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Taking inflation into account, a $599 iPhone in 2026 would have been $380 in 2007. Given that the actual launch price in 2007 was $499, that's a pretty hefty dr

Taking inflation into account, a $599 iPhone in 2026 would have been $380 in 2007. Given that the actual launch price in 2007 was $499, that's a pretty hefty drop.

thatfrenchguy 8mo ago
$499 with carrier subsidy too
- Dylan16807 8mo ago
  It didn't take much longer to get a 3G for that price with no subsidy.
Dylan16807 8mo ago
A technology doodad getting 25% cheaper in real terms over 15-20 years is about as far opposite as you can get from a hefty price drop.
- DVassallo 8mo ago
  It's also 10000% more capable too.
  - Dylan16807 8mo ago
    And OP wants a model that's somewhat less than a 10000% improvement.
  - array_key_first 8mo ago
    Sure, but new computers are 100,000x more capable and 1/10th the cost. If we look back far enough, it's 1/100th the cost. We could do better.
- gbear605 8mo ago
  Sure, it hasn’t crashed like the prices of televisions, or like computers did in the 80s and 90s. But it’s still meaningfully cheaper and of course much more capable (the original iPhone didn’t even launch with an App Store!).
- NoLinkToMe 8mo ago
  Come on, the iPhone had: - no app store - no video recording at all - no copy/paste function - no selfie camera - no GPS Just to name a few. I won't even go into things like touch/faceID, wireless charging, iCloud, any form of water resistance etc. And then in terms of the specs on what it did have that got better, processor, memory, storage, screen quality, battery life, camera, it's all orders of magnitude better. There really is no comparison. I mean look at the price of a digital camera, music player etc, hell even external battery pack in 2007, with the same specs as the iPhone today, and you'll easily find support for using the words 'hefty price drop'.
  - Dylan16807 8mo ago
    It took about three years to get all the features in your bulleted list. It's been another fifteen and a half years since. Touch/faceID is cheap, wireless charging is cheap, the free tier of iCloud is cheap, water resistance is cheap. Yes the specs have increased a ton. When asking for a model under $500, the idea would be giving up some of those specs. And that's clearly possible; even low end phones these days are a zillion times better than an original iPhone. And no I will not look at non-iPhone things when I'm evaluating whether iPhones underwent a hefty price drop. The cheapest iPhone these days is slightly cheaper than a first or second generation iPhone, and the best one is a lot more expensive.
    - NoLinkToMe 8mo ago
      Yes it was the iPhone 4 and it was $649, or $968 in today's money for 16gb of storage. That mean's today's cheapest iPhone is 40% cheaper than this base model you're referring to, as well as being tons better. If you don't think 40% is a hefty price drop then idk what to tell you. That's for the 16gb by the way, the next year's 64gb would've constituted a 53% price drop today. And that's still for a wildly different phone. You're getting way, way more value today. Longevity alone is easily twice as long, meaning the cost-per-use or cost-per-year can be halved, leading to >75% price drops. The idea Apple should be going even beyond that to make low-end new phones for a company that positions itself at the top of the market, is just silly. Apple has a long line of phones available for purchase on the secondary market, refurbished market, old-model market, is known to replace batteries 7 years after discontinuing the sale, and can be replaced with non-official batteries as well. Like you could literally buy an iPhone 12 on the secondary market for $50 and do a $39 battery replacement, or buy it fully refurbished for $150. You can buy a million android phones at any spec level. The idea that Apple should compete at this budget with its own old phones and android phones is a bad idea and the idea Apple entry level phones aren't much cheaper, have more longevity and have wildly better specs than before, is empirically not true. Is it technically possible for Apple to create a $400 phone that's still much better than the original iPhone? Obviously I agree with you that it is. Does it make sense for Apple to do it? Obviously not. In this thread you'll have people saying 60 hertz is ridiculous in 2026 on an iPhone 17, and people saying they're completely fine with iPhone 12 specs in 2026 and wanting to get more discounts for fewer specs (ignoring the fact you can indeed simply buy that iPhone 12). The remaining market is so slim it's not worth getting into, but you can't please everyone with a lineup of 5 phones.

