model. They all get you to from point A to point B. People will pay it, but possibly a smaller share of people.
Apple's first go at it failed trying to sell gold watches.
Maybe they will have better success with $10,000 iphones.
The problem is, there is only so much you can do to differentiate $10,000 iphone and $1,000 iphone from feature perspective, other than capacity, materials, and service.
IF you're driving $120,000 Mercedes, people know you drive a $120,000 Mercedes. It's not 3 times better than $40,000 Mercedes, but it is substantially better AND different in all aspects.
If Apple wants to charge $3,000-$5,000 for an iphone, they'll need to create a separate line, new name, new design, and new everything. And convince developers that it's worth their time developing software with functions exclusive to them.
Eh, let me know when I can connect my phone to the computer and have it mounted as a mass storage device, then I'll accept that the arguments are invalid.
Let me get a native crossplatform airdrop on android and I would consider switching back
I never want to plug in an iOS device. But, after you accept the iTunes thing if did plug it in as mass storage, you'll see that you can move arbitrary files to the app that can open them. Do you really want the extra storage or is there another particular use case you want that requires it as a mounted drive?
What do you mean by native airdrop? You can have whatever SSH/SMB/NFS server you want.
> is there another particular use case you want that requires it as a mounted drive
I don't want files to be per-application. I have various audiobook reading apps, music players, video playing apps, etc. I don't want to copy my music once per app, I want to put it on my phone and choose which app I want to play stuff with later on.
Samsung's default keyboard does a really bad job of guessing the correct word compared to an iPhone. (I didn't realize that it was a Samsung keyboard and not the default Android one when I wrote the original post.)
By Next iPhone, it means the iPhone 8 or iPhone Edition, what ever it will be named.
People often forget you can still buy what a normal upgrade cycle iPhone 7s. Assuming the leaks and rumours are correct, you still get the normal "S" upgrade, Faster SoC, better LTE Baseband, WiFi and Bluetooth improvement, likely a slightly better screen, glass Back, Better Front and Back Camera, along with Capacity bump, double the Storage for same price.
And the iPhone 8 is Apple's price discovery, how much will people paid for the best Apple could make, with limited capacity and volume. Personally I dont think $999 is that expensive considering an iPhone 7s Plus Mid tier would cost $869.
That is what Apple, and likely what the media is going to spin the story. Its ONLY $140 difference. And it is actually the wrong way to compare it to because even though it has a 5.8" screen, it has the size of an iPhone 7, which goes for $769 mid tier. We already knew from the firmware hacks there is likely a iPhone 8 Plus NEXT YEAR, same size with iPhone 7 Plus but with 6.x" Screen, likely starting at $1099.
Apple is doing an amazing job in the fight against techno-deflation. I just bought a new MacBook Pro yesterday with decent specs and holy jalapeños it's pricey. The irony for me is that I'd probably have bought an Apple Watch too if the MBP weren't so expensive.
I have the 15in MBP and wish I never did. I hate the keyboard and the touch bar and the fact that it seems like every app I like is moving to a subscription model. It is getting quite expensive using Apple anymore.
True, but I feel that lately Apple is cutting corners with parts. I'm using the new MBP to type this and the keyboard stinks and lately my spacebar has been sticky. The "need a dongle for everything" situation is a nightmare, too.
I'm feeling backed into a corner--Microsoft sucks, Apple sucks, Google has become untrustworthy and thus sucks. It's like all these tech companies are breaking it off you know where and we have no choice but to accept that.
I feel your pain. Luckily i'm typing this on the best macbook pro the 2015 model (that's not saying much). It even has a real escape key and a couple of ports. Still need a dongle to get a displayport output though. I installed Windows, as the best worst option, as the dumbing down of iOS..erm mac OS, is intolerable as a developer.
The Series 1 'Edition' watches were $10-17k and in gold. When Series 2 came out, they switched the gold to ceramic and they start at $1,249.
The gold ones were definitely for sale both online, in the shops, and in department stores (one of the big London department stores has an Apple Watch counter).
Personally, I think it was more of a marketing gimmick: send a few out to celebrities for some buzz in the fashion press, and get the tech press to write about how Apple are "going after the Rolex end of the watch market"... even if they don't sell many, it was good PR for the first series of watches.
And for consumers, they could try the gold one on in the shop, sigh that they don't have $10,000 and then buy the $300-$500 one.
Disregarding sound quality Beats headphones have reputation (at least from what I have heard) of being well built, being rather nice, well packaged and so on. They are also quite minimalist. Apple version of LV bag would look nothing like something an LV customer would buy.
That probably includes VAT. Sales tax isn't included in US pricing, since it varies by location quite a bit (believe it or not, sales tax is higher literally across the street from where I work than adjacent to where I work).
