Here’s why you should maybe consider blowing a fortune on your next smartphone.
Being a gearhead, I was recently reading an article on Team-BHP (my new favorite website) on how a more expensive car can maybe just work out cheaper.
Here’s a link to the article in case you’re interested: https://www.team-bhp.com/advice/how-more-expensive-car-can-work-out-cheaper
The primary thought process behind this is simple.
It’s based on the customer retaining the premium car for a longer period and staying in that premium domain even while purchasing their next car.
This is also made possible because you can hold on longer to the premium car without ever feeling its age. There’s also this rule that some petrolheads follow of selling their car off after 5 years.
Customers also are urged to sell off their cars because, in this particular context, most of these cars are not exactly premium. So they ultimately feel the need to constantly upgrade because they begin to feel the age of the car with every passing year and every new car released.
He talks about a person he knew who went through three cars over 8 years. Which meant that the person on average changed his car every 4 years.
Out of the three cars he bought, the second and third cars were quite premium. The first was a very budget-oriented car. Not bad, but not exactly something you would want to hold onto for more than 4 years.
To put it shortly, the author suggests that this particular individual could have just gone for the costlier second car right from the beginning. And in doing so, could have used two premium cars over a longer period, while not losing too much value on them through depreciation (because they’re premium).
He also goes into other pros about going for the costlier car, but those points are more car related. So I won’t be going into those.
The article resonated with me because I felt the same thing was also relevant to smartphones.
There’s a lot of literature on why you shouldn’t invest in a flagship phone. There may be literature suggesting otherwise. But I feel I don’t run into such articles except for people advocating iPhones.
I also felt the need to write this article because most of my friends and relatives are big advocates for buying budget or mid-range smartphones, and don’t jump at the idea of buying a slightly costlier device.
They have their reasons for this. And to each his own.
But hear me out.
I think if you are a person who cares a little bit about the technology that you use, you should maybe consider adopting a similar strategy toward your smartphone purchases.
Sure, you may not get the same value you did for it as you would for a car. But you will still not be completely robbed because of depreciation. I do want to point out that this depends on the smartphone itself, so don’t adopt this strategy without researching on your own a bit.
But the important point is you can give yourself that premium flagship phone experience throughout. And trust me, there’s a reason why many people insist on that.
A common counterpoint given to buying costly phones is that there’s nothing that differs between a budget phone and flagship phones in terms of day-to-day tasks.
While this may be true, and you may be able to pacify yourself somehow and move on in life, flagship phones do everything better.
Especially the little things.
Everything from the animations, to that gut feeling you get of the phone being able to handle anything no matter what you throw at it. And that feeling is comforting.
I also want to say that it’s not like mid-range or budget phones can’t handle heavy workloads. They can, but that same confidence is simply absent.
You also have this disappointment within yourselves seeing the phone chug away at something.
With more companies now giving proper software updates in the Android world, it means you also don’t miss out on newer software. Apple always gave timely updates, so they had that going for them all the time.
But Apple isn’t exactly affordable, and that’s where Samsung has come in clutch with honestly amazing update releases. Other companies have come up as well, but I’ll leave that for the scope of another article.
The last point I want to get across is this.
Your smartphone is the device closest to you. It’s the most intimate you can get with a mobile device. Invest in a good experience and it will make your life better by just that much.
Now, if you still want to go for budget phones, that’s fine. Some people just have immense difficulty justifying a smartphone purchase as costly as today’s flagships. But maybe, give a flagship a shot and see how it pans out.
