The Reign of the Fancy Phone Is Over
Few people can justify spending $300 on a bit of extra camera zoom
The annual hype around smartphones tends to focus on what the tech press affectionately refers to as “flagship” phones. These are devices like Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro, which starts at $1,000 and is marketed as a film studio in a box, or Google’s Pixel 4, whose radar chip and voice-powered assistant combine to create a phone you don’t always have to touch, starting at $800. But as the banner features of these premium phones have become more frivolous, consumers seem to be increasingly satisfied with their more basic counterparts.
Until fairly recently, manufacturers could rely on their most innovative, most expensive phones to also be their most popular. Apple’s iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 7 (and their Plus-sized versions) — released in 2014, 2015, and 2016, respectively — all became Apple’s top sellers when they were released. Apple would usually offer a small price cut on the previous year’s model, using the older devices as a “budget” category.
In 2017, when Apple released the iPhone X, the first iPhone that started at $1,000 at launch, some speculated that the high price would deter customers. But the most expensive iPhone sold more than any other. And at that point, there were plenty of other options: The iPhone 8…
