How I Smartphone

We’re now accustomed to having a device on us at all times that’s amazingly small and that can access most of the entire corpus of human knowledge.  Usually in a couple seconds. 

Sometimes it still blows my mind when I really think about it.  I mean, when it comes to things I thought were going to be invented in the future when I was young, well, flying cars never happened. 

Heck we still can’t get cars en masse that average 30mpg.  Pathetic. 

But we got smartphones, and the internet. 

When I used to watch Star Trek as a kid and Captain Kirk would speak into this “thing” that magically let him talk to Spock who might have been chillin’ on another planet, I used to think “yeah, right… phony”.  I mean, it had no wires.

Well, damn, we pulled that off (except for the planet part). 

So Apple has released it’s newest iPhones, something that will surely give half the population a genuine Chris Matthews leg-tingle.  But at what cost? 

Turns out those leg tingles are pretty darn expensive.  Like, crazy expensive. 

You read that right…. starts at $999, then goes to $1099.00.  Then up to, get this – $1449.00. 

For a smartphone.  I’m not going to mock, or ridicule.  Because someone out there will call me out for “shaming” people. 

I’m simply going to say that you don’t need to spend a thousand bucks on a phone to get a good phone.  And if you want to get to financial independence faster, doing that is not the best way. 

This post is not intended to be an Apple vs. Android argument.  Because those are the bloodiest wars on the planet. 

Future historians will forget all about the Crusades, the World Wars, and the War on Terrorism.  But they will write extensively about the Apple vs. Android war.  So I do not wish to create another battlefield in that ongoing saga.

 

By The Numbers

Let’s look at a hypothetical scenario.  You buy a new iPhone-X for a thousand dollars.  Even if that phone lasts five years (unlikely) – but let’s say it does – that’s $200 per year for the device. 

Yes, Apple has a trade in policy.  So for the sake of argument let’s say they gave you $200 for your old iPhone, which a bit of Googling tells me is about the norm. 

Okay, now you’re spending $800 for a phone that will unlikely get you through 5 years.  That’s still $160 per year. 

Here’s the thing, I’ve never paid more than $100 for a phone, total – ever! 

What do I buy?  I’ve stuck with LG’s.  My current is an LG X-Power.  When I wrote this post they had it listed for $141.00, but I got it at Target for $90.00 a year and half ago. 

Yes – $90.00 

I haven’t had a single problem with it.  Yes I saw quite a few bad ratings on Amazon but the one listed is another “generation” after mine.  When I bought mine it was 5 stars across the board. 

And this is my third LG phone.  Just FYI, I have no affiliation with LG, and my meager blog cannot possibly benefit them in any way. 

 

What I Done Spent

I got my first smartphone in 2012.  Let’s look at my phone history:

My first LG (Optimus) was $75 new and lasted about 2.5 years.  I lost it. – Cost Per Year: $30

My second LG phone (V-something) was $100 new and lasted 3 years.  The GPS antennae started acting up. It was a hardware issue.  I use GPS the most, for driving sometimes but every day for cycling and running.  I still get use out of this phone as a security camera for my house.  Cost per year: $33.33 

My current LG X-Power is about 17 months old, and going strong.  I can’t say “I love it” because I don’t love any smartphones. I actually strongly dislike what they’ve done to our society in many ways.  But I also like very much the handy aspects of them (GPS, camera, emergencies, the random cat video here and there…) 

And it has a 4100mAh battery.  If you’re not familiar, that’s ginormous.  I charge it barely once a week, with my solar charger. 

The new iPhones have a 2,658 mAh battery (barely more than half the size of mine), scaling up to 3,174mAh for the insanely priced $1449.00 model. 

So for fifteen hundred bucks (!) you get a battery that only holds 3/4 the capacity of my $90 phone.  Just sayin… 

That’s as far as I’m going to go into comparing functionality, because it’s not really about that. 

You can go fight your phone wars all day and argue elegance, style, how fast it is, camera specs, etc etc blah blah. 

Bottom line, unless your phone has to be absolutely the best and most top notch because your very company and livelihood depends on it and you’d lose money if it weren’t, you don’t need a super expensive phone.  

But we all know that’s true for hardly anyone, and his friend nobody.  And even if that were true, you can get a very top-line Samsung for about $450 – $500, about half the cost of these new iPhones. 

So let’s go back and sum up the cost of my phone life (hardware only): 

Six years of smartphone ownership, total cost so far, $265.  That’s $44.16 per year, and will continue to go down as my current phone shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.

And as mentioned one of my old phones is still in use as a security camera, which is a great little hack and still providing value. 

Also remember I stupidly lost my first, so had I not done that my cost would be even less.

 

I’m Rough With Her

Did I mention I dropped my current phone on the summit of a 14er in Colorado and the face directly hit a sharp rock?  The screen now has cracks, and still works flawlessly. 

Kind of like my body which has many scars from outdoor pursuits, but still works.  Not flawlessly, but for the most part.

Oh did I also mention that I dropped it in a local river while stand up paddle boarding?  Yep, totally submerged for a bout 7 or 8 seconds in shallow water while I was getting the board out.  Still works flawlessly. 

In other words, in my experience, LG phones are pretty darn good.  And I’ve been mean to them.

Lastly, I did a recent article that stirred quite a bit of critique about how middle class salaries have actually outpaced inflation since 1984. 

Most of the critiques pointed out the cost of living, and rightly so because it’s far too complex to accurately measure for everyone. 

That said, I pointed out that we buy TONS of things that never even existed in 1984, smartphones being one of the most ubiquitous.  So we buy more “categories” of things these days that we still consider “being middle class”. 

Well, that’s a slippery slope, and moving the goalpost on what middle class is creates an easy-out to say “the middle class is falling behind!”. 

Does anyone think if you can’t afford a $1000 iPhone-XS then your salary is not keeping up with the middle class? 

I do know for sure that tons of middle class people will be buying them though, including people who make below the median income in America.

Even though I hate many aspects of smartphones, I realize they’re a very valuable thing and I’m for them.  That’s why I eventually got one.  They can save lives,  allow you to make a call for an emergency, and do many other things. 

But why spend $1000 or more on a device that you can get for one-tenth of the price? 

I’m all for spending on things that make you happy, so if one of those new iPhones tickles your happy-itch that much, then go for it. 

But just realize that if you want to get to financial independence, you better be balancing that with smart spending elsewhere.

Your turn readers – Will you be buying a new iPhone-XS and if so do you categorize it as a luxury purchase?  Or do you think it’s a standard, “middle class” item?