omnius
Android Enthusiast
I'm curious how everyone here feels about it. My personal feelings are that the way it's set up, it's highly profitable for the industry but very little savings are being passed down to the consumers.
If you look at the upper tier of newer smartphones, the cost of a new smartphone is averaging about $500-$700. In many countries this up front cost can be mitigated by carrier subsidizing that cost by you signing up for a 3 year contract term. But here's the rub. If your smartphone breaks down after the 1 year warranty, you're left with a good portion of your contract and no phone. The options left to you are to pay an early upgrade fee of around $300 and restarting your 3 years all over again.
Or you can buy another phone outright. However if you want to stay in the same tier of phone, this will cost you $500-700. Taking a look at entry level smartphones in the sub $300 range, you'll discover the specs are lower than a top tier phone a year older than a new entry level smartphone. Single core cpu, half the RAM, half the storage etc.
Or you can repair your current one, with no replacement phone given, taking a week, and paying around $100 for the repair with no guarantee it will go well the first time.
Taking an extended warranty to avoid all this will add another $100 to the cost of your phone.
I don't think it's very hard to immediately notice how common it is for smartphones to become screwed up after only 18 months or so when you spend any amount of time on boards like this and see all the malfunctioning phone posts. These are pretty delicate gadgets that get crammed in pockets, sit on hot cardock dashboards, dropped, and are subject to daily use wear and tear. I also heard an interesting comment from a store employee I was discussing this with, who told me that her store refers to the period of being after warranty, but before contract finishing as "the rough spot". I said "you guys actually have a term for it??" to which she said yes.
This entire state of affairs works extremely well to the industry's advantage. I obviously don't like it, but I will give credit where it's due, they have quite a clever thing going for themselves.
So what to do? The way I see it there are really only two choices here. You can either suck it up and resign yourself to possibly being on the hook for $500 - $700 every 18 months, or, you break the industry's cycle and stop buying upper tier phones and stick with the $300 entry level phones and avoid contracts. But wait, there's more. The only savings I will get from doing this will be saving a total of $300 on the cost of the phone. Because guess what? The cost of the monthly voice/text/data remains exactly the same whether I sign for 3 years or no contract at all! Like I said at the start, all of this is great for the industry, but sucks for me. Hey, I'm all for a company being profitable. But it seems to me that 100% of it is good for the industry, and 0% to the consumer's interests.
If you look at the upper tier of newer smartphones, the cost of a new smartphone is averaging about $500-$700. In many countries this up front cost can be mitigated by carrier subsidizing that cost by you signing up for a 3 year contract term. But here's the rub. If your smartphone breaks down after the 1 year warranty, you're left with a good portion of your contract and no phone. The options left to you are to pay an early upgrade fee of around $300 and restarting your 3 years all over again.
Or you can buy another phone outright. However if you want to stay in the same tier of phone, this will cost you $500-700. Taking a look at entry level smartphones in the sub $300 range, you'll discover the specs are lower than a top tier phone a year older than a new entry level smartphone. Single core cpu, half the RAM, half the storage etc.
Or you can repair your current one, with no replacement phone given, taking a week, and paying around $100 for the repair with no guarantee it will go well the first time.
Taking an extended warranty to avoid all this will add another $100 to the cost of your phone.
I don't think it's very hard to immediately notice how common it is for smartphones to become screwed up after only 18 months or so when you spend any amount of time on boards like this and see all the malfunctioning phone posts. These are pretty delicate gadgets that get crammed in pockets, sit on hot cardock dashboards, dropped, and are subject to daily use wear and tear. I also heard an interesting comment from a store employee I was discussing this with, who told me that her store refers to the period of being after warranty, but before contract finishing as "the rough spot". I said "you guys actually have a term for it??" to which she said yes.
This entire state of affairs works extremely well to the industry's advantage. I obviously don't like it, but I will give credit where it's due, they have quite a clever thing going for themselves.
So what to do? The way I see it there are really only two choices here. You can either suck it up and resign yourself to possibly being on the hook for $500 - $700 every 18 months, or, you break the industry's cycle and stop buying upper tier phones and stick with the $300 entry level phones and avoid contracts. But wait, there's more. The only savings I will get from doing this will be saving a total of $300 on the cost of the phone. Because guess what? The cost of the monthly voice/text/data remains exactly the same whether I sign for 3 years or no contract at all! Like I said at the start, all of this is great for the industry, but sucks for me. Hey, I'm all for a company being profitable. But it seems to me that 100% of it is good for the industry, and 0% to the consumer's interests.
. The phones are not a bad deal.