Smartphone sales down 22 percent in Q2, the worst performance in a decade::North American sales are bad for everyone, except, miraculously, Google.
They doubled the price while removing core features like headphone jacks and microSD.
The people who bought phones as a status symbol ran out of money and the people who are advanced users are sticking with their old phones that are simply better until planned obsolescence forces them to buy another older model.
I haven’t felt the headphone jack removal as much as I thought I would, though I’ve had a few sets of Bluetooth headphones for traveling since about 2014 or so
Good
Good. They should never have been that high anyways
deleted by creator
Exactly what I was coming to write. Who could have thought that rising notably the prices would have led to less sales?
You can still buy a Moto G for like $200 that is better than an old high-end phone in every way and runs Android like a champ. Only flaw is short support lifespan.
Phones is basically cheaper now. Features that only found on high end now on low end. SD 4 is insanely good (4g2 is an underclock 730). Very few reason to shell out 1000$+ for phones now
Phones are also much more mature of a product than 10 years ago. When the iPhone first came out every year was a major leap in core functionality. Now, everything is so good that it’s not that big of a deal if a phone is a couple years ago. Just like it’s not a big deal when a computer is a couple years old.
I told everyone that once contracts for cell phones were replaced with payment plans, companies would start gouging their customers with higher phone prices because the customers could now “afford” it.
Greedy ain’t the right word imo.
I don’t know why people still use the big carriers. Subsiding the phones and getting an upgrade every 2 years was the reason to use them. Now they just add the cost of the phone to your bill.
The brilliant thing is they’ve gone from “We’ll buy the phone, but there’s a $200 ETF” to “we won’t buy the phone, and there’s no ETF. But now if you cancel you owe us $1,000.”
If you think you’re not using “the big carriers” in the US I’ve got news for you: you are using the big carriers. They are all either owned or leasing bandwidth from the big carriers. It’s nothing more than an illusion of choice.
If they are cheaper or different in any meaningfully way, it’s still worth it. Not sure if would be considered an illusion of choice or not, unless you want to boycott them of course. Not American though so not sure how different they are.
But for example I am on a cheaper carrier owned for the most common carrier here in Spain which is quite expensive. And it’s cheap as fuck compared with the main one and unless you want their tv deal it has 99% of the same services for a fraction of the costs.
I’m using their towers, but paying 1/3rd the price. My point is why pay the premiumto use them directly if they took away the only advantage of doing so.
deleted by creator
Something something trust thermocline.
My new motorola has about 2 gigs of bloat that I can’t get rid of and I’m sure it’s worse on the newer phones.
Fairphone 5, just the basic Gapps (all deactivated), no other bloat.
(☞ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)☞
Did you get your phone from your carrier? In addition, some brands do that with cheaper phones. Can buy unlocked phones.
Maybe try Google Pixel or iPhones that have terms against pre-installing shit.
Yeah, thanks. It was from my carrier. I think my next phone will be a pixel, and then I’ll install my own OS.
Nice. In the rare chance that you haven’t heard of GrapheneOS, now you have.
Google and Samsung are winning and smaller vendors are being squeezed out.
Phone plateaued 5 years ago for the average user.
I have a one plus 6. I’m on it for hours everyday. Reading. Browsing. Listening. No gaming. Lots of pictures.
My online data ran out long before my phone data - for pictures.
Phone runs fast. No more updates so nothing changes on me anymore.
I have zero reason to update. Would I like a better camera? Sure. But not for 1200$ I don’t.
Could my battery last longer? Yeah. Sure. But I can replace it if I want for 20-40$
My next phone will probably be a refurbished last Gen phone. Nothing more then 400 I imagine.
I upgraded from a 7 to a 14 pro and while it doesn’t hang up on the newer OS as much (a problem the 7 developed over its lifetime), it’s not really an appreciably better experience overall. The camera is nicer.
On the 7 Pro, stuck on the oneplus navigation gestures, pop up front facing cam. Fully working phone, still no other phone to replace it when it comes to having a screen without a bump. And I can get a free phone through work, but there isn’t one I want yet…
I switched from the 7 pro to 10 pro just to double my storage and have a better camera. For actual use as a phone, there wasn’t a need to upgrade whatsoever.
