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How much is too much? Are these portable computers we carry around that just happen to be able to make phone calls really worth a small fortune? Would you pay over $2000 for a mobile phone that can fold in half?
Samsung Galaxy Z Flip on sale in Australia April 3 for [AUS]$2199
[...] At the Z Flip's [AUS]$2199 price it's [AUS]$200 more than the Galaxy S20 Ultra we told you was too expensive and too big earlier this month.
The Z Flip may be even more expensive but it is at least smaller, and gets even more so when you fold it in half to stash in your pocket or bag.
The new wave of foldable phones are very expensive, but that's also part of their appeal.
"The Galaxy Z Flip is a statement piece and we can't wait to see what Australians do with it," Samsung vice president of mobile Garry McGregor said.
On the other end of the scale, Huawei has announced its new foldable, the Mate Xs, will also be coming to Australia soon.
[...] The phone, a horizontally folding device that opens up into an 8-inch tablet is described by the company as a "high-end, luxury device," which partly explains its massive price tag.
The Huawei Mate Xs is due to go on sale here April 9 for [AUS]$3999, but is already available for pre-order.
[...] Huawei's local managing director Larking Huang said the phone was "ideal for tech seekers or anyone who craves performance, design and usability".
"Australian consumers will benefit from an unprecedented, immersive experience, all at the touch of their fingertips. Offering large dual displays, ultra-slim foldable form and all-day usage – Australians will be able to do business on the go or watch movies," he said.
What they won't be able to do is use any of Google's mobile services, like the Play Store, Gmail, Drive, Maps, YouTube, and other apps Australians rely on to do business, and indeed watch movies.
Huawei was banned from using those when it was placed on a US list of "banned entities" last year.
What is the most you will pay for a mobile phone?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday March 19 2020, @10:36AM
My previous phone was a first-gen Moto G. I think I spent £100 on it. I bought it because I expected long-term support from Google, but then Google sold Motorola a few months later and it went for 6 months with published remotely exploitable vulnerabilities, so I moved to using LineageOS on it. I kept it for a long time until the external speaker died (having a phone that couldn't ring sounded good, but eventually became more annoying than good). I replaced it with a OnePlus 5T, around the time the 6T came out. The 5T has everything I wanted and a few things that they removed for the 6 (like a headphone jack, for example). I use it a lot more than I used the Moto G: the GPS finds position almost immediately, the camera is better, and it runs a bunch of work things that the Moto G struggled with. I was willing to pay a bit more for a phone that had good support from LineageOS. This one cost me £200.
To put this device in perspective, the two machines I used during my PhD were (from memory, slightly off probably) an x86 desktop with a 1.2GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 20GB hard disk and a graphics accelerator that didn't count as a GPU (2D acceleration, not programmable) and a G4 Powerbook laptop with a 1.67GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a Radeon 9700 (some shader support, 64MB of RAM) and an 80GB hard disk. The desktop has a 100Mb/s wired network, the laptop had 54Mb/s WiFi (802.11b/g) and GigE wired network support (but if you actually used that speed it completely killed the CPU and everything died painfully for a bit). The phone has a quad-core 2.45GHz CPU (with better out-of-order superscalar perf than the desktop CPU above), 8GB of RAM, an Adreno 666 (a slightly indirect distant descendant of the Radeon on the old laptop, unified shader model, fully programmable), 802.11ac (400Mb/s+) WiFi as well was 4G WWAN. It is significantly more powerful that either of the machines I used during my PhD by any metric (and can even drive a wireless display, though the only thing I ever do with that is PowerPoint, where it can show the presenter view on the phone and the slides on the remote display) and goes a full day on a single charge with reasonably heavy use. I can connect a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to the phone and use it like a real computer.
I can imagine people who are about photos more than I do wanting a better camera. I would quite like the ability do drive a wired display, because the wireless display stuff isn't enough for things like xCloud (and having an XBox in my pocket that I can plug into a TV in hotels sounds fun when I'm travelling), but other than that I'll probably keep using this one until it physically wears out.
I do a load of stuff on my phone now that I'd previously have used a big computer for. It also helps that it supports dual SIM so I can use it to make and receive calls on my personal SIM but use the work SIM for data (most of the data I use is work-related, so they can pay for it).
sudo mod me up