I had a ZTE Monte Carlo and used it for 3 years. It's surprisingly durable as a device. Everything works and there're minimal physical damage after my careless use for 3 years. Whereas my other Chinese brand phone (Umi) had more and more problems as it wears out just 1 year after.
I'm currently rocking the indestructible, inexhaustible nokia 105 (phone flashlight ftw), but next year when I go east to seek my fortune on the continent I've accepted that a smartphone and associated nightly charging ritual will become essential.
What would HN recommend as a cheap, durable android device? These ZTE things look pretty good...
Also, what happened to those ultra cheap windows mobile devices targeted at "emerging markets?"
I have Moto G. Software updates are fairly regular, but I still switched to Cyanogenmod. I'd say there isn't much difference between CM and stock android. You can tether with CM without worrying about telco tethering blocks, something that doesn't work on stock android
"You can tether with CM without worrying about telco tethering blocks, something that doesn't work on stock android"
Doesn't that depend on your carrier? IIRC some carriers detect tethering by looking for packets with different TTL values (which would represent different devices' defaults, or indicate an extra decrement as the packet went through the phone), or inspecting HTTP User-Agent.
I was unable to replicate his results on my Nexus 5 running AOSP. This behavior has possibly changed in newer versions of Android.
Also, DPI can be trivially bypassed by running all traffic from your phone through a VPN. All traffic, tethered or not, will be indistinguishable to your carrier.
Are you running the 'stock' Google-provided ROM, did you try an actual fresh installation? I'm running a clean AOSP ROM, without any kind of CM customizations.
Moto E or G - wide base, good support, replacement parts easily available and installable. My kids keep breaking my screen, and I can replace the screen assembly for 30 bucks (takes about 20 minutes).
We bought one for my future mother-in-law, because the Windows Phone tile system was easier for her to deal with than the Android home screen. Plus, when she dropped it in a puddle after a few months, no big deal.
I don't understand why these low cost Nokia's get so little love here in the U.S. My 520 was $50 a few years ago and is a rock solid piece of hardware. I guess it's the missing apps on Windows mobile?
This looks pretty sweet. And will run windows 10 apparently. Shame it doesn't go for less than £50 without a contract. Double the US price, as usual.
EDIT: Except it comes in 512mb and elusive 1gb RAM versions, with identical product names and prices, so I have to search around to get the good one. This is how it starts! Perhaps I don't need a smartphone...
It depends how much of an upgrade you're looking for. If you want a flagship-esque phone without the price the new $220 Moto G is an excellent pick. I absolutely love mine—it's fast, has a good battery and is much more stylish than other phones in the category.
The only thing keeping it back from being a flagship is the camera. Also possibly the 5.1 screen-size. But hey, I prefer the 5" screen over the 5.5" to 6" ones, so it works for me.
EDIT: Also, Motorola has almost no bloatware on the phones. The few apps they pre-install are actually quite good.
I got the Moto G 3rd generation a few weeks ago, and I really like it, so I second this recommendation.
My two main complaints are that you can't touch to wake (and there's no physical button on the face) and that I don't get an SMS notification when the phone is sleeping if the messaging app is already open to the person who sent the new message (which is very, very common for conversations).
If it's not the focused app, I get one like normal.
HTC Desire 610, 170USD. I don't know about durable yet, but at a quarter the price of a new iphone and a decent feature upgrade all around from a 5-year-old iphone 4, I'm happy.
I bought a Xiaomi Note 2 months ago and really happy with it. It's comparable to an iPhone in terms of quality and at least twice cheaper (~315$). The only downside is that you have to figure out how to install Google Play Store by yourself (and most online tutorials on how to do it are outdated).
ZTE is as big as Huawei. Both of ZTE and Huawei manufacture telecom equipments. Umi is a tiny company. That's why ZTE phone is much better than Umi phone.
As an app developer, that may make sense, but I don't think consumers see it that way at all. Perhaps that will change in the future, but the skins applied by HTC & Samsung, especially (Sony's & LG's aren't too overdone) make the UX completely different between brands, even if the underlying OS is the same. Add in the ability to use custom launchers and you very easily could end up with someone customizing their Android phone to the point where only they know how to use it.
I've been an Android user since forever but HTC's interface kept nagging me to configure the HTC Experience after every little update, even though I'd dismissed it over and over.
It's like that pop-up wondering if you'd like to take a survey while you're entering your shipping address during check out.
Sony's experience (at least the Xperia Z3) is far from vanilla and not in a good way. They replace pretty much every app and UI component with an inferior in-house version, and add a bunch of unremovable apps to try to sell you Sony stuff.
I hear the Z5 is better though so hopefully they're getting the message.
Boy do you have that right. I love how small that phone is and the hardware is good in general, but everything they've done with the software is cringeworthy. What are the options for wiping it completely?
Not really at the moment (although not as bad as Samsung). They are however moving more and more towards vanilla. They've just released a limited test release of a basically vanilla install for the xperia Z3 and if rumors are to believed then the new Z5 will be much more vanilla than any previous release
Moto G seems be my baseline for what I expect a good enough phone to be. That honor used to belong to the Galaxy S III US. Ver.
I expect others like ZTE and Alcatel will catch up at some point. But probably will also face some fearce competition from the quality direct-to-customer type companies like Xiaomi, OnePlus, Wileyfox.
Alcatel has a few very nicely designed and study phones. Cameras are pretty bad though. ZTE also has a few beautifully designed and polished models, especially the Nubia line, but the new Axon that launched in the US is pretty good too - it's sort of a OnePlus 2 competitor.
So what's the catch with the ZTE? Processor speed is boring. Is it the touch screen being unresponsive? Some software thing? Bad screen? Does it break easily?
I got a $60 ZTE firefox phone then switched to Android. Compared to my kid's Moto G it's smaller, feels thicker, has a lower-res screen, no selfie-cam, crappy forward-cam, and that's about it. It's pretty great for texting but if I used it for email (which I don't) I think I'd want a phone with a bigger, higher-res screen and the extra $100 for the G would be worth it.
I owned a ZTE device (a sub-$50 one at that) and aside from being a touch slower (relative to flagships) and having a terrible camera it was darn good.
To talk in particular about the Maven (per the article): 4.5" screen ("small"), 2100mAh battery (other similarly sized phones have 2500mAh), 1 GB of RAM (2 GM is typical in flagships), quad core 1.2GHz (flagships at that size have 2.5GHz quads), no wireless charging, no NFC, and the cameras are utterly terrible.
So there are some trade offs with the Maven and many ZTE phones in general. But the real question is: are they "good enough?" And to be frank, yes, they are. If someone cannot afford a $600 flagship, get a $60 ZTE and get 80% of the value for 10% of the price.
Between ZTE, Moto, and Nokia you can get a really nice phone for under $100 now.
