Originally Posted by
BigFlyer
...
I don't need a case - if I drop it and break the screen, I can get a new phone for $40, less than the deductible for Applecare.
I may well buy another flagship for the camera. But, an Iphone certainly does not have 17.5 times the functionality of this phone, but it does cost 17.5 times as much for the base model.
Are we all suckers for using expensive phones? Probably depends on how we use them. My cheapest smartphone was the iPhone 4 with a cost of about 120$/year (over 6 years) which makes it even cheaper than the original iPhone (only 2 years of usage) bought at the subsidised price (but jailbreaked). Both were absolutely destroyed when I stopped using them.
Friends start to stretch their phones over longer periods as well if their phone isn't broken. Some three years between new phones. Others 4 or 5 years. It's not a matter of can't afford but rather a matter of "the incremental progress does not justify spending yet again hundreds of $".