Never take seriously those who ridicule low income people for having a smartphone or laptop.
“If they’re so poor how did they buy an iPhone???”
Because they’re trying to escape poverty, not the 1700s, genius. If you think basic tech access is luxury, survive a month without it.
@QasimRashid I was poor.
It is a terrible financial advice to buy luxury premium tech products (lost/destroyed at an accident). There are more important things to spend money on.
Getting basic tech access to escape poverty is a straw man fallacy when comes to buying a luxury tier of tech.
Even if I'm not poor anymore. All phones I own(ed) cost less than half of an iPhone.
(With exception of Pixel 7, that I returned because it wasn't worth the more than double price of good enough phones.)
That’s almost certainly true for new iPhones, but second-hand ones are often a similar price to Android ones with the same specs and are far more likely to get security updates. Unless you’re able (and have enough time to) install a third-party ROM and keep it up to date, a second-hand iPhone is often the best bet for something that can run recent apps (banks love to drop support for old operating systems, so that they don’t carry any liability from phones being hacked) and still gets security updates.
In my region:
- New iPhones start at 600€.
- New decent Android phones with great camera cost 200€ to 300€.
- New good enough Android phones for strictly basic needs cost 150€.
- Pixel costs similarly to iPhone (same luxury tier)
When being poor. Risk of destroying thing by accident, or during manual labor, is NOT negligible.
It's more secure to buy a new basic-needs phone each single year, than to hope expensive iPhone will (mechanically) last 4 years.
Second hand iPhone 8s (which are still getting security updates and got an OS update in September) are under £100, and work with a pre-pay SIM that costs under £1/month, and I have never seen the local second-hand computer shop not have one in stock. There are Android phones for less, but almost none of them still get security updates, many of them run locked-down firmware so you can’t install anything else. We recently spent £60 on a second-hand Android tablet for a demo (doesn’t get security updates but we don’t care, it’s connected to a local WiFi to talk to an MQTT server to provide a UI for an embedded device). I’d been planning on getting an Android phone but the tablet was cheaper than any phones that they had in stock that ran a vaguely recent Android (i.e. one that I could target without jumping through lots of hoops).
That's not bad, actually.
For how long do iPhones get security updates?
From quick skim at local second-hand portal, searching iPhone offers below 200€:
- found mostly Phone SE 2020 or iPhone 11 (2019) or iPhone 12 (2020)
- conditions new/refurbished or good-condition second-hand
- ranged from 120€ to 200€ (probably depending on seller's hurry / patience), but mostly around 180€
The iPhone 8 was released 8 years ago and is still getting updates. Most cheap Android phones get them for 2-3 years, the expensive ones for a few years longer.
Enough people buy the latest and greatest iPhone and sell on their old one that the price for the older ones that still have a decent lifespan is not too high.
@david_chisnall @qasimrashid okay, so here we have:
- getting old iPhone under 150€ in great condition (maybe its last update),
- or new Android under 150€ (likely no update ever).
Hmm, that's dilemma. Both sound fine as 1-year lasting choices.
And, both have good cameras, nowadays.
Thank you. You changed my view - iPhones can be a cheap and good option.
I was quite fixated on my old knowledge/experience of iPhones being too expensive, even secondhand or one had to be lucky with secondhand.
@david_chisnall @qasimrashid however, I'm still quite surprised by the new learning, that iPhone can be cheap and yet good to great option.
I used iPhone 7 (company provided phone, not owned by me), and it had quite great camera.
So, later iPhones should have same or better cameras. Doesn't sound bad, actually.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.
Miroslav Kravec
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)