Well yes and no. People keep saying this and in a way it's true but spec-wise, there are differences.
For example, Galaxy S4 launched more than 2 years ago, like 2.3 years or w/e. It has half an inch bigger screen, higher screen-to-body ratio (smaller bezels), twice the pixel density (the ZTE's is about 30% less than the 5 year old iphone 4's density for example, it's not insignificant).
Then the S4 had the Snapdragon 600, the ZTE has a 400. (i.e. S4 has a faster CPU and faster GPU, with all the ramifications you can imagine).
S4 has double the ram. That isn't as significant when making android vs ios comparisons (as they handle everything differently), but android vs android, double the ram (1 to 2) is a big deal.
S4's camera has almost 3x as many MP on the back and autofocus, better front camera, too, and higher resolution images and video.
And then there's all the S4 stuff that is useful to some, not to others. Like more sensors (temperature, humidity, gestures, wireless charging etc).
And lastly, 2600 mAh battery vs 2100.
Pretty similar for the 2012 Galaxy S3, too. The S2 from 2011 seems to actually be considerably worse in some areas, or equal, than the ZTE.
Of course it's pretty insane we're even making comparisons between phones that cost 10% the price 2-3 years ago. That's the significance. But I wouldn't say they're similar to 2 year old flagships.
And small enough to hold in my hand. I have a 4.7" screen on my phone and can barely use it one-handed. Granted I have tiny hands, but I don't get how people use some of these newer phones.
If they are preventing you from loading your own software, in my mind that lends credence to the idea that ZTE has some sort of spying capability (beyond the usual smartphone spying capabilities) that they really don't want to lose.
Implying that the Chinese are any more likely to be listening to the world's communications through their phones than the Americans are likely to be through their phones is farcical.
I'm not saying it can't be both. But American companies already own the mobile operating system space. If we're owned by the US, it's likely there. And those companies are most likely but playing ball with the Chinese as nicely as they ate with the Americans. And that's why backdoors built into Chinese hardware for Chinese spies seems at least plausible to me.
It will probably create a gap in phone prices. The under $100 phones, for people who pay the full price up-front and don't need anything too fancy. And the $450+ phones, for people who pay $20 a month for a phone installment purchase plan on something like AT&T Next.
IMO, a $300 phone doesn't really fit well in that world. Too pricey for an upfront purchase. And once you go monthly, most people aren't too price concious when comparing $15 per month vs $20 per month.
At the same time, when I'm buying a new phone (unlocked and up front) I don't go for the $100 phones but I do take price into account. Not that it does much for OEMs selling at those lower margins but it's a large part of why I buy $350-450 phones like the Nexus 5 or Moto X instead of the $650+ iPhone.
I think you nailed it on the installment plans though. Splitting up the cost and spreading it out makes a few hundred dollars less obvious (psychologically at least).
People are more price-conscious than you'd think. I mean, even Apple -- the brand that cater the most to the price-insensitive -- has always sold a decent number of its $550 and $450 phones.
The more people see real prices, even if they finance them, the more they're going to reconsider the definition of "splurging."
The $450 phone was $0 upfront, and the $550 phone was $100 upfront, but they all cost the same per month after that. Scrounging up $200 for a flagship $650 phone is tough for some people, even if they can pay the monthly cell phone bill.
Now, with financing, all the phones are $0 upfront. The $450 one is $19 per month, the $550 one is $23, and the $650 one is $27. So I'd wager they sell more of those flagships to people.
More than difficult, it just hurts to pay $650 for a phone.
I bought a moto g (~$160), I think it's a good balance for me. I want to be able to use the web, basically, and voice commands. But I don't need to play any games or use it for more than communication + entertainment when bored and away from home.
I also want it to be reliable, which is primarily battery life--which the Moto G is, clocking a 2+ days with my typical use.
Well the issue is people STILL won't see the bottom line price. They will get the monthly price. A LG G3 is $17 a month and an iPhone 6 is $25. People do horrible math and don't see that they are paying $200 more for an iPhone 6.
People will pay $5K more for an equivalent Toyota. It doesn't mean they are doing horrible math. Maybe they've sold a previous Toyota and realized, used, they bring in significantly more than the Chevy.
It may not be obvious if you surround yourself with engineers and programmers, but there are a whole lot of adults out there who can't do that kind of math in their head.
I would say that the majority of adults fall into that category (not knowing they're paying $200 extra, that is), and they all manage to take care of themselves, somehow.
"Horrible math" is definitely one explanation. But the other one is that many people use their cell phones for many hours a day and that phones enable everything they do. By that metric, spending a small amount of extra money spread over two years can make a lot of sense for anyone who is not dirt poor and struggling to eat.
I doubt it. As another poster pointed out, phone companies are still offering payment plans on new phones, so to an approximation all they're really offering is a bit more price transparency on the same old pricing model.
Also, let's be blunt: Users of Apple products aren't exactly the most price-sensitive consumers in the market. If anything, it'll just make them less likely to buy new phones like clockwork every two years. But if so then probably all smartphone manufacturers will experience something similar.
Apple's $650 flagship will probably continue to do fine. But the $450 phones really got a lot of mileage from being "free." If you were buying a phone in 2012 from a normal contract carrier, there really wasn't any way to pay less than $450, because $450 was $0.
With real pricing, a $350 phone is $100 less, and anyone who was considering buying a two-year-old phone to save $200 is probably very interested in saving another $100.
Did they? I have seen maybe 2 or 3 5c's in the wild ever, so I just assumed they had tanked on the market.
While it's certainly not a random sample, I commute by public transit so I do spend a lot of time watching a lot of people fiddle with their smartphones.
I think that depends on the pace at which Android is developing. Android hardware is incredibly low priced and there isn't a significant difference between iPhone and a mid range android phone in terms of hardware. If the quality of the OS experience is as good or better than Apple, then Apple marketshare will shrink eventually. They are still making a killing in terms of profit margin, and shifting a lot of units so as a company I'm sure Apple will continue to do well for a long time.
Android struggled for a long time with user experience and visual quality, but Android 5 and Material Design has been a huge win for them and I'm pretty sure that trajectory will continue.
At one point in time people said this about Japanese electronic vendors. Most of those companies are now dead.
You can point at the Japanese automakers as a counter-point. However, I caution that comparison because they rallied around quality. In the early-70s the major American automobile makers were both terrible quality and expensive. The Japanese were able to create the holy union of both a more reliable and cheaper automobile.
Could a Chinese market sprout up to make quality and cheap phone? Probably, but there's no real issue of all the phones are expensive, but terrible devices.
In the long run, yes, when 3D printing and robotics makes manufacturing viable anywhere again. In the short term, iPhone and chinese android brands will rule
I read quite a bit on my iPhone (several books a month) and watch nearly all my TV/videos on it. If you really like iOS as apposed to Android or Win10, then it isn't that hard to justify spending a few hundred more on a device that gets hours of use every single day. And will resell in 2 years for quite a bit more than the competition.
