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Thanks Mr President for letting us enjoy higher phone prices. We absolutely love paying more for our phones. Why not 4 years? 5 years? What about ten years?

montzark 5y ago
So you'd prefer a phone without a warranty if it would be cheaper?
- KMnO4 5y ago
  I think the reaction is distrust that the manufacturers will play nice. If it costs them $20/phone average to warranty them for another 12 months, they may charge $50 more per sale. A similar thing happened in Canada. A few years ago, a law was passed that barred 3-year phone contracts (with a new max of 2 years). In retaliation, nearly all phone subsidies from carriers have stopped. Ie, there’s no such thing as “$0 phone on 3 year term” in Canada anymore.
  - belval 5y ago
    Not sure what region of Canada you are from, but as far as I can tell they just shifted from a contract model to a balance model where you amortize the cost of your phone using your monthly payments. In the end what changes if how transparent they are with pricing, before it was 60$/month with a brand new phone and 55$ if you brought your own device, now it's. 55$/month and you can bundle a phone for 5$ more. This is in Quebec.
  - foolmeonce 5y ago
    > nearly all phone subsidies from carriers have stopped. I find this great. The ability to differentiate on "free" phones was a barrier to competition on the service costs that allowed telecoms to avoid competitive pricing for decades. My concern with the Spanish law is that it seems to ensure a functional, repairable phone physically but there is not a realistic way to ensure essential security updates across all the software involved.
  - pydry 5y ago
    >there’s no such thing as “$0 phone on 3 year term” in Canada anymore. Why is that a bad thing? When carriers subsidize phones the price is inevitably higher overall. It's little different to those $1100 now or "$100 per month for 12 months" ads.
    - bennybob 5y ago
      Of course it is, they are financing your phone which costs money. You are paying extra for the risk, inflation and interest.
      - pydry 5y ago
        Except it doesn't cost that much. It's mostly profit margin. You're paying extra for the illusion of free.
    - cameronh90 5y ago
      My Pixel 2 was actually cheaper through EE in the UK than it was to buy it SIM free. It's never happened before or since.
      - pydry 5y ago
        When I worked in the travel industry some luxury hotels would agree to do deals where heavily discounted hotels would be bundled with flights. They wanted to sell at < £X without the appearance of having sold a premium product so cheaply. Bundling with the flight hid the cost. It's possible this happens occasionally for phones but I doubt it's common.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > In retaliation, nearly all phone subsidies from carriers have stopped. Ie, there’s no such thing as “$0 phone on 3 year term” in Canada anymore. It's not a 'subsidy'. It's just a payment plan. Why get your loan from your phone company? I don't get why people wanted this in the first place.
  - martin8412 5y ago
    Why is that a bad thing?
pydry 5y ago
Or less... Did you forget the time when Apple deliberately made old iPhones grind to a halt so people would run out and buy new ones?
- martin8412 5y ago
  Could that lie stop being perpetuated anytime soon? It was poorly communicated, but done for valid reasons.
  - pydry 5y ago
    As part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month: "Apple "committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine." https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 As you say, "just a misunderstanding". If it was genuinely done for the benefit of users they wouldn't have needed to hide what they were doing.
    - satyrnein 5y ago
      The word "hide" implies they intentionally concealed it, beyond just an "omission". To me, this is like games running at lower resolutions on older iPhones. Would that, too, require a disclosure?
      - pydry 5y ago
        I think a lot of people have never heard of the lightbulb conspiracy.
  - biaachmonkie 5y ago
    Lie? No Apple was fully aware of the power usage profiles of their devices and the power delivery profiles of their batteries and how those degrade over time. Apple chose, for a variety of reasons (cost savings, weight, size) to use a capacitor and battery combination that as the battery degraded with use over time would not be able to meet the instantaneous power delivery requirements of the phones and result in unreliable behavior. Instead of admitting their mistake and offering to replace peoples batteries or refund them or some other reasonable solution. They instead decided to sneak in a performance throttling software change to try and mitigate their design mistakes. I don't consider that "valid reasons".

montzark 5y ago

So you'd prefer a phone without a warranty if it would be cheaper?

