KRSW

Agree and disagree -- buying ANY of the flagship phones at their initial release price is for suckers.

You definitely DO NOT get what you pay for when it comes to the latest (and not necessarily greatest) tech. You're paying a serious premium, often to be a beta tester of a so-called premium product. Every single release of the iPhone has had widely-reported flaws.

Now, buying a flagship phone after it's taken a haircut on the price can make a lot of sense, especially if you're picking up a refurb or secondhand phone. BUT at that point, some of the Chinese phones (OnePlus, etc.) make a lot of sense. I don't know that I'd want to use any of the $40 (new) phones for any great length of time, but some of the Chinese phones are darn close to some of the flagship phones out there. For that matter, a $40 generic smartphone is a lot closer to the flagships than they used to be.

PTravel

Really? My old phone just died. What should I have bought, in your opinion.

I wouldn't own an iPhone if it was given to me. My experience with Android is very, very different.

Ah, I guess I don't really understand phones. I thought that different people need different phones at different times and for different reasons. Apparently, I was wrong. According to you, everyone has exactly the same needs and they can all be satisfied by a $40 generic smartphone. Thanks for clearing that up.

mrcamp

About 2 months ago, I bought my second ASUS device (Zenfone 3 deluxe 5.5" 64 GB/4GB RAM) when best buy had it on sale for $279. It's back to the normal price of $399 at most outfits now. Most of my friends have never taken a second look at an ASUS device until I told them mine was $279 on sale. I personally will never buy a flagship again. As long as the likes of ASUs, OnePlus, etc. keep putting out these mid-range devices at a good price.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...eluxe_5_5.html

gobluetwo

All this thread has demonstrated is that different people have different priorities. It's unfair to say one person is a "sucker" for buying a newly-released flagship phone when a cheaper/older/used/off-brand/etc. phone gets you some/most/all of the way there at some arbitrarily lower price.

One might have certain views on the evils of consumerism, disposable culture, and planned obsolescence; while others couldn't care less about those things.

And really, nobody actually NEEDS the latest and greatest electronical gadget in the sense that life/job/whatever will go on without it, but they might make a lot of sense based on what you want to accomplish and how much you're willing to pay.

pinniped

I've changed my answer on this several times in the past few years. In the subsidized world, I always took the newest flagship. (True even back when "flagship" simply meant "newest flip phone". ) I was grandfathered into a very good plan, so re-upping for 2 years seemed pretty low-risk.

Then I went through a round of experiments with midrange phones and was really underwhelmed. Apps didn't run well; the camera quality was so-so at best. I have now settled on approximately the "one-year-old flagship", the best phone available at about 1/2 its original list price with no strings attached on my mobile plan.

Basically, I've become accustomed to a very good smartphone camera, and this is the thing that seems to get compromised on low-end phones.

For kids, I buy older used phones.

gobluetwo

PTravel's challenge, of course, would be the fact that the "one-year-old flagship" that he could have considered to replace his dead Note 3 is the Note 7, about which nothing else needs to be said. For him, it would either have been the brand new Note 8 or... the 3 year old Note 4? or a non-Galaxy Note, like the S8+.

WIRunner

I've been using an HTC 10 and an iPhone SE for the bulk of this year (and the SE for most of last.) There is very little that I cannot do between them. Had an LG G6 for a few months (loved it), a iPhone 6s, and a Samsung GS8 for four days (hated it), but neither offered a dramatic improvement over the 10 or either of the iPhones. I've been quite happy with the SE's performance in battery life, call quality, reception, it seems to be my "go-to" phone.

Flagships are nice, but they're more of a status symbol these days. The mid-range devices ($250-400) seem to be the sweet spot lately. There is, again, little that they can't do just as well as a flagship. The push this year and last has been for 18:9 displays (or there about), and better cameras. The rest is software related.

I've used several "value" phones, there is a noticeable difference in display quality, battery life, GPS ability, and overall usability. Had one for a while to just use Waze with. Lasted about 3 months before it started to have problems. Not worth the hassle.

pinniped

Fair point. If I were a big-screen fan, it might be the one where I'd be tempted to pull the trigger on paying full retail. Maybe find a good trade-in deal if you can...

