Are phones expensive or is it me?

Mobile phones are about the only things that hasn't gone up in price...

Remember back in 2004 my nokia 6600 smart phone cost me about £350 and my p900 smart phone cost about £450
 
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I guess it depends on what phone you go for, personally I think there's a lot of phones that are overpriced, like the iphone and some of the android devices. You can get a phone that does everything they do with slightly lesser spec for £120sh
 
There is a big difference between "over priced" and "expensive".
Yes the iPhone is expensive, yes the top-end HTC devices like the Desire are expensive.
However for what they can do, the technology inside etc they are certainly not over-priced.

If you only want to spend £20 on a phone then you'll get £20 worth of phone - it'll make calls and that is about it.
Spend more and you get a device that can do more.

Personally expensive as they are, I've found my Desire purchase worth every penny.
 
stoofa said:
However for what they can do, the technology inside etc they are certainly not over-priced.
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I don't believe that's a valid argument, can spend £120 on a great 2.1 android phone will all the same features but a little less performance. For me the premium is a little high, more than 3x as much for incremental benefits?

Thankfully we get the spread the cost and forget about it with contracts.
 
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No, In actual fact phones seem to have gone down in price in recent years.

My dumb phones used to cost the same as the Desire. Smartphones seem to have come down in price in recent years too.
 
The top end (ish) has stayed about the same I think. Contracts have gone way up though, this whole 18/24 month malarkey is a joke imo. I got both an N80 and N95 on launch on 12 month contracts @ £30pm, they were £400 phones easily.
 
Yeah I've always thought phones were expensive when you think of all the technology that's around us.
 
Skyfall said:
I don't believe that's a valid argument, can spend £120 on a great 2.1 android phone will all the same features but a little less performance. For me the premium is a little high, more than 3x as much for incremental benefits?
Click to expand...

The difference in build quality is immense. I still haven't found another android phone which feels as solid in my hand as my Milestone, and to me that's worth the premium alone, I like nice things! I don't think there is anything out there which is nicer to hold except possibly the Legend, but I've not held one yet.
 
Phones sold on PAYG in the UK are incredibly cheap because the market is so competative now that the networks subsidize the cost of the handset so that you can buy it cheaper.

Every PAYG phone sold from a network is sold at a loss basically. So in that respect phones are very cheap for what they do.

E.g. Where I work, we sell our cheapest PAYG phone at £9.99 but buy it in at £18 per unit.


Obviously it's different on cotract but you have to take into account the huge amount of fraud in the mobile phone industry. Many contracts are never paid for and there's a lot of fraudulent contracts being taken out in other peoples names from stolen details. That pushes prices and contract lengths up in addition to the cost of the handset itself.
 
I think they are too expensive.

I also hate contracts, carriers, and pretty much the whole mobile telecoms industry. It's nothing new of course, I just think it hasn't evolved enough.
 
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