Plus you can probably run stock Android on the op6 if you wanted to run Android 13
I’m using a Samsung Galaxy S10 for over three years now and I don’t see a reason why I should get a new one anytime soon.
I’m not really surprised, smartphones kinda hit this point of “good enough for most people’s purposes” 3-4y ago and short of an actual reason to upgrade like the 4g-5g switchover there isn’t a lot of incentive for most people to throw down $400-1k for a new phone every couple of years.
I would have happily kept my OnePlus 7T for a few more years if the network switchover didn’t require new hardware.
Personally I don’t need a faster smartphone at this point, if anything motivates me to buy a new one it’s usually better radios, better battery runtime and better cameras. The rest of the gewgaws don’t matter much for daily use.
Which phone did you upgrade to? I also have the 7T and quite happy with it except for brightness outdoors
I hit fleaBay and bought a used 9 Pro. All I really wanted out of the upgrade were newer radios (5g + AX wifi) and better cameras. I think I paid around $350, if my track record holds I’ll keep it for 2-3 years then do the same again for the same reasons. I’ve been halfway looking at a 10 Pro/T or an 11 model for better battery runtime (Snapdragon 888 is a bit of a battery hog for the performance) but I don’t really have a reason to upgrade yet.
Agreed
This market stagnation was what got me to buy a Fold. Every 3-5 years of the same size slabs, just imperceptibly “faster”. Then came something new finally. Same as my pixel 2xl, I’ll have this till the battery or screen starts to go.
It seemed the last incentive they were trying to get people to upgrade was throwing as many cameras as possible on the back. Companies need to try and innovate again and the folding screens is at least one way of them trying something new. Prices have also climbed dramatically so I’m not surprised people are bothering to upgrade.
Also I would add inflation went up, prices jumped. Meaning not so much free spending cash any more. People might have previously had the cash to update phone, just for sake of update even without it being necessary. Now days? People have way more important things they have to spend more money on.
It’s more tied to the change of the business model.
Phones used to be subsided by the plan and the 2 year contract lock in, so if you didn’t upgrade every cycle you were effectively leaving money on the table.
This is why the market accelerated so quickly compared to any other class of hardware.
As the 2 year contract fell out of favor (thanks largely to T-Mobile), you had 2 year heavily discounted payment plans tied to device trade in that took their place, but these were opt-in as opposed to the previous model which was built in to every contract.
While the economy was strong, the depreciation on your current device and effectively FOMO on maximizing its trade in value kept the system driven at similar numbers.
But as purses have tightened, suddenly the outlay on increasingly expensive devices with lower trade in values for past devices is a racket people are opting out of.
It was never really about features as opposed to status and reup indicators. Most of the rest of the world has more like 3 year phone replacement cycles for the past decade, and have been fine with the same feature parity per model year as US phones.
I’m honestly surprised the 2 year thing kept going as long as it did.
Honestly, how much better can they get? I love to have the latest gadgets as much as the next guy, but I’ve got bills and shit too.
Still rocking my Pixel 4a.
That phone is a great size.
I had one of those. Failed in the weirdest way: sound stopped working, even through Bluetooth. From googling, it sound like the bends the phone gets when sitting on it can damage the main board and the connection to the sound chip fails. Was shocked the phone could have a hardware failure of that type. I have learned zero lessons and still keep my phone in my back pocket.
Anyhow, it was a great phone but just a bit too narrow. The keyboard was uncomfortable. I don’t need these stupid supertall 20:9 stretched screens, but I need enough width to type. I miss 16:9 phones, my old Moto Z was the comfiest-typing phone screen ever.
I miss my Samsung S4 so much. That thing was amazing. It lasted like, 8 years or something, the longest by far of any of my phones.
Well… do we all need to change our perfectly fine, advanced and fast pocket computer every year just to have always the latest -> IMO No.
Good for the environment that it’s a bad business year.
Good
Oops, theu made last year’s phones too good.
Watch the planned obsele
