When the iPhone X was released (2017), the £1000 pricing was considered ridiculous. Most flagships at the time cost about £600 (this is what the 2016 iPhone 7 cost at launch, with the iPhone 7 Plus having a starting price of £720).
Obviously this didn’t stop Apple from selling them like hotcakes and establishing an immediate +30% increase of the flagship smartphone prices.
Today, a Galaxy Z Fold starts at £1800. This is a +146% increase over the 2017 release price of the Galaxy Note 7.
According to the bank of England, we’ve seen a total inflation of 34% in the 2017-2025, while phones have increased their prices by >100%.
So yeah, no surprise there. As phones keep rising in value, they are going to continue becoming an increasingly desirable target for thefts. A gym bag full of smartphone boxes can easily have over £20k at retail prices, and easily fetch £10k when sold at a hefty discount, but a smartphone store doesn’t have the security measures of a jewelry store. I can see how it’s attractive to thieves.
Who on earth is paying £1800 minimum for a bloody mobile phone??? That’s insane!
People that think £83 a month is something they can afford to pay so they are easily pushed to spend more and more. Meanwhile I am paying £4 a month.
Oooh how did you get down to £4? I’m on £6, only 5GB data and I hit the limit every month.
£83 a month on a phone is fucking mental. That’s a council tax payment in some places. That’s more than my gas + electricity.
Really? B and paying like £176 a month on council tax, feels like a waste of money. Like we have bin collections unnecessarily frequently, wish I could have a reduced bill and fewer collections.
As for the phone, Asda calls/SMS only.
Yeah! My last place council tax was £92, granted I get 25% off as a sole occupier and all that. My current is £100 a month. Oooh I’d be careful what you wish for, we all know what happened to Birmingham 😂
Ah yeah I was wondering whether it’d be a no-data plan. That’s so cool tho, I’m into that. I would like to go no-data and just be unreachable when I’m wandering but honestly I’m so scatterbrained that I wouldn’t be able to stockpile audiobooks/podcasts/albums enough to last me 😭 good stuff tho, I am jealous!
You can get pretty big SD cards these days, mine probably has days worth of music and podcasts on it. I also generally feel like data should be unlimited or off, I don’t like having it with a cap on how much you can use. I actually have 2 SIM cards as one is for my 4G router as well and that one has unlimited. At some point I should probably upgrade the router to 5G as the antenna I have can do both. Just a drop in replacement to support 5G, not sure how much real world speed gains I might see from that though, if any.
I don’t even pay that much for a gaming tower computer. Yeah I agree it insane. There’s no way I pay that for a simple phone.
Well, the most expensive possible phone has increased in price. You can still buy cheap phones. If anything electronics are one of the more inflation resistant products. You can buy a new laptop today for less than a couple decades ago, and it will be a lot faster.
I can’t quite see whether they’re addressing the outright theft of handsets; or the increasing amount of thefts of the infinitely more valuable staff handheld terminals.
It’s a shame either way. I suppose an answer would be to stun or disable all phones until they are activated at a point of sale, rather than the opposite way round.
It still doesn’t mitigate the attack vector of a corrupt employee though.
Could go like Argos, products all out the back, pictures or terminal bolted to the wall that can be used to browse products.
Yes it looks worse than products on display but I would go to Argos over having to knock to get into a locked shop.