Personally, I don't see the price difference just in hardware or functionality, but in software and support.
When I buy a premium iPhone device, I pay for future years of security updates and optimizations. I also pay for kind, instant support online or in a network of certified resellers or Apple stores (if I'm lucky to be near one at least in EU).
Some people like to tinker with their devices or even have to from time to time when an app/service goes amok. I pay extra to not deal with that, because my time is worth more, then wasting it on things like that.
Selling phones with plans for a subsidized (when someone can't count the total cost) is one of the biggest multi-billion dolar "scams" I've seen for a while. Here (Europe) buying a pre-paid card and a phone separatly is the most cost effective option, isn't it the same in the States?
It is cheaper - I'm saving $1000 bucks on my iPhone over the course of two years, just by buying it unlocked and on a cheaper plan.
I can use it in other countries as well, just a matter of swapping the SIM card. Only downside is that my network provider won't replace my phone if something were to happen to it, but I'd imagine there are third party insurance providers in this space.
I think there are a few reasons why companies like Verizon are so big in the U.S.: they have a good network, they offer plenty of family plans, and they will replace your phone for what seems like subsidized rate under various conditions. Oh, and they advertise constantly.
But not being able to use my phone out of the country? Very limiting. Why would I pay more for that handicap as an individual enrollee?
you can get a 5GB prepaid plan as well, it's something like 15€ ($17) per month (in Germany, which is among the more expensive countries regarding mobile phone tariffs). And when you go over your cap, your speed gets reduced to 64kbit but you don't pay extra. Some prepaid providers then allow you to "reset" your data cap for another 3-5€.
Can only find that, 15 pound plan by giffgaff, 4gb limit on data and a 10p charge per minute for calling UK landlines.
Then there's their 'always on' which isn't unlimited, it's 6gb which to me is practically unlimited. After the 6gb your speeds get reduced to a fraction (which I like, and up to 6gb you can tether btw).
But if you look at the phone+plan deals giffgaff has, they're all slightly cheaper per month and with the phone included there's no upfront costs and it's still cheaper than buying the phone separately.
It does make sense of course if you can find a new-quality, second-hand phone, at a second-hand price, or if you travel so much that any plan no matter the pricing really makes little sense in the first place.
> Here (Europe) buying a pre-paid card and a phone separatly is the most cost effective option, isn't it the same in the States?
Where in Europe? In the Netherlands all the calculations I ran every 2 years showed anywhere from slight to major discounts for 2 year contracts paired with a phone, and that's without discounting future cash payments (or valuing money you're paying upfront, either way).
It's still beneficial to phone companies because it makes phones look cheaper than they actually are ($30 a month feels more doable than $720 upfront) and so it's probably easier to sell a $30 a month cost for 2 years than selling a $720 cost even though (ignoring time value of money) they're the same.
And then if you add say a $20 phone plan, it's basically: want to pay $50 a month, or $30 a month and pay $720 now? The latter is probably easier to swallow for most and easier to sell, but that's of course entirely different from being a scam.
So for example, the Netherlands. Apple's shop sells the iphone for 700 euros. KPN (one of the 3 networks) has a one-time 53 euro, 2 year 54 euro plan, so 56 euros per month on average and the phone & plan is included.
A similar plan with the same KPN is €32.50. Add that to the 700 euro cost of the phone over 24 months (€29) and you're at 62 euros, vs 56 euros, more than 140 euros of discount and that's without valuing the financial/convenience value of not having to pay 700 euros upfront.
And this is literally the first, standard plan I looked into, no cherrypicking. (5gb a month plan, no limit calling/texting). Perhaps you could find different results but I've, purely as part of my buying decisions when I bought my own phone, ran these calculations here about every year or every two years at different carriers and it's consistent. So I'd say, it depends on the country.
As for prepaid, it's absolutely horrible here in the Netherlands. It's 30c per minute for calling, 16c per text, 25c per megabyte. Not kidding. That's KPN by the way, the same that offers the above plans. That means if you call say 300 minutes per month, that's 90 euros already. And that's just a little over calling 1 hour per week. Call 30 minutes per week and it's 36 euros. Add a 700 euro iPhone and you're already well over any KPN plan you can get, and you haven't used any data or texts yet. The 5 gigabytes of data the plan has would cost you 1250 euros per month if used in prepaid. Even using just 500 megabytes per month (my plan 5 years ago) would cost you 125 euros per month, prepaid.
KPN's prepaid is disproportionately shitty though, it's meant for old people really. Like my grandfather has it and he mostly just calls for cabs, emergencies etc. T-Mobile's rate in the Netherlands is more sensible, but still 5c per megabyte. A 1 gigabyte monthly data usage still costs you 50 euros, but such a 1 gigabyte plan would cost you less than 20 euros with minutes included. Prepaid here is never, ever a good option, unless you're an extremely light user like my grandfather, or someone who travels tons and doesn't return (as you can freeze plans for vacations etc).
In Belgium BASE, which is owned by KPN, do a reasonable deal compared to the others with BASE 0. Its technically a monthly invoiced plan but works as a pay as you go card - you only get charged for what you use. Its basically the same price as any of the "outside the bundle" costs for their other plans. If you either use phone calls/internet/text infrequently or highly variable it's very interesting.
Interestingly also in Belgium there is legal requirement that the phone company evaluates your bill every X months and notifies you if you could save money by moving to a different plan. Invariably I used to always be recommended BASE 0 due to my highly variable usage.
I think the UK had a similar thing from O2 but I don't remember if it was a legal requirement. It could be a European thing.
Here (Europe) buying a pre-paid card and a phone separatly is the most cost effective option
Where? Europe is a big place. Also it depends very much on which phone you want.
Certainly last time I did the math in Sweden, if you wanted a new high end phone like the latest iPhone or Samsung S6 then it was basically always cheaper to get it on a two year contract compared to paying for the phone and getting a separate equivalent plan or per-paid card. On the other hand if you wanted a sub 100€ phone or where happy with a second hand phone, then getting a phone and pre-paid card or cheap monthly plan separately is almost always cheaper.
Except of course for Apple with 44% of the market in the US, which is increasing, and somewhere around 90% of the profit. Winning in Android is a race to the bottom where only the cheap survive, exactly what happened to Dell and its competitors in the PC market. And someday Google will decide it needs to actually make money from Android and that world will fork into Google Android Phone and the seven dwarf versions.
I don't think Google will ever try to make money directly off of licensing Android or selling phones. It's far more likely they'll continue to leverage it to bring users to their services.
I think the point where Google and consumers are misaligned would be their preference of Chrome OS over Android. Still, I don't see them throwing away their market power in a play to move users to Chrome OS. They'll just keep mixing them both together until there is no difference.
