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Why do they keep getting more expensive? $1299??
by selectodude 3y ago
Why do they keep getting more expensive? $1299??
- tmtvl 3y agoProbably because in the USA people aren't as willing to work for peanuts as people in the PRC?
- doublepg23 3y agoI believe the USA manufactured version is the “Liberty Phone” starting $2199. The regular Librem appears to be made in China. https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/ https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/
- perardi 3y agoWell, people in the PRC aren’t really working for peanuts nowadays either. They’re not making US/EU wages, but they ain’t working for free, either. China has been doing its own outsourcing of cheap labor to places like Vietnam. Labor is nowhere near the only factor that makes Chinese sources cheaper. It’s the ecosystem. There’s an entire industry that can do every possible thing, and they’re doing it all the time, so they’re flexible and configurable and can quickly spin out a variant on your standard-issue smartphone like it’s nothing. (Well, assuming Xi’s recent megalomania hasn’t slowly started to destroy all that…)
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Well, people in the PRC aren’t really working for peanuts nowadays either. They’re not making US/EU wages, but they ain’t working for free, either. Mate, forget about chinese wages being livable as an argument. First and foremost, US/EU workers aren't working in factories which have suicide nets on them, that alone shroud tell you everything. Secondly, workers in the US have it so good that they don't even want to work in semiconductor factories of TSMC (the better paid kind of skilled factories with weight on your resume), let alone consumer electronic factories where you're a disposable cog, least ones which need suicide nets to keep you from killing yourself after your 12h shift and living in a shipping container village.
- perardi 3y agoHey mate, you watched a documentary about Foxconn a decade ago! Good for you! Read some actual economic data. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167268121000329 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01672...
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoJust because Chinese labor is now statistically getting more expensive doesn't mean those Chinese workers making your iPhone or 'Black Friday impulse buy e-waste', have it that much better in terms of QoL that would get them even within spitting distance of western QoL.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoBecause suckers continue to pay. I have not paid that for my lifetime total of smart phones. Sure, my phone is out of date and some lesser stats. But for half the performance (which used to be called great performance at one time) I pay 5% the price.
- asddubs 3y agothe librem isn't really about great performance though, it's about specialization/niche use cases. it also doesn't benefit from economies of scale nearly as much
- charcircuit 3y agoIronically your cheap phone may have higher specs than the Librem 5.
- afavour 3y agoSad reflection of the realities of manufacturing, I suspect. They won’t ever achieve the kind of scale you’d need to make it cheaper. IMO it is what it is. Especially when you consider the hardware kill switches etc this is a niche product that the right small audience will pay $1.2k for.
- stonogo 3y agoTwo generations of pinephone disagree. I think the price is due to labor costs for software.
- asddubs 3y agopine also puts $0 into software though
- finitestateuni 3y agoAre you trying to contradict or agree with the post you replied to? That’s exactly what they are saying.
- asddubs 3y agoNeither, really, just spell out what that means more explicitly
- pengaru 3y agoI think pine64's business model is to pursue sales volume, but it's unclear to me if there's enough buyers of linux phones for that approach to be sustainable long-term. Maybe if they can keep refreshing their model with regular hardware upgrades, they can milk their base. Having a pine64 style competitor is problematic for Purism since it's cannibalizing their sales. It's likely contributing to the even higher prices needed just to keep the lights on. Which just creates more pressure diverting potential sales towards pine64. Would Purism even move more product if their prices better matched pine64's? Is there a queue of would-be librem5 buyers waiting that just can't stomach the price? How many people are there really who want a chunky phone with work-in-progress software, regardless of price? My prediction is after Purism implodes Pine64's prices start climbing.
- charcircuit 3y agoBecause they need to fund the refunds from previous people who bought it.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- teawrecks 3y agoThat's the price of a device that isn't subsidized by your data, is built using sustainable means, and is not yet scaled up for mass market.
- nologic01 3y agoI would say that this is good start to build on. A modern smartphone is a tremendous device. In convergent mode many people would not need a laptop or desktop. With replaceable parts and upgradeable open source software it could last a decade. Further, what exactly is a sane digital society without embedded surveillance worth in dollars? There is no reason why such phones shouldnt have a mass market and more approachable prices. The status quo is a market failure, not a law of nature.
- martin8412 3y agoNo.. This is the price of buying a phone from a company that doesn't know anything about hardware design, and nothing about software needed. They're a scam.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoYeah, it's pretty insane. Pixels with GrapheneOS are better value propositions and actually have superior security.