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rcxdudetoday at 11:38 AM4 repliesview on HN

This is one of the advantages apple currently has: Staying on the bleeding edge of or buying an iphone is cheaper than you would think, because iphones in general retain their value longer than the average android, due to apple's relatively long OS update period (and yes, it would be better if they were more open and less control freaky, but they still beat their competition). And even the android brands that do have competitive support periods lose out due to the brand confusion.


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microtonaltoday at 1:26 PM

This is one of the advantages apple currently has: Staying on the bleeding edge of or buying an iphone is cheaper than you would think, because iphones in general retain their value longer than the average android

I have found that you can also use the less long value retention to your advantage by not buying an Android phone on release day. E.g. Pixels often go for hundreds off after 6 months or so. E.g. here in Western Europe, including VAT: Pixel 9a 549 -> 349, Pixel 10 899 -> 549, Pixel 10 Pro 1099 -> 769. At the same time the iPhone 17 has only gone down about 100 Euro. When getting e.g. a Pixel at the discounted price, the loss is not so much after selling after 1-2 years.

Also, I had a habit of getting a new iPhone every year and the loss of selling second-hand is now much larger than in the early days. I think the demand lessened due to the market largely reaching an equilibrium + there not being a lot of advances in smartphones, so people are staying on their phones longer, so there is less demand for second-hand phones (e.g. my parents were on iPhone 11 until recently, my mom still is).

The typical interested buyers are also more annoying to deal with these days (also probably due to the changing iPhone demographics). So nowadays, if I cannot sell it to family or friends, I'll often just send it to a company like Rebuy.

kelvinjps10today at 1:54 PM

Samsung and pixels Almost match it. Something about ¡Phones it's outside of the us or in developed counties I might say they're expensive compared to android. The price difference between what they cost in the us and in other parts is a lot. When I came to the us that I realized that buying an ¡Phone is not that dumb, as here the price are reasonable, for example Samsungs phones cost the same.

kvemkontoday at 11:49 AM

> apple's relatively long OS update period

For a 127 EUR Samsung A17 up to 6 OS and security updates (6 years) are advertised. For a Google Pixel up to 7 updates. How long is it for Apple?

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g947otoday at 1:26 PM

That may be a good argument 5 years ago but not today.

An iPhone does not necessarily last longer than an (flagship) Android phone these days, including security updates.

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