Once the upgrade fatigue hits and people are no longer subsidized for their cell phones, putting down $600+ or putting down $60 for serviceable phone would become a no brainer. These phones have to become good enough and they are already getting there.
How true is this for that 44% currently using iphones?
Iphones stay good enough for at least 2-3 years, if you're not picky. $600/3 = $200. $17 per month, 0.56 cents per day.
It's not nothing. But it is nothing compared to what the iphone class spends on, say, coffee. There is the one-off hit from paying the $600 all at once, but credit cards reduce that pain somewhat.
Meanwhile, you're using the phone every day. If you have the money, you probably want a phone you really like, not one that is just good enough.
Don't get me wrong, I think these new "good enough" phones are going to capture a large part of the market. I just am not sure it will be the iphone part. Past a certain income level, $540 savings for years of daily annoyance isn't really a compelling saving.
Agreed, that's kind of how I value my rMBP, or equivalent windows laptops around $1500. I'll use it for 4 years, sell it for 25% the price (this is sadly where windows loses some value that's often not justified, resell market for Apple is great, resell market for top (not crappy but top) windows hardware seems to really undervalue the remaining quality).
Got my MBP for about €1400, aim to sell it for at least about €400 a few years down the road. That leaves a cost of about 20 euros per month.
Then I look at the fact that as an independent developer I'm earning a few thousand a month and this device basically like 90% of my office.
It means a device that costs $100 or $1000 or even $5000 doesn't really make a huge difference. It's like a writer's pencil costs $1 or $10 or $100, when it's a tiny percentage of his costs and a gigantic percentage of his usage.
That having been said, whether a purchase is justified in and of its own ignores the fact whether it's justified vs other purchases. After all, spending money supremely is a game of opportunity cost. And here spending an additional $500 starts to break down, and now we'd have to weigh the marginal benefit. Does a MBP vs a MBA for say a web developer who has a career in SEO, or say CSS, add much? Often the answer would be no, and compared to say $500 on a year at the gym, a romantic weekend, charity, is hard to defend. And with cheap phones hitting the essentials more and more (messaging, calls, basic snapshots, directions, quick info, a game of poker, dating etc), I'm already personally getting disinterested with new iterations of phones. The latest giants' 6 versions (samsung, apple) did nothing for me in terms of purchasing desire, despite thinking they're awesome devices.
I have to agree. I owned a One Touch Idol 3 for a couple months and found it wasn't what I wanted. It was serviceable but it just didn't seem to be something that felt good to use when I did use it. Build quality is the only reason why I switched over to the iPhone (I think the software is horrible).
> Past a certain income level, $540 savings for years of daily annoyance isn't really a compelling saving.
I think the whole point of this discussion is we've reached a tipping point where the "low end" phones aren't annoying anymore. For many users, they're perfectly acceptable
Just a clarification: I meant annoying compared to what you know is possible.
I've had an iphone 4 until recently. I used a moto e while traveling. I now have an iphone six.
The moto e was great! It could do anything I want to do, and was very cheap. Meets all my needs.
But....using the iphone six is simply a smoother experience on a number of factors. So while the cheaper phone meets my needs, the more expensive version is ultimately worth it, given the considerations I outlined in the original post.
For a bunch of people who i. use their phones a lot, and ii. aren't THAT price sensitive, this will play out. Could apply to higher end android phones too.
I run a business, so that increases the use of having a smooth operating phone. I manage some work stuff using it.
The interesting part of these trends is for people like me who aren't in the "iPhone class". It used to be my options for a phone I could justify paying for were: garbage, or garbage. Now I can actually have a usable phone that can do the things I want it do without "daily annoyance" (and I sure do know what daily annoyance from a phone is!).
Yes, it's not magically perfect. A coworker made fun of me because I have to dial in to a talking computer to listen to voice mail, for example. But how often do most people get a voice mail anyways? I can text, pictures, email, web and use basic apps, which is all I really need or want to do on such a small screen anyways.
So I'm very excited and happy with the improvements in the low-end phone line.
>So I'm very excited and happy with the improvements in the low-end phone line.
Oh definitely. It's incredible the amount of fairly smooth functionality you can get for $100 now. If I HAD to use a moto G, say, I'd still be pretty content.
I can't picture a day Google decides make money directly out of Android. It gets them tons of users to their services which gets them tons of money. And all companies building Android phones are doing the selling hard part instead of Google.
Far more likely is an ever greater interaction between Android, online services and chrome OS until they all mix undistinguished or one takes over the others.
ZTE makes the best $10-$20 phone I've seen anywhere.
It is called the ZTE Zinger (T-Mobile) or ZTE Prelude 2 (AT&T)
The formal model name is the Z667 or Z667T or Z667G
Goes on sale that cheap a few times a year, otherwise $40
The screen is low resolution but you'd never know, works fine for all but the smallest text.
It is dual core and runs KitKat 4.4 so it is very smooth.
The problem is they are impossible to root and impossible to unlock bootloader. So they never took off. ZTE basically shot themselves in the foot and sold out to carrier desires.
It should be a crime in the USA to not be able to root your phone if you paid for it.
Basically an exploration of value. An iPhone can cost 3x times as much as some of these other phones, and is certainly a more pleasant device to use, but does it really offer 3x as much functionality?
The basic (world-changing) functions of the smartphone (location services with GPS, decent point and shoot camera with you at all times, web access on the go, etc.) are present in both devices.
> The basic (world-changing) functions of the smartphone (location services with GPS, decent point and shoot camera with you at all times, web access on the go, etc.) are present in both devices.
Generally, cheap ($30) phone's camera is awful. $200 Android phone's camera is good. iPhone 6's camera is excellent. (Though I am using iPhone 6 Plus, I still think iPhone 6 Plus is too expensive.)
If I have to wait 30 seconds for my phone to get out of its own way each time I desire to accomplish a task (camera, map application, web access), am I actually going to use it for those things, or do I now have a dumbphone with more things that can break?
True, but consider this from the shitphone piece...
"Things had gradually become slower. They rarely came to a full stop, but they got close. Complicated websites in particular were hard for shitphone. I found myself blaming the websites."
Maybe you would just stop going to horribly designed mobile websites, and you wouldn't be much worse off.
You shouldn't expect the usefulness of devices to be linear in cost, even for completely rational buyers uninfluenced by fashion or culture. Such buyers will select a phone where the marginal cost is equal to the marginal benefit.
Water gives my 99.9% of the usefulness of Coke (i.e., I don't die of dehydration), but it's also very reasonable for me to spend 10 times more for Cokes because the marginal cost is still small compared to the enjoyment benefit.
