The problem with smartphones is that we are all, with few exceptions "normies". I dropped the ball on smartphones, my last one is a $300 Samsung that is actually quite decent for all I use it for.
It doesn't take the best pictures but it is not a blurry mess either, more than enough to complement my terrible skills as a photographer, and by that I mