7 ms·

Is the iPhone se really luxury? If you are starting from the idea that every teen will have a smart phone, I think apple has blanketed the market with products

Is the iPhone se really luxury? If you are starting from the idea that every teen will have a smart phone, I think apple has blanketed the market with products at all the cost points.

Conan_Kudo 4y ago
It's pretty luxury nowadays. Decent smartphones go for less than half that cost, and good ones can be even cheaper. The accessibility and affordability of high quality mobile computing devices has risen across the board. But Apple is very much on the upper mid range to high end side of things.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  You can get older iPhones for almost free. And they work fully with iMessage
  - leetrout 4y ago
    Locally? Or is there a reputable place online?
    - YinLuck- 4y ago
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - est31 4y ago
      I've bought an used SE 2 from refurbed, but it's not available in the USA. There are competitors which do deliver to the USA, e.g. refurb.me: https://www.refurb.me/refurbished/iphone/iphone-se-2 https://www.refurb.me/refurbished/iphone/iphone-se-2 It's its own entire market. Generally I would suggest looking for bigger companies and ones which have policies to replace batteries if they are below a certain health level.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Best Buy has some: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-pre-owned-iphone-8-64gb-unlocked-space-gray/6334396.p?skuId=6334396 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-pre-owned-iphone-8-64gb-u...
nordsieck 4y ago
> Is the iPhone se really luxury? If you combine the SE with the local used market, it can get extremely inexpensive. I'm currently rocking an SEv2 that I got for $150. I'm not saying that $150 is cheap objectively, but in relation to Android phones - even used ones - it stands up pretty well. This is especially true since Apple supports phones for so long. If you're cost constrained, you can spread the cost of a phone over more years than a typical Android phone.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  But with Android you get much more features for the money. All Android phones are bezelless for instance, even the cheapest budget phone. The SE still rocks the iPhone 8 design from 2017 with all its drawbacks. Personally I don't use Apple because I have far too many things I can't do on it (mostly due to their restrictions in the app store, like using open PGP keys over NFC). But if I did I'd never consider the SE.
  - abledon 4y ago
    its the only iphone model with a physical front button. it will be my replacement come december!
    - nordsieck 4y ago
      > its the only iphone model with a physical front button. It's definitely a great feature if you wear a mask often. I find I only have trouble with it if my finger is wet.
      - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
        I wish Apple would bring back the fingerprint scan. Once my iPhone 8 plus bricks they won't sell me a new 8. Face scanning is too dystopian and violating for me, but any iPhone after 8 requires it. I tried buying the SE to resist this practice, but it's designed to be intentionally tiny and inconvenient to force us neo-Luddites into the current corpo-dystopian era
munk-a 4y ago
Is there a reason to allow a tech company to arbitrarily emphasize ostracization and bullying to increase their bottom line? I know there are common accusations of fan-boyism in both directions but I would hope this community can unite in calling out Apple over their messenger bullshit. Real stakeholders at Apple need to realize how damaging this profit optimization is.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  I agree with you but it's not damaging to Apple (much the opposite) so they'll continue to do it.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    That is why I'm specifically advocating for us calling them out on it - that makes it damaging to them.
    - sbuk 4y ago
      Here’s a crazy idea. Why not fix the problem at the source? Address the entitled behaviour of teenagers.
      - alpaca128 4y ago
        You mean the behaviour that ancient civilizations already used to complain about? I'd argue changing one UI color would be an easier first step.
      - munk-a 4y ago
        If you want to fix teenage rebellion and cliquishness I applaud your efforts. I certainly personally suffered from bullying when I was a teenager over my clothes and haircut and pretty much every other facet of my person so if you can come up with a way for no one to ever endure it again I'd celebrate your achievement. Humanity hasn't managed to impart real empathy on teenagers in thousands of years of existence - we have accounts of rebellious teens from Rome so I assume it's not an easy fix. So, maybe instead of focusing on bullying we can just focus on punishing companies that profit from bullying.
michaelmrose 4y ago
The average worldwide cost of a smartphone is ~$300. Android phones can be bought new in box for $50-$170. The iphone SE which is basically last years model starts at $429 and comes without the power bring which allows you to plug into an outlet which costs an additional $18. That is iphones start at a cost more than the majority spend on a phone admittedly worldwide but that isn't what I call all cost points.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > The iphone SE which is basically last years model The iphone SE is not last year's mode. It's an iPhone 8 body (including camera) with the current CPU. For example, the SEv3 came out this year and has the same CPU as the iPhone 13 which came out at the same time.
  - est31 4y ago
    Yeah the SE is probably the fastest iphone model there is because the CPU is top notch while the screen resolution is smaller, so rendering is less complex computationally.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      I don’t think that any iphone model has trouble with rendering, so it is likely not a bottleneck. Nonetheless, it is an insanely fast phone 2-3 generations ahead of current top android chips.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  The Apple website prices only reflect the top end of the iPhone market. The iPhone SE 2nd generation is still sold new directly from low price/prepaid carriers for under half that price (right now $189 on the Tracfone website for example, probably even cheaper elsewhere). Compare that to new Android phones in the same price range which often are loaded with adware/spyware apps that cannot be uninstalled, and blocked from all security/software updates, the longevity makes an older SE competitive with the cheapest 3rd world country android phones in the long term, and with performance that exceeds even the highest end Android phones because of a better cpu.
retrac 4y ago
A new unlocked iPhone 13 Mini device is $850 in Canada. I can buy an unlocked Android smartphone for under $80 that'll do what I need. Though I splurged and spent just under $200 on my last phone. Something that costs 4x as much as a decent mid-range model that will meet most people's needs is luxury. Most people do not purchase phones and service plans the way I do (separately - I buy an unlocked device up-front then use it with my preferred carrier). So they probably don't think about it like that. It's just an extra $30 a month on their bill for the lease. That really starts to add up, though.
- reiichiroh 4y ago
  The 128GB Samsung S20FE is $475 CAD today
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    Well you’re paying for the Samsung brand I guess. There are plenty of cheap and usable Android phones.
  - LorenDB 4y ago
    I own a Moto G Stylus 5G (256 GB) from 2021 that I paid $240 USD ($330 CAD) for on Amazon earlier this year.
- givemeethekeys 4y ago
  > A new After having owned a what was already considered 'old' used iPhone for three years, I finally bought a new iPhone, which I expect to use for the next five years.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    FWIW - my 5-year-old "original" SE, which was Apple's cheapest phone when I bought it, finally stopped supporting the new iOS version early this month.
tuatoru 4y ago
Anything that has 87% of the market is by definition mass-market. Edit: Back in the '90s, PC Magazine had a saying, "the PC you want costs $3,000". This figure was fairly stable despite the improvement in PCs' performance over the decade. By this standard, and considering that as well as a PC it's a phone, a camera, an atlas and an encyclopedia, a TV and a music player, the iPhone doesn't seem too much like a luxury.
- elif 4y ago
  87% of the children* I wouldn't call Finding Nemo or it's current equivalent mass market even though I have no doubt 87% of children have seen <<insert cultural movie I probably am missing by a generation or two>>.
  - jacobr1 4y ago
    Why not? A "mass-market" paperback book means unit sales on the order of 100k/year What level of market penetration would you expect? I would argue that most popular products still have a target vertical.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    You don't think finding nemo is mass market?
    - elif 4y ago
      I would call 'people under 10' to be a targeted market. And it seems Wikipedia agrees: "The mass market differs from the niche market in that the former focuses on consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds with no identifiable preferences"
- ghaff 4y ago
  "Machrone's Law" as I recall had a $5K price point. And, yes, it held until probably sometime in the 2000s. Yes, PCs were pretty expensive if you consider the PC you "wanted" was probably close to $10K in today's dollars.
heavyset_go 4y ago
You can walk into a prepaid wireless store and grab a new Android phone for $20.
- Huh1337 4y ago
  You ever tried that? It's a horrible experience. I love Android but you definitely need to spend much more to get something out of it. My advice is to get a second hand Samsung flagship - I have S9+, that's a great phone you can get for $200 - but don't go for anything less, you'll be very sorry if you do.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    A $20 Android phone is better than nothing when you're already struggling to pay bills and raise children. That's the reality many people face.
    - Huh1337 4y ago
      No, it's so bad it's better to have nothing for a while, save some money and then buy a better phone. These phones really are so bad. Give it a go. Usually it's a horrible mess of Chinese tracking code, shitware apps you can't uninstall, and it won't be getting any system updates in a year. Buy an older flagship second hand phone for $20, that's going to be much better experience than a new $20 one, even if it's 5+ years old and doesn't look good anymore.
      - heavyset_go 4y ago
        It is when you need a phone to run apps to do your job or for simple things like banking. Talked to a pest control guy who works for a large company, and he needs a smartphone to do his job. He is quite literally managed through an app, needs it to check-in to work, for time sheets, find out where the next customer lives etc. Someone like that cannot go without a smartphone, requirements like that are leaking into low-level service and retail jobs, now.

Is the iPhone se really luxury? If you are starting from the idea that every teen will have a smart phone, I think apple has blanketed the market with products at all the cost points.

Conan_Kudo 4y ago

It's pretty luxury nowadays. Decent smartphones go for less than half that cost, and good ones can be even cheaper. The accessibility and affordability of high quality mobile computing devices has risen across the board. But Apple is very much on the upper mid range to high end side of things.

Gigachad 4y ago
You can get older iPhones for almost free. And they work fully with iMessage
- leetrout 4y ago
  Locally? Or is there a reputable place online?
  - YinLuck- 4y ago
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - est31 4y ago
    I've bought an used SE 2 from refurbed, but it's not available in the USA. There are competitors which do deliver to the USA, e.g. refurb.me: https://www.refurb.me/refurbished/iphone/iphone-se-2 https://www.refurb.me/refurbished/iphone/iphone-se-2 It's its own entire market. Generally I would suggest looking for bigger companies and ones which have policies to replace batteries if they are below a certain health level.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Best Buy has some: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-pre-owned-iphone-8-64gb-unlocked-space-gray/6334396.p?skuId=6334396 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/apple-pre-owned-iphone-8-64gb-u...

nordsieck 4y ago

> Is the iPhone se really luxury? If you combine the SE with the local used market, it can get extremely inexpensive. I'm currently rocking an SEv2 that I got for $150. I'm not saying that $150 is cheap objectively, but in relation to Android phones - even used ones - it stands up pretty well. This is especially true since Apple supports phones for so long. If you're cost constrained, you can spread the cost of a phone over more years than a typical Android phone.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
But with Android you get much more features for the money. All Android phones are bezelless for instance, even the cheapest budget phone. The SE still rocks the iPhone 8 design from 2017 with all its drawbacks. Personally I don't use Apple because I have far too many things I can't do on it (mostly due to their restrictions in the app store, like using open PGP keys over NFC). But if I did I'd never consider the SE.
- abledon 4y ago
  its the only iphone model with a physical front button. it will be my replacement come december!
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > its the only iphone model with a physical front button. It's definitely a great feature if you wear a mask often. I find I only have trouble with it if my finger is wet.
    - TurkishPoptart 4y ago
      I wish Apple would bring back the fingerprint scan. Once my iPhone 8 plus bricks they won't sell me a new 8. Face scanning is too dystopian and violating for me, but any iPhone after 8 requires it. I tried buying the SE to resist this practice, but it's designed to be intentionally tiny and inconvenient to force us neo-Luddites into the current corpo-dystopian era

munk-a 4y ago

Is there a reason to allow a tech company to arbitrarily emphasize ostracization and bullying to increase their bottom line? I know there are common accusations of fan-boyism in both directions but I would hope this community can unite in calling out Apple over their messenger bullshit. Real stakeholders at Apple need to realize how damaging this profit optimization is.

cercatrova 4y ago
I agree with you but it's not damaging to Apple (much the opposite) so they'll continue to do it.
- munk-a 4y ago
  That is why I'm specifically advocating for us calling them out on it - that makes it damaging to them.
  - sbuk 4y ago
    Here’s a crazy idea. Why not fix the problem at the source? Address the entitled behaviour of teenagers.
    - alpaca128 4y ago
      You mean the behaviour that ancient civilizations already used to complain about? I'd argue changing one UI color would be an easier first step.
    - munk-a 4y ago
      If you want to fix teenage rebellion and cliquishness I applaud your efforts. I certainly personally suffered from bullying when I was a teenager over my clothes and haircut and pretty much every other facet of my person so if you can come up with a way for no one to ever endure it again I'd celebrate your achievement. Humanity hasn't managed to impart real empathy on teenagers in thousands of years of existence - we have accounts of rebellious teens from Rome so I assume it's not an easy fix. So, maybe instead of focusing on bullying we can just focus on punishing companies that profit from bullying.

michaelmrose 4y ago

The average worldwide cost of a smartphone is ~$300. Android phones can be bought new in box for $50-$170. The iphone SE which is basically last years model starts at $429 and comes without the power bring which allows you to plug into an outlet which costs an additional $18. That is iphones start at a cost more than the majority spend on a phone admittedly worldwide but that isn't what I call all cost points.

nordsieck 4y ago
> The iphone SE which is basically last years model The iphone SE is not last year's mode. It's an iPhone 8 body (including camera) with the current CPU. For example, the SEv3 came out this year and has the same CPU as the iPhone 13 which came out at the same time.
- est31 4y ago
  Yeah the SE is probably the fastest iphone model there is because the CPU is top notch while the screen resolution is smaller, so rendering is less complex computationally.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    I don’t think that any iphone model has trouble with rendering, so it is likely not a bottleneck. Nonetheless, it is an insanely fast phone 2-3 generations ahead of current top android chips.
_yb2s 4y ago
The Apple website prices only reflect the top end of the iPhone market. The iPhone SE 2nd generation is still sold new directly from low price/prepaid carriers for under half that price (right now $189 on the Tracfone website for example, probably even cheaper elsewhere). Compare that to new Android phones in the same price range which often are loaded with adware/spyware apps that cannot be uninstalled, and blocked from all security/software updates, the longevity makes an older SE competitive with the cheapest 3rd world country android phones in the long term, and with performance that exceeds even the highest end Android phones because of a better cpu.

retrac 4y ago

A new unlocked iPhone 13 Mini device is $850 in Canada. I can buy an unlocked Android smartphone for under $80 that'll do what I need. Though I splurged and spent just under $200 on my last phone. Something that costs 4x as much as a decent mid-range model that will meet most people's needs is luxury. Most people do not purchase phones and service plans the way I do (separately - I buy an unlocked device up-front then use it with my preferred carrier). So they probably don't think about it like that. It's just an extra $30 a month on their bill for the lease. That really starts to add up, though.

reiichiroh 4y ago
The 128GB Samsung S20FE is $475 CAD today
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  Well you’re paying for the Samsung brand I guess. There are plenty of cheap and usable Android phones.
- LorenDB 4y ago
  I own a Moto G Stylus 5G (256 GB) from 2021 that I paid $240 USD ($330 CAD) for on Amazon earlier this year.
givemeethekeys 4y ago
> A new After having owned a what was already considered 'old' used iPhone for three years, I finally bought a new iPhone, which I expect to use for the next five years.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  FWIW - my 5-year-old "original" SE, which was Apple's cheapest phone when I bought it, finally stopped supporting the new iOS version early this month.

tuatoru 4y ago

Anything that has 87% of the market is by definition mass-market. Edit: Back in the '90s, PC Magazine had a saying, "the PC you want costs $3,000". This figure was fairly stable despite the improvement in PCs' performance over the decade. By this standard, and considering that as well as a PC it's a phone, a camera, an atlas and an encyclopedia, a TV and a music player, the iPhone doesn't seem too much like a luxury.

elif 4y ago
87% of the children* I wouldn't call Finding Nemo or it's current equivalent mass market even though I have no doubt 87% of children have seen <<insert cultural movie I probably am missing by a generation or two>>.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  Why not? A "mass-market" paperback book means unit sales on the order of 100k/year What level of market penetration would you expect? I would argue that most popular products still have a target vertical.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  You don't think finding nemo is mass market?
  - elif 4y ago
    I would call 'people under 10' to be a targeted market. And it seems Wikipedia agrees: "The mass market differs from the niche market in that the former focuses on consumers with a wide variety of backgrounds with no identifiable preferences"
ghaff 4y ago
"Machrone's Law" as I recall had a $5K price point. And, yes, it held until probably sometime in the 2000s. Yes, PCs were pretty expensive if you consider the PC you "wanted" was probably close to $10K in today's dollars.

heavyset_go 4y ago

You can walk into a prepaid wireless store and grab a new Android phone for $20.

Huh1337 4y ago
You ever tried that? It's a horrible experience. I love Android but you definitely need to spend much more to get something out of it. My advice is to get a second hand Samsung flagship - I have S9+, that's a great phone you can get for $200 - but don't go for anything less, you'll be very sorry if you do.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  A $20 Android phone is better than nothing when you're already struggling to pay bills and raise children. That's the reality many people face.
  - Huh1337 4y ago
    No, it's so bad it's better to have nothing for a while, save some money and then buy a better phone. These phones really are so bad. Give it a go. Usually it's a horrible mess of Chinese tracking code, shitware apps you can't uninstall, and it won't be getting any system updates in a year. Buy an older flagship second hand phone for $20, that's going to be much better experience than a new $20 one, even if it's 5+ years old and doesn't look good anymore.
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      It is when you need a phone to run apps to do your job or for simple things like banking. Talked to a pest control guy who works for a large company, and he needs a smartphone to do his job. He is quite literally managed through an app, needs it to check-in to work, for time sheets, find out where the next customer lives etc. Someone like that cannot go without a smartphone, requirements like that are leaking into low-level service and retail jobs, now.