My wife tried the Moto G 2nd generation LTE $160, but didn't like the industrial design- too cheap. I think the first generation may have been nicer. We ended up with the Samsung Galaxy Alpha for $275: it looks nice, but not quite as expensive as their flagship phones:
I own a Nokia Lumia Icon (Verizon) and a Microsoft Lumia 640 (T-Mobile). The Icon was bought on a plan and was $199 subsidized. The 640 was bought off-contract for $99. I believe the Icon was selling for around $700 off-contract. I've used both extensively now (the Icon was my old daily phone, the 640 is my new one). The 640 is lacking in the camera. That's it. Every other experience on the phone? Identical. I don't miss the Icon at all, and I think that really says something.
Why would a phone 6-7x the price be roughly equivalent in experience? Why should it be? The 640 isn't subsidized by anything. $99 is the just the price of it. It's an amazing device, FAR better than an equivalent android.
People complain about Windows Phone not having "flagship" devices, but realistically, it doesn't need them. The cheap phones are great.
I've tried expensive android phones, iphone, as well. None of them stand up to the experience on WP for me. If Microsoft keeps making $100 phones like this, I'll never pay more than that for a phone.
Hey, I'm glad you're liking the WP. Honestly, I think WP should be great. That said....
Android phones are starting to get into this territory too. OnePlus 2 is $400. That is 4x the cost of your $100. But it is less than half the cost of my $1000 Note 2. (I don't buy on contract because I have a grandfather plan on VZ for unlimited data). My wife's phone was $700. Next refresh in about 2 years we'll be in the OnePlus store.
The reason I say all of this is that we should all, across every platform but Apple, be looking forward to getting less expensive, higher quality devices.
I'm hoping that Android gets a lot better on the battery usage before that happens in earnest though. I've read they've focused on this recently but I haven't had time to drill into details.
I love Windows Phone and have had 3 different models since Windows Phone 7. I'm currently on a Lumia 830 for my private phone and get about 3.5-4 days of battery life. Granted I don't call/text a lot relying on email, Lync and Skype. My previous Lumia 520 was about the same, and the previous LG E900 was 2.5-3 days.
My partner has a Moto G (1st Generation) and loves it but only gets about 1-1.5 days of battery life. Good phone, similar price levels after offers on the Lumia 830, but dramatically lower battery life.
This is a great example of Clay Christensen's Disruption. The cheap phone manufacturers, will emerge as big winners in the long run and push the current high-end manufacturers to either compete at their price point, or have their market share shrink dramatically.
I don't think you actually read that book. Disruptive innovation is moving a technology designed for one market, possibly a new one, into another existing market. Existing market participants focus on 'sustaining' innovations like reducing costs and inventing more expensive products. In today's environment, think using ARM processors, intentionally designed for low power draw in mobile phones, into laptops, desktops and eventually servers.
ZTE's success is just price differentiation within an existing market. Their 'innovation' is selling phone technology from 2 years ago at a discount. I don't think that even counts as a sustaining innovation, and the article notes that sales doubled but profits growing only 4 percent-- this implies huge cuts to profit margins. The same article also notes that this 'reduced margins' strategy might be subsidized by Chinese security interests.
"Consider the hegemony of Detroit’s Big Three—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. At one time, they dominated the auto industry, producing bigger, faster, safer, more comfortable cars with more and more features. But these improving products also “create a vacuum underneath them,” Christensen says, “and disruptive innovators suck customers in with fewer features and a cheaper price.” Toyota, Honda, and Nissan disrupted the Big Three’s marketplace by introducing smaller, lighter, less safe, and less comfortable but reliable cars that needed few repairs and got good gas mileage—at a significantly lower price. Within a few years, they had garnered a large share of the market. Says Christensen: “The leaders get killed from below.”
A Toyota car, is a Toyota car that was designed to be a car..it was not designed for some other purpose and re-purposed for transportation.
> A Toyota car, is a Toyota car that was designed to be a car..it was not designed for some other purpose and re-purposed for transportation.
This explanation works cross purposes with his actual book, which uses the example of Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha vs Harley-Davidson and BMW. The Japanese offroad bikes are very precisely not designed for street driving, and were repurposed. It also covers backhoes vs diggers, and how people now use backhoes even for normal digging jobs. And hard drive minification. I lent out my copy to our marketing intern, or I'd pull quotes.
It also disagrees with his own quote: "Sustaining innovation makes good products better—but then you don’t buy the old product. They’re replacements. They do not create growth." Honda didn't just take a Ford Falcon design from 5 years ago and sell it at a steep discount. They had designs suitable for the Japanese market, that suddenly became popular when the oil embargo hit in '73. Because Civics were a substantially different car, the Big 3 couldn't just pull their old designs off the shelves, and it's not like the market for the Big 3's used cars took off.
ZTE phones are essentially phones from 2 years ago, at market clearing (lower) price. You don't need to reach for disruptive vs sustaining innovation to explain why ZTE is gaining marketshare when simple supply & demand curves will do the trick. AFAICT, the only innovation on display here is making less profits.
The last phone I had last for more than 2 years was made by Palm. After that:
1) lost the phone. We think it was left on the roof of my car
2) Dropped in toilet. Did not have removable battery, so it eventually shorted out
3) An OTA firmware update bricked it, the device was 2 months out of warranty so the manufacturer refused to fix it, despite their software being what bricked it.
I'm now on a 1st gen Moto X I got used for $100. I don't plan on spending much more than that for a phone ever again.
Most of my time on the computer is at work, so I have a Dell Optiplex with 2 24" screens. At home, I have both a workstation and a laptop, and probably use the laptop more. I use the phone for a quick lookup something, or for reading articles, watching videos &ct.
getting multi-screens connected to my "phone" is the key thing I'm missing. I can do it with one now -- but its not as good as attaching a mac/pc to an external monitor for coding or similar big screen tasks.
I'd put cyanogenmod on my note4 - but then I'd loose the cool pen feature that I use a lot.
I wonder if intel and microsoft will succeeed in shrinking the tablet/pc all the way down to phone size before the phone guys figure this out - I would love that (disclaimer I work for intel).
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[ 114 ms ] story [ 231 ms ] threadWhat would HN recommend as a cheap, durable android device? These ZTE things look pretty good...
Also, what happened to those ultra cheap windows mobile devices targeted at "emerging markets?"
Doesn't that depend on your carrier? IIRC some carriers detect tethering by looking for packets with different TTL values (which would represent different devices' defaults, or indicate an extra decrement as the packet went through the phone), or inspecting HTTP User-Agent.
You can hack around both TTL values and user-agent btw. Deep packet inspection, maybe less so
Also, DPI can be trivially bypassed by running all traffic from your phone through a VPN. All traffic, tethered or not, will be indistinguishable to your carrier.
VPN would work for DPI true, hassle though.
Nokia 635, $40: http://www.amazon.com/AT-Nokia-Lumia-635-Contract/dp/B00LBFF...
We bought one for my future mother-in-law, because the Windows Phone tile system was easier for her to deal with than the Android home screen. Plus, when she dropped it in a puddle after a few months, no big deal.
