The way I read that title: Apple and Samsung stopped innovating, now sales aren’t growing, so it’s time for enshittification.
Samsung added a 10x telephoto lens and i was excited to finally get that over the regular 2x or 3x of the time.
Then they stopped making them and went back to 5x.
This phone still works great
A 10x zoom might tempt me to upgrade… Not much else would.
How good is the lens ?
Ive really enjoyed using it, pictures come out really nice. It helps to have something to steady yourself on though if you want the best outcome as your small movements move the window much more.
You should buy it. Every time. Fuck subscriptions.
some subscriptions are fine though, like email or a vpn.
you could argue there should be no need for a vpn but… it is what it is
Services as subscriptions: fine. They are ongoing agreements that require an unspecifiable amount of labor, it makes sense to pay as you go.
Subscription goods? Fuck that. If I am in posession of it and responsible for maintaining it in a specific state of operation and quality, I basically own it anyway.
Charging me monthly for a pocket-sized computer with the added stipulations that the seller gets to dictate what I’m allowed to do with it, probably installs spyware on it (on top of the OEM and OS spyware), and if I break it (or otherwise violate the terms of use) I have to buy it anyway and they still get to keep it? They’ve basically reinvented a mix of payphones and library PCs, but more invasive and more expensive
They’ve basically reinvented a mix of payphones and library PCs, but more invasive and more expensive
No this isn’t even the same thing. Library PC is made available to you for free (paid via taxes). Payphone was a bit a different breast, as they supposed to make phone service available at any place when before we had cellphones, although they were also available for free (you paid for making calls though).
Over here they want to remove ownership. Instead of owning a house, you rent an apartment, instead of owning a car you pay to use self driving one, instead of owning a movie or music (yes, I know) you pay for streaming service, and now you won’t even own the computer in your pocket.
Basically they want society where we don’t own anything and only pay subscription fees to live. This push toward that world is called technofeudalism. Only billionaires own things and we are just serfs at their mercy.
Lots of vpns claims are fake but whatever.
yeah i just wanna hide my ip from random websites, they don’t need to know my ip
i couldn’t care less about what vpn providers say, i don’t even know what my vpn provider (proton) “promises”.
Absolutely fucking not. Im not going to lease something that contains my private information ever.
You will own nothing and like it
Never do that. You should always fully own and control your communication and computation devices. It’s a matter of privacy.
Even if you buy an iPhone outright you don’t fully control it.
That’s why I don’t buy Apple products…
I waited 8 year to get a newer phoner that was better than my previous phone in all respects at the same price. And even then it was mostly a convenience upgrade because my old phone was still working well.
Why the hell would it be worth it to lease a phone?
It depends a lot on how heavily you use your phones. I’m a heavy user and my batteries degrade heavily in 2-3 years. That leads to overheating, poor performance, and of course poor battery life.
The cost of replacing a battery is high for most phones. Sometimes higher than buying a new phone at a similar level of performance.
I’m doing 1-2 battery cycles per day. A light user might go through battery cycles at a quarter of my rate, and would not have those problems.
Right to repair solves that, by mandating against designs which make simple replacements exorbitantly expensive for no good reason.
Was high. Europe changed the law <3
Seeing is believing, they probably find some loophole to fuck with the system.
They will try to male the battery in only compatible with onemodel or some kind like this.
Subscriptions were supposed to replace cable, then software, then heated seats, now phones. Funny how every innovation somehow ends with paying forever. If your business model needs me renting hardware I already carry everywhere, maybe the product isn’t improving fast enough to justify buying it?
If your current plan is to buy the latest and greatest phone today, sell it in two years, and then buy a new top of the line phone, then Apple’s new lease program looks like an attractive option. They’ve priced it such that, over the course of the lease, you end up paying about the cost of purchasing the phone minus its resale value. Leasing looks convenient because it saves you from having to find a buyer.
It also keeps phones out of the secondary market, which benefits Apple. Off lease phones are used for warranty replacements, or sold as refurbished through official storefronts instead of person to person.
Once Apple’s leasing program kills off a competing used phone market, they can also raise the cost of the lease to reflect that, which also benefits Apple over the longer term.
Apple would be stupid not to try leasing their phones.
There’s always going to be a robust used market for phones that were purchased outright, to be resold on a different cycle than every 2 years (plenty of rich people changing phones every year, and plenty of people replacing on a 3, 4, 5, or 6 year cycle). You can expect the market to basically settle on a curve where it depreciates along a predictable rate.
Leases don’t really change that, any more than leases changed the market for used cars, or even certified pre-owned by the same dealers and organized by the same manufacturers who sell new cars.
There will be times that the predefined lease terms will unexpectedly prove to be either beneficial or detrimental to the consumer. Sometimes external factors will affect the entire used market, like currency issues, or component pricing issues (imagine if RAM prices dramatically swing again for new devices in a way that affects the value of the already-sold devices out in the world), where the predefined lease prices turn into a windfall for someone. Like in 2021 or so when expiring car leases allows the lessee to buy out the car at the end of the lease for much cheaper than the car itself was worth.
It’s generally going to be a less than ideal financial decision to lease, but it also won’t collapse the used device market and it won’t be that far off the practice of selling your old phone when you buy a new one.
Yeah I generally switch every 5 years or so, and my old phone generally just rots away in a drawer. Leasing might actually make sense for use cases like mine (or not, I haven’t looked at the numbers). Might also give me less anxiety about accidentally scratching the thing.
They want a future in which only they own property, and everyone else has to rent even the freaking air.
Just like with cars. If you always have to have the latest and greatest, need to be seen with “the best”, replace your phone frequently then yes leasing is cheaper than buying. This would be stupid but people seem to do this
Fast fashion is trashy. But people will do whatever to make the illusion of affluence because that’s how some hope to get into the club.
With smartphones current prices and componants becoming more expensive they are realizing not a lot of people will buy a smartphone costing more than 1500 dollars. Especially when hardware is now good enough and people are starting to try to keep their phone as long as possible.
Making you rent your phone allow to hide how much it’s going to cost you and ensure them a steady cash income.
This!
I only buy hardware which supports installing free/libre operating systems and applications.
So, Android.
For now
No, Pixel.
I will go without. I will drag a PC and a mobile router everywhere I go before I rent a phone. Can these asshole corporate bullshitters just go to mars already so we can be free of them?
Last phone was an iPhone 13. Current is the 17.
I don’t game so unless something catastrophic happens I don’t see myself needing to get a new phone for a very long time.
I have no interest running “AI”, either.
See what amazon did to older working kindles. Is there a law that phone makers can’t just brick their devices when considered old enough? It doesn’t seem that way. Soon we will all revert back to phones as phones only.
Same. I upgraded bc my 13 was starting to show signs of age. I would’ve waiting until it catastrophically gained, but with the ai/chip crisis I figured there was no way future iPhones were going to be cheaper, so I got a 17. Looks like I made the right call
As former IT, most people seem to go from iphone 12/13 to 17 in the last year. Anecdotally, my wife and I went from S17s to $300 motorolas. My parents take the rotating yearly “upgrade” offer and seem fine with that
Depending on what moto does with graphene I may just need that instead.