Taking inflation into account, a $599 iPhone in 2026 would have been $380 in 2007. Given that the actual launch price in 2007 was $499, that's a pretty hefty drop.

thatfrenchguy 8mo ago

$499 with carrier subsidy too

Dylan16807 8mo ago
It didn't take much longer to get a 3G for that price with no subsidy.

Dylan16807 8mo ago

A technology doodad getting 25% cheaper in real terms over 15-20 years is about as far opposite as you can get from a hefty price drop.

DVassallo 8mo ago
It's also 10000% more capable too.
- Dylan16807 8mo ago
  And OP wants a model that's somewhat less than a 10000% improvement.
- array_key_first 8mo ago
  Sure, but new computers are 100,000x more capable and 1/10th the cost. If we look back far enough, it's 1/100th the cost. We could do better.
gbear605 8mo ago
Sure, it hasn’t crashed like the prices of televisions, or like computers did in the 80s and 90s. But it’s still meaningfully cheaper and of course much more capable (the original iPhone didn’t even launch with an App Store!).
NoLinkToMe 8mo ago
Come on, the iPhone had: - no app store - no video recording at all - no copy/paste function - no selfie camera - no GPS Just to name a few. I won't even go into things like touch/faceID, wireless charging, iCloud, any form of water resistance etc. And then in terms of the specs on what it did have that got better, processor, memory, storage, screen quality, battery life, camera, it's all orders of magnitude better. There really is no comparison. I mean look at the price of a digital camera, music player etc, hell even external battery pack in 2007, with the same specs as the iPhone today, and you'll easily find support for using the words 'hefty price drop'.
- Dylan16807 8mo ago
  It took about three years to get all the features in your bulleted list. It's been another fifteen and a half years since. Touch/faceID is cheap, wireless charging is cheap, the free tier of iCloud is cheap, water resistance is cheap. Yes the specs have increased a ton. When asking for a model under $500, the idea would be giving up some of those specs. And that's clearly possible; even low end phones these days are a zillion times better than an original iPhone. And no I will not look at non-iPhone things when I'm evaluating whether iPhones underwent a hefty price drop. The cheapest iPhone these days is slightly cheaper than a first or second generation iPhone, and the best one is a lot more expensive.
  - NoLinkToMe 8mo ago
    Yes it was the iPhone 4 and it was $649, or $968 in today's money for 16gb of storage. That mean's today's cheapest iPhone is 40% cheaper than this base model you're referring to, as well as being tons better. If you don't think 40% is a hefty price drop then idk what to tell you. That's for the 16gb by the way, the next year's 64gb would've constituted a 53% price drop today. And that's still for a wildly different phone. You're getting way, way more value today. Longevity alone is easily twice as long, meaning the cost-per-use or cost-per-year can be halved, leading to >75% price drops. The idea Apple should be going even beyond that to make low-end new phones for a company that positions itself at the top of the market, is just silly. Apple has a long line of phones available for purchase on the secondary market, refurbished market, old-model market, is known to replace batteries 7 years after discontinuing the sale, and can be replaced with non-official batteries as well. Like you could literally buy an iPhone 12 on the secondary market for $50 and do a $39 battery replacement, or buy it fully refurbished for $150. You can buy a million android phones at any spec level. The idea that Apple should compete at this budget with its own old phones and android phones is a bad idea and the idea Apple entry level phones aren't much cheaper, have more longevity and have wildly better specs than before, is empirically not true. Is it technically possible for Apple to create a $400 phone that's still much better than the original iPhone? Obviously I agree with you that it is. Does it make sense for Apple to do it? Obviously not. In this thread you'll have people saying 60 hertz is ridiculous in 2026 on an iPhone 17, and people saying they're completely fine with iPhone 12 specs in 2026 and wanting to get more discounts for fewer specs (ignoring the fact you can indeed simply buy that iPhone 12). The remaining market is so slim it's not worth getting into, but you can't please everyone with a lineup of 5 phones.