I don't understand why these low cost Nokia's get so little love here in the U.S. My 520 was $50 a few years ago and is a rock solid piece of hardware. I guess it's the missing apps on Windows mobile?
It's great. I love it. It's not quite as nice as my old phone, but it's 90% of the value, for 15% of the price.
And in some ways, it's better than my old phone (lighter, more damage resistant, better battery life, better cellular reception)
EDIT: Except it comes in 512mb and elusive 1gb RAM versions, with identical product names and prices, so I have to search around to get the good one. This is how it starts! Perhaps I don't need a smartphone...
The only thing keeping it back from being a flagship is the camera. Also possibly the 5.1 screen-size. But hey, I prefer the 5" screen over the 5.5" to 6" ones, so it works for me.
EDIT: Also, Motorola has almost no bloatware on the phones. The few apps they pre-install are actually quite good.
My two main complaints are that you can't touch to wake (and there's no physical button on the face) and that I don't get an SMS notification when the phone is sleeping if the messaging app is already open to the person who sent the new message (which is very, very common for conversations).
If it's not the focused app, I get one like normal.
It's like that pop-up wondering if you'd like to take a survey while you're entering your shipping address during check out.
It finally drove me to a cheap Windows phone.
I hear the Z5 is better though so hopefully they're getting the message.
I expect others like ZTE and Alcatel will catch up at some point. But probably will also face some fearce competition from the quality direct-to-customer type companies like Xiaomi, OnePlus, Wileyfox.
I owned a ZTE device (a sub-$50 one at that) and aside from being a touch slower (relative to flagships) and having a terrible camera it was darn good.
To talk in particular about the Maven (per the article): 4.5" screen ("small"), 2100mAh battery (other similarly sized phones have 2500mAh), 1 GB of RAM (2 GM is typical in flagships), quad core 1.2GHz (flagships at that size have 2.5GHz quads), no wireless charging, no NFC, and the cameras are utterly terrible.
So there are some trade offs with the Maven and many ZTE phones in general. But the real question is: are they "good enough?" And to be frank, yes, they are. If someone cannot afford a $600 flagship, get a $60 ZTE and get 80% of the value for 10% of the price.
Between ZTE, Moto, and Nokia you can get a really nice phone for under $100 now.
For example, Galaxy S4 launched more than 2 years ago, like 2.3 years or w/e. It has half an inch bigger screen, higher screen-to-body ratio (smaller bezels), twice the pixel density (the ZTE's is about 30% less than the 5 year old iphone 4's density for example, it's not insignificant).
Then the S4 had the Snapdragon 600, the ZTE has a 400. (i.e. S4 has a faster CPU and faster GPU, with all the ramifications you can imagine).
S4 has double the ram. That isn't as significant when making android vs ios comparisons (as they handle everything differently), but android vs android, double the ram (1 to 2) is a big deal.
S4's camera has almost 3x as many MP on the back and autofocus, better front camera, too, and higher resolution images and video.
And then there's all the S4 stuff that is useful to some, not to others. Like more sensors (temperature, humidity, gestures, wireless charging etc).
And lastly, 2600 mAh battery vs 2100.
Pretty similar for the 2012 Galaxy S3, too. The S2 from 2011 seems to actually be considerably worse in some areas, or equal, than the ZTE.
Of course it's pretty insane we're even making comparisons between phones that cost 10% the price 2-3 years ago. That's the significance. But I wouldn't say they're similar to 2 year old flagships.
ZTE has gotten VERY good at locking down their phones, the bootloader checks and undoes root and the kernel seems to detect attempts otherwise.
For me, non-root is a showstopper.
But holy crap that's a good theory. I'd be really interested in the actual demographics of who is buying which phones.
Then the follow-up, the ZTE Skate started their trend of fiendish difficulty to unlock.
IMO, a $300 phone doesn't really fit well in that world. Too pricey for an upfront purchase. And once you go monthly, most people aren't too price concious when comparing $15 per month vs $20 per month.
I think you nailed it on the installment plans though. Splitting up the cost and spreading it out makes a few hundred dollars less obvious (psychologically at least).
The more people see real prices, even if they finance them, the more they're going to reconsider the definition of "splurging."
Now, with financing, all the phones are $0 upfront. The $450 one is $19 per month, the $550 one is $23, and the $650 one is $27. So I'd wager they sell more of those flagships to people.
I bought a moto g (~$160), I think it's a good balance for me. I want to be able to use the web, basically, and voice commands. But I don't need to play any games or use it for more than communication + entertainment when bored and away from home.
I also want it to be reliable, which is primarily battery life--which the Moto G is, clocking a 2+ days with my typical use.
Them: No, really?
Me: It is $8 a month more and at 2 years that is 24 * 8. So in 2 years you are paying $192 more.
Them: Shocked look and than they try to do the math in their head and can't and just shrug.
This has happened with family members and strangers
People can't do simple math in their head. My definition of simple math is business math and specifically do a 2 digit times a 1 digit number.
I would say that the majority of adults fall into that category (not knowing they're paying $200 extra, that is), and they all manage to take care of themselves, somehow.
Many aren't very good at that, either.
Also, let's be blunt: Users of Apple products aren't exactly the most price-sensitive consumers in the market. If anything, it'll just make them less likely to buy new phones like clockwork every two years. But if so then probably all smartphone manufacturers will experience something similar.
With real pricing, a $350 phone is $100 less, and anyone who was considering buying a two-year-old phone to save $200 is probably very interested in saving another $100.
While it's certainly not a random sample, I commute by public transit so I do spend a lot of time watching a lot of people fiddle with their smartphones.
Android struggled for a long time with user experience and visual quality, but Android 5 and Material Design has been a huge win for them and I'm pretty sure that trajectory will continue.
You can point at the Japanese automakers as a counter-point. However, I caution that comparison because they rallied around quality. In the early-70s the major American automobile makers were both terrible quality and expensive. The Japanese were able to create the holy union of both a more reliable and cheaper automobile.
Could a Chinese market sprout up to make quality and cheap phone? Probably, but there's no real issue of all the phones are expensive, but terrible devices.
While true, I've found that the price/quality ratio leaves something to be desired.
Especially when you prefer to buy unlocked phones
When I buy a premium iPhone device, I pay for future years of security updates and optimizations. I also pay for kind, instant support online or in a network of certified resellers or Apple stores (if I'm lucky to be near one at least in EU).
Some people like to tinker with their devices or even have to from time to time when an app/service goes amok. I pay extra to not deal with that, because my time is worth more, then wasting it on things like that.
Now compare that to a sub 100$/€ phone.
I think there are a few reasons why companies like Verizon are so big in the U.S.: they have a good network, they offer plenty of family plans, and they will replace your phone for what seems like subsidized rate under various conditions. Oh, and they advertise constantly.