PTravel

Exactly. And I find the "note" feature very useful, which eliminates the S8+ (which would only save about $70, anyway).


You've kind of missed my point, but also illustrated it. Different people have different needs. This is what works for you, but would not necessarily work for me, just as what works for me would not necessarily work for you.

That may be true in the iPhone world, but it's not true in the Android world. The Samsung flagship, the Note 8, does things that I need that no other phone could do.

chipmaster

Generalizations are dangerous to make especially with electronics being the amazing thing being added into each new generation of products; Car, computer, phone, DSLR etc. For some things things are indeed incremental and for others there is true revolution, very personal and YMMV. Who are we to debate this personal choice, life is short, make sure you aren't compromising on what is important to you.

Now as to phone, an iPhone6plus, verus 7plus verus 8plus, I have my own opinion as well as a D3s/D4/D4sD5 or D800/D800e/D810/D850

nkedel

I can definitely think of one counter-example: mobile developers, but at that point unless they're independent/freelance, their employer is usually paying for the new ones -- and from my experience at a company doing that heavily, convincing people to test against older phones is often actually the hard part

WIRunner

There's going to be a few specialty phones that this will be the case. The core features of Android are pretty much the same.

PTravel

Well, that's always been true of Samsung's flagship phones, so I wouldn't necessarily call them "specialty phones." The core features of Android are pretty much the same in the sense that Android is an OS, just like Windows or Linux are OSes. Two distinguishing factors, however, are CPU and internal memory. A fast quad-core CPU is going to result in a phone that is considerably more responsive than one with a slower-clocked singe or double core CPU. You can also leave more programs open if you have more memory.

nkedel

The Note series have always been specialty phones; the Galaxy S series is the mainstream "flagship" model.

And while there have been a few other phones with a pen -- notably the semi-cheap LG Stylo series -- I'd agree that nobody else has done as good a job on the pen-related software (and probably won't until Google decides to get serious about native support.)

The margin there doesn't distinguish flagship models; there were 6GB, Octa-core models out well before the Note8 although 6GB of RAM is still uncommon. For a heavy enough user, going from 4GB to 6GB can make a big difference, but for the most part, the difference between 3GB and 4GB is still not going to be noticeable to most people (2GB, however, is pretty bad these days), and most of the better midrange phones are moving to 4GB.

There are a lot of gradations of CPU and GPU speed on phones; I haven't kept up on benchmarks enough to know if the generation difference between last generations top-of-the-line (e.g. Snapdragon 820/821) and this generation's (Snapdragon 835) actually matters. There IS a big difference between low-end quad cores and the older higher-clocked quad cores and present midrange hex-and-octa-cores.

Does anyone still sell a dual-core phone? The $40 Moto E4 that started this thread is already quad-core, albeit a low-clocked one. Top of the line CPUs are all 8 cores these days and plenty of midrange phones are 8 cores, with most of the rest 6.

PTravel

Well, I guess we've got different definitions of specialty phones. One thing that the Note 8 can do is operate as a credible full-screen windowing computer with a dedicated, Android OS. I'd agree that is a "specialty," primarily because no one else has a phone with a dedicated OS for this. As for a stylus, I guess I don't see it that way, given the wide variety of tablets that have stylus entry and the fact that the Note 8 is considered a "phablet" with features of both. It's just the first phablet to support a stylus internally.

I don't consider myself a heavy phone user. Other than skype, I don't run video on my phones (I use my tablet for the that). I certainly wouldn't edit video or photos on my phone and, for that matter, as far as photography goes, I have a good DSLR. My phone is my "emergency camera" if something comes up, though I will say that the Note 8 takes dramatically better photographs than the Note 3 that it replaced.

What I have noticed, though, is the Note 8 is much faster than my Note 3 -- it opens apps faster, works within the apps faster, and even seems more touch-responsive.

Yep. I just got a cheap phone for my wife on Amazon -- it was $59 with ads (she was insistent that she didn't mind), and is a dual-core Alcatel. For her purposes, it is ideal. All she does is phone, text and use the GPS, and she's very happy with it.