Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/21/samsungs-foldable-phone-is-c.html
…
3 Likes
Early adopter tax. I am however looking forward to when folding reaches the mid-end. Larger screen with a regular footprint in my pants? I’m in.
7 Likes
Good. I saved $1980.
8 Likes
Old enough to remember when phones were free so, when I see these insane prices on smart phones I just have to laugh. Apple, Samsung, etc. have found the sucker pool.
4 Likes
Free as in beer, or as in speech? How old are you, exactly?
10 Likes
Why stop there? Don’t buy that 150 foot luxury yacht and you could save enough money to retire right now!
10 Likes
First time anyone has been excited shrinking the footprint in their pants.
5 Likes
Here’s another…
On the one hand, I hate these. On the other hand, I guess it’s a necessary step to get the Global Link from Earth: Final Conflict which I’ve wanted ever since I saw the show in the late 90’s.
(Preferably without hegemonic aliens carving up Earth politics, but I’m flexible if that’s the price.)
11 Likes
Oh come on. They are just called “phones” — you and I know that they are extremely powerful, capable mobile computers.
And who’s a sucker exactly? Anyone with a smart phone? That’s a whole lot of suckers who seem to find that spending $600-$1000 or so on a very powerful, mobile computer is worth it.
I think these days most people would agree one of these devices can last three years. That’s $1/day. That’s a lot less than people spend on their, say, Starbucks habit. Or any one of a million things. Why so judgemental? Do you own a smartphone? 
14 Likes
Well, that’s about how long the difficult to remove battery will last, but with a few simple tools and tutorials from iFixit or a trip to a phone repair specialist, you can get your pocket computer a new battery for a lot less than the cost of a new pocket computer.
6 Likes
Sony used to do this sort of thing, then abandon it; maybe things will be different now
Samsung’s always done this with their phones. They have a good history of experimenting, they don’t always hit the mark but i appreciate that they’re willing to try stuff out rather than always play it safe. Though of course i buy the normal phones, i don’t need any wacky features.
7 Likes
As of this time last year, the average age of an Apple device (basically, average age of iphones since everything else Apple sells is a rounding error on the total number of iphones sold) was four years, three months. There’s no reason to think that that number has done anything but go up since then.
4 Likes
Yes and Apple stock. I’m tired of their push into the lux phone market and wish they would just produce and sell a cheaper phone (pocket computer) for the rest of us.
6 Likes
I mean, they were never really free. Someone had to pay for them, and that someone was usually the customer in the form of higher monthly rates. The cost of the dumbphone was simply built into the monthly fee.
18 Likes
The average telephone “rental” in 1980 was $1.18 per month that’s damn close to being free.
1 Like
Oh, you mean the really dumb landline phones. Yeah, those were ridiculous. I remember when Bell finally was forced to allow consumers to buy their own landline phones. I convinced my mom to go to the new Phone Store (that’s what it was called) and buy a Slimline, which paid for itself in about a year or so, IIRC.
But I was really talking about the pre-smartphone era mobile phones from the late 90s through 2008 or so (when iPhone and Android started to take off). Apart from WinMo phones, which were fairly expensive, the Nokia/Samsung/Alcatel flip and chocolate bar phones were fairly inexpensive by today’s standards. Of course, they also couldn’t do much.
6 Likes
If you mean a land-line phone supplied by the phone company, they were “free” (paid for by your monthly service) but not exactly um, portable.
If you mean cellphones given away for “free” as a part of a monthly service contract, both Apple and Samsung both do that on a regular basis. Again, not free, but part of a two/three year contract agreement.
Either way, paying $500-$700 for something that’s a combination computer, phone, pager, camera, game system, music device, video player, etc etc etc that fits in your pocket isn’t exactly a sucker bet.
8 Likes
But, $1980.00 most certainly is for a phone that does nothing different from a $500-$700 iPhone except fold in the middle.
3 Likes
I am fine with buying a new iPhone model every 4-5 years or so. The total costs are getting way out of hand though, agreed. And those who want a new model every time are absolutely moronic for it.
4 Likes
I feel ya, but what about the XR? It gets great reviews, is very capable, and again, $750 divided by three or four years is really not a ton of money, especially as it’s very easy to set up a plan where the cost is spread over a couple years. The daily price of an XR (not including service of course) if you can keep it for four years (pretty possible, even potentially without a battery swap) is about 51 cents a day. Service on top of that is about $2/day.
Again, I would submit that versus the cost of, say, a Coca Cola bottle, a person is getting significantly more bang for the buck these days with a smartphone and LTE service. 
And I appreciate you engaging thoughtfully btw. 
3 Likes
