Looking at today’s smartphone market, there has never been a time when the options available to us have been so broad. So many companies are coming up with powerful devices day in day out, making it difficult to choose when its time for a new device or to change an existing one. This competition is not a bad thing at all since it pushes companies to make better devices because they know that if they don’t, others will. Not only are they making better phones due to competition, but they are also making powerful devices at affordable and even cheap prices.
Take, for example, the Pocophone F1 which was released a little over a year ago. That phone made airways not because it was the fastest or it took the best pictures, but because of the price. Xiaomi, the company that made this device were able to deliver a device with flagship-grade specs at a very low price.
It came with a Snapdragon 845 processor, which was the same processor found in devices like the Samsung s9+ and the Google Pixel XL which were $840 and $899 respectively to the Pocophone's $300 at release. As of now, there are many devices on the market which provide incredible value for money. So this begs the question, it there still a need to spend up to $1000 dollars on a smartphone? The answer is no.
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| Buy the Pocophone F1 (Amazon) |
Gone are the days when a few companies controlled the smartphone industry and could decide to reserve the best features to their flagships and could sometimes deliberately slow down their less expensive devices in other encourage customers to go for their top offerings. That is no longer the case as now, you can get a device at half the price of $1000 dollar device with little to no compromise to performance. Also, the features that debut on flagships end up on mid-range devices a few months later so there isn’t a need to spend that extra quid.
Also, to the average consumer, the smartphone is just a portal to applications. Therefore if their smartphone allows them to do use their favorite applications then they’ll be satisfied. The extra 10-20% increase in performance you get from a flagship is just not worth the extra cost in today's market. It is no surprise that not a single flagship device was part of the top 5 selling devices of 2019. This does not mean getting a flagship is bad by any means but just know you are missing next to nothing if you don’t.