But not being able to use my phone out of the country? Very limiting. Why would I pay more for that handicap as an individual enrollee?
https://www.giffgaff.com/goodybags/15pound-goodybag
Can only find that, 15 pound plan by giffgaff, 4gb limit on data and a 10p charge per minute for calling UK landlines.
Then there's their 'always on' which isn't unlimited, it's 6gb which to me is practically unlimited. After the 6gb your speeds get reduced to a fraction (which I like, and up to 6gb you can tether btw).
But if you look at the phone+plan deals giffgaff has, they're all slightly cheaper per month and with the phone included there's no upfront costs and it's still cheaper than buying the phone separately.
It does make sense of course if you can find a new-quality, second-hand phone, at a second-hand price, or if you travel so much that any plan no matter the pricing really makes little sense in the first place.
Where in Europe? In the Netherlands all the calculations I ran every 2 years showed anywhere from slight to major discounts for 2 year contracts paired with a phone, and that's without discounting future cash payments (or valuing money you're paying upfront, either way).
It's still beneficial to phone companies because it makes phones look cheaper than they actually are ($30 a month feels more doable than $720 upfront) and so it's probably easier to sell a $30 a month cost for 2 years than selling a $720 cost even though (ignoring time value of money) they're the same.
And then if you add say a $20 phone plan, it's basically: want to pay $50 a month, or $30 a month and pay $720 now? The latter is probably easier to swallow for most and easier to sell, but that's of course entirely different from being a scam.
So for example, the Netherlands. Apple's shop sells the iphone for 700 euros. KPN (one of the 3 networks) has a one-time 53 euro, 2 year 54 euro plan, so 56 euros per month on average and the phone & plan is included.
A similar plan with the same KPN is €32.50. Add that to the 700 euro cost of the phone over 24 months (€29) and you're at 62 euros, vs 56 euros, more than 140 euros of discount and that's without valuing the financial/convenience value of not having to pay 700 euros upfront.
And this is literally the first, standard plan I looked into, no cherrypicking. (5gb a month plan, no limit calling/texting). Perhaps you could find different results but I've, purely as part of my buying decisions when I bought my own phone, ran these calculations here about every year or every two years at different carriers and it's consistent. So I'd say, it depends on the country.
As for prepaid, it's absolutely horrible here in the Netherlands. It's 30c per minute for calling, 16c per text, 25c per megabyte. Not kidding. That's KPN by the way, the same that offers the above plans. That means if you call say 300 minutes per month, that's 90 euros already. And that's just a little over calling 1 hour per week. Call 30 minutes per week and it's 36 euros. Add a 700 euro iPhone and you're already well over any KPN plan you can get, and you haven't used any data or texts yet. The 5 gigabytes of data the plan has would cost you 1250 euros per month if used in prepaid. Even using just 500 megabytes per month (my plan 5 years ago) would cost you 125 euros per month, prepaid.
KPN's prepaid is disproportionately shitty though, it's meant for old people really. Like my grandfather has it and he mostly just calls for cabs, emergencies etc. T-Mobile's rate in the Netherlands is more sensible, but still 5c per megabyte. A 1 gigabyte monthly data usage still costs you 50 euros, but such a 1 gigabyte plan would cost you less than 20 euros with minutes included. Prepaid here is never, ever a good option, unless you're an extremely light user like my grandfather, or someone who travels tons and doesn't return (as you can freeze plans for vacations etc).
https://www.base.be/en/mobile/monthly-plans/base-0.html
Interestingly also in Belgium there is legal requirement that the phone company evaluates your bill every X months and notifies you if you could save money by moving to a different plan. Invariably I used to always be recommended BASE 0 due to my highly variable usage.
I think the UK had a similar thing from O2 but I don't remember if it was a legal requirement. It could be a European thing.
Where? Europe is a big place. Also it depends very much on which phone you want.
Certainly last time I did the math in Sweden, if you wanted a new high end phone like the latest iPhone or Samsung S6 then it was basically always cheaper to get it on a two year contract compared to paying for the phone and getting a separate equivalent plan or per-paid card. On the other hand if you wanted a sub 100€ phone or where happy with a second hand phone, then getting a phone and pre-paid card or cheap monthly plan separately is almost always cheaper.
I think the point where Google and consumers are misaligned would be their preference of Chrome OS over Android. Still, I don't see them throwing away their market power in a play to move users to Chrome OS. They'll just keep mixing them both together until there is no difference.
Iphones stay good enough for at least 2-3 years, if you're not picky. $600/3 = $200. $17 per month, 0.56 cents per day.
It's not nothing. But it is nothing compared to what the iphone class spends on, say, coffee. There is the one-off hit from paying the $600 all at once, but credit cards reduce that pain somewhat.
Meanwhile, you're using the phone every day. If you have the money, you probably want a phone you really like, not one that is just good enough.
Don't get me wrong, I think these new "good enough" phones are going to capture a large part of the market. I just am not sure it will be the iphone part. Past a certain income level, $540 savings for years of daily annoyance isn't really a compelling saving.
Got my MBP for about €1400, aim to sell it for at least about €400 a few years down the road. That leaves a cost of about 20 euros per month.
Then I look at the fact that as an independent developer I'm earning a few thousand a month and this device basically like 90% of my office.
It means a device that costs $100 or $1000 or even $5000 doesn't really make a huge difference. It's like a writer's pencil costs $1 or $10 or $100, when it's a tiny percentage of his costs and a gigantic percentage of his usage.
That having been said, whether a purchase is justified in and of its own ignores the fact whether it's justified vs other purchases. After all, spending money supremely is a game of opportunity cost. And here spending an additional $500 starts to break down, and now we'd have to weigh the marginal benefit. Does a MBP vs a MBA for say a web developer who has a career in SEO, or say CSS, add much? Often the answer would be no, and compared to say $500 on a year at the gym, a romantic weekend, charity, is hard to defend. And with cheap phones hitting the essentials more and more (messaging, calls, basic snapshots, directions, quick info, a game of poker, dating etc), I'm already personally getting disinterested with new iterations of phones. The latest giants' 6 versions (samsung, apple) did nothing for me in terms of purchasing desire, despite thinking they're awesome devices.
I think the whole point of this discussion is we've reached a tipping point where the "low end" phones aren't annoying anymore. For many users, they're perfectly acceptable
I've had an iphone 4 until recently. I used a moto e while traveling. I now have an iphone six.
The moto e was great! It could do anything I want to do, and was very cheap. Meets all my needs.
But....using the iphone six is simply a smoother experience on a number of factors. So while the cheaper phone meets my needs, the more expensive version is ultimately worth it, given the considerations I outlined in the original post.
For a bunch of people who i. use their phones a lot, and ii. aren't THAT price sensitive, this will play out. Could apply to higher end android phones too.
I run a business, so that increases the use of having a smooth operating phone. I manage some work stuff using it.
