There are no bad smartphones anymore

by Volker Weber

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Yesterday I chose to remove a comment from a first timer who waltzed in to attack a different comment and flat out stated that iOS was crap. It rubbed me the wrong way both in style and substance. And I might be stating the obvious when I say that you can't really buy a bad smartphone anymore. It's going to be an iPhone or some variant of Android. And they basically all have the same capabilities. Just look at the devices in the photo. Two of them start adding a second (or third, if you count the front facing) camera.

Three cameras! Hello? It takes this much effort to make even a small difference. Launch events are crazy boring. Vendors ferry hundreds of influencers to synchronized events around the world and then present a smartphone that is only marginally better than their previous one. So the S8 makes the S7 edge look old? What difference does that make? You will be doing exactly the same with either one. What are the big differences between the iPhone 6 and the 7 Plus in this photo aside from the size? Force touch and tele lens.

Don't make assertions about your particular choice being superior to the others. I am amazed by all of them. Choose what you like and what fits your particular taste as well as your budget. When I recommend the iPhone, it's not because of features. I recommend it because I think you will be glad you bought it, for many reasons that I am not going to list here.

Does that mean I think all other choices are crap? You would be a very small mind to believe that.

Comments

Love it, well said! Thank you, Volker.

Jochen Kattoll, 2017-05-21

I absolutely agree on your point that either choice is valid and might fly for somebody else, although it does not for oneself. I also am amazed at the small miracles we are holding in our hands. As somebody who built his own radios and electronic circuits a loooong time ago, I am awestruck so many times. Brand and even price do not matter here, they are all the same: Small miracles. Imagine, what needs to be present and on what giants shoulders we need to be standing to be able to build that.

However, there is also shadow: Outdated out of the box and never to be maintained devices with known security flaws. What a shame! Miracles, broken. This is often the case (and understandably so by design) with 'too cheap' devices.

From the buyers perspective, if money is not of absolute prime concern, buying a device which will be maintained and secure for as long as they want to use it, should be in the top 3 criteria, at least. No flagship is needed to buy into that. Of course things can change, vendors can abandon products (like Volkers Tablet). With sub 150€ smartphones, however, plans do not change, as they were never supposed to be supported, anyway.

I know, I know. In reality, too many people do not even 'not care', they do not know and would not bother, even if they did know. What a sad prospect for the small miracles, utterly broken as soon as they are being flashed with their OS and put into their box for the first time. In the factory.

Hubert Stettner, 2017-05-21

Gute gebrüllt. ;)

Ich fand Apple auch mal doof. Das Unternehmen manchmal immernoch. Aber grade bei Smartphones aber eigentlich auch beim ganzen Rest gilt: Die Hersteller geben sich alle nichts mehr. Mal ist ein Gadget hübscher, mal nicht, was aber auch sehr subjektiv ist.

Für mich ist es einfach. Ich habe vor einigen Jahren beschlossen, mich nicht mehr ohne Not in ein neues Betriebssystem einzudenken.

Johannes Matzke, 2017-05-22

Honestly, even for us not in the ios/android world, we can find "not bad" smartphones easily. And specifically in the WP world, dirt cheap.

Pedro Quaresma, 2017-05-22

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