KMnO4 5y ago
I think the reaction is distrust that the manufacturers will play nice. If it costs them $20/phone average to warranty them for another 12 months, they may charge $50 more per sale. A similar thing happened in Canada. A few years ago, a law was passed that barred 3-year phone contracts (with a new max of 2 years). In retaliation, nearly all phone subsidies from carriers have stopped. Ie, there’s no such thing as “$0 phone on 3 year term” in Canada anymore.
- belval 5y ago
  Not sure what region of Canada you are from, but as far as I can tell they just shifted from a contract model to a balance model where you amortize the cost of your phone using your monthly payments. In the end what changes if how transparent they are with pricing, before it was 60$/month with a brand new phone and 55$ if you brought your own device, now it's. 55$/month and you can bundle a phone for 5$ more. This is in Quebec.
- foolmeonce 5y ago
  > nearly all phone subsidies from carriers have stopped. I find this great. The ability to differentiate on "free" phones was a barrier to competition on the service costs that allowed telecoms to avoid competitive pricing for decades. My concern with the Spanish law is that it seems to ensure a functional, repairable phone physically but there is not a realistic way to ensure essential security updates across all the software involved.
- pydry 5y ago
  >there’s no such thing as “$0 phone on 3 year term” in Canada anymore. Why is that a bad thing? When carriers subsidize phones the price is inevitably higher overall. It's little different to those $1100 now or "$100 per month for 12 months" ads.
  - bennybob 5y ago
    Of course it is, they are financing your phone which costs money. You are paying extra for the risk, inflation and interest.
    - pydry 5y ago
      Except it doesn't cost that much. It's mostly profit margin. You're paying extra for the illusion of free.
  - cameronh90 5y ago
    My Pixel 2 was actually cheaper through EE in the UK than it was to buy it SIM free. It's never happened before or since.
    - pydry 5y ago
      When I worked in the travel industry some luxury hotels would agree to do deals where heavily discounted hotels would be bundled with flights. They wanted to sell at < £X without the appearance of having sold a premium product so cheaply. Bundling with the flight hid the cost. It's possible this happens occasionally for phones but I doubt it's common.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > In retaliation, nearly all phone subsidies from carriers have stopped. Ie, there’s no such thing as “$0 phone on 3 year term” in Canada anymore. It's not a 'subsidy'. It's just a payment plan. Why get your loan from your phone company? I don't get why people wanted this in the first place.
- martin8412 5y ago
  Why is that a bad thing?

pydry 5y ago

Or less... Did you forget the time when Apple deliberately made old iPhones grind to a halt so people would run out and buy new ones?

martin8412 5y ago
Could that lie stop being perpetuated anytime soon? It was poorly communicated, but done for valid reasons.
- pydry 5y ago
  As part of the agreement, Apple must display a notice on its French-language website for a month: "Apple "committed the crime of deceptive commercial practice by omission" and had agreed to pay the fine." https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724 As you say, "just a misunderstanding". If it was genuinely done for the benefit of users they wouldn't have needed to hide what they were doing.
  - satyrnein 5y ago
    The word "hide" implies they intentionally concealed it, beyond just an "omission". To me, this is like games running at lower resolutions on older iPhones. Would that, too, require a disclosure?
    - pydry 5y ago
      I think a lot of people have never heard of the lightbulb conspiracy.
- biaachmonkie 5y ago
  Lie? No Apple was fully aware of the power usage profiles of their devices and the power delivery profiles of their batteries and how those degrade over time. Apple chose, for a variety of reasons (cost savings, weight, size) to use a capacitor and battery combination that as the battery degraded with use over time would not be able to meet the instantaneous power delivery requirements of the phones and result in unreliable behavior. Instead of admitting their mistake and offering to replace peoples batteries or refund them or some other reasonable solution. They instead decided to sneak in a performance throttling software change to try and mitigate their design mistakes. I don't consider that "valid reasons".