Yes, it's not magically perfect. A coworker made fun of me because I have to dial in to a talking computer to listen to voice mail, for example. But how often do most people get a voice mail anyways? I can text, pictures, email, web and use basic apps, which is all I really need or want to do on such a small screen anyways.
So I'm very excited and happy with the improvements in the low-end phone line.
Oh definitely. It's incredible the amount of fairly smooth functionality you can get for $100 now. If I HAD to use a moto G, say, I'd still be pretty content.
It is called the ZTE Zinger (T-Mobile) or ZTE Prelude 2 (AT&T)
The formal model name is the Z667 or Z667T or Z667G
Goes on sale that cheap a few times a year, otherwise $40
The screen is low resolution but you'd never know, works fine for all but the smallest text.
It is dual core and runs KitKat 4.4 so it is very smooth.
The problem is they are impossible to root and impossible to unlock bootloader. So they never took off. ZTE basically shot themselves in the foot and sold out to carrier desires.
It should be a crime in the USA to not be able to root your phone if you paid for it.
https://medium.com/matter/shitphone-a-love-story-a44e6643480...
Basically an exploration of value. An iPhone can cost 3x times as much as some of these other phones, and is certainly a more pleasant device to use, but does it really offer 3x as much functionality?
The basic (world-changing) functions of the smartphone (location services with GPS, decent point and shoot camera with you at all times, web access on the go, etc.) are present in both devices.
Generally, cheap ($30) phone's camera is awful. $200 Android phone's camera is good. iPhone 6's camera is excellent. (Though I am using iPhone 6 Plus, I still think iPhone 6 Plus is too expensive.)
If I have to wait 30 seconds for my phone to get out of its own way each time I desire to accomplish a task (camera, map application, web access), am I actually going to use it for those things, or do I now have a dumbphone with more things that can break?
"Things had gradually become slower. They rarely came to a full stop, but they got close. Complicated websites in particular were hard for shitphone. I found myself blaming the websites."
Maybe you would just stop going to horribly designed mobile websites, and you wouldn't be much worse off.
Water gives my 99.9% of the usefulness of Coke (i.e., I don't die of dehydration), but it's also very reasonable for me to spend 10 times more for Cokes because the marginal cost is still small compared to the enjoyment benefit.
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-G850a-Unlocked-Cellphon...
And yes, I think it's nuts to pay $100 for design, but happy wife happy life..
Why would a phone 6-7x the price be roughly equivalent in experience? Why should it be? The 640 isn't subsidized by anything. $99 is the just the price of it. It's an amazing device, FAR better than an equivalent android.
People complain about Windows Phone not having "flagship" devices, but realistically, it doesn't need them. The cheap phones are great.
I've tried expensive android phones, iphone, as well. None of them stand up to the experience on WP for me. If Microsoft keeps making $100 phones like this, I'll never pay more than that for a phone.
Android phones are starting to get into this territory too. OnePlus 2 is $400. That is 4x the cost of your $100. But it is less than half the cost of my $1000 Note 2. (I don't buy on contract because I have a grandfather plan on VZ for unlimited data). My wife's phone was $700. Next refresh in about 2 years we'll be in the OnePlus store.
The reason I say all of this is that we should all, across every platform but Apple, be looking forward to getting less expensive, higher quality devices.
I love Windows Phone and have had 3 different models since Windows Phone 7. I'm currently on a Lumia 830 for my private phone and get about 3.5-4 days of battery life. Granted I don't call/text a lot relying on email, Lync and Skype. My previous Lumia 520 was about the same, and the previous LG E900 was 2.5-3 days.
My partner has a Moto G (1st Generation) and loves it but only gets about 1-1.5 days of battery life. Good phone, similar price levels after offers on the Lumia 830, but dramatically lower battery life.
The phone is absolutely sufficient and you can't beat the plan.
Ref: http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/
ZTE's success is just price differentiation within an existing market. Their 'innovation' is selling phone technology from 2 years ago at a discount. I don't think that even counts as a sustaining innovation, and the article notes that sales doubled but profits growing only 4 percent-- this implies huge cuts to profit margins. The same article also notes that this 'reduced margins' strategy might be subsidized by Chinese security interests.
"Consider the hegemony of Detroit’s Big Three—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. At one time, they dominated the auto industry, producing bigger, faster, safer, more comfortable cars with more and more features. But these improving products also “create a vacuum underneath them,” Christensen says, “and disruptive innovators suck customers in with fewer features and a cheaper price.” Toyota, Honda, and Nissan disrupted the Big Three’s marketplace by introducing smaller, lighter, less safe, and less comfortable but reliable cars that needed few repairs and got good gas mileage—at a significantly lower price. Within a few years, they had garnered a large share of the market. Says Christensen: “The leaders get killed from below.”
A Toyota car, is a Toyota car that was designed to be a car..it was not designed for some other purpose and re-purposed for transportation.
Reference: http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/07/disruptive-genius
This explanation works cross purposes with his actual book, which uses the example of Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha vs Harley-Davidson and BMW. The Japanese offroad bikes are very precisely not designed for street driving, and were repurposed. It also covers backhoes vs diggers, and how people now use backhoes even for normal digging jobs. And hard drive minification. I lent out my copy to our marketing intern, or I'd pull quotes.
It also disagrees with his own quote: "Sustaining innovation makes good products better—but then you don’t buy the old product. They’re replacements. They do not create growth." Honda didn't just take a Ford Falcon design from 5 years ago and sell it at a steep discount. They had designs suitable for the Japanese market, that suddenly became popular when the oil embargo hit in '73. Because Civics were a substantially different car, the Big 3 couldn't just pull their old designs off the shelves, and it's not like the market for the Big 3's used cars took off.
ZTE phones are essentially phones from 2 years ago, at market clearing (lower) price. You don't need to reach for disruptive vs sustaining innovation to explain why ZTE is gaining marketshare when simple supply & demand curves will do the trick. AFAICT, the only innovation on display here is making less profits.
1) lost the phone. We think it was left on the roof of my car
2) Dropped in toilet. Did not have removable battery, so it eventually shorted out
3) An OTA firmware update bricked it, the device was 2 months out of warranty so the manufacturer refused to fix it, despite their software being what bricked it.
I'm now on a 1st gen Moto X I got used for $100. I don't plan on spending much more than that for a phone ever again.
reason I ask: I'm on my galaxy note 4 probably 40% of time and going up.pc/mac get rest of time and going down.
got rid of all IOS devices.
I'd put cyanogenmod on my note4 - but then I'd loose the cool pen feature that I use a lot.
I wonder if intel and microsoft will succeeed in shrinking the tablet/pc all the way down to phone size before the phone guys figure this out - I would love that (disclaimer I work for intel).
It's very small and light and has advanced features like "redial" and "alarm clock".
I think it's my favorite phone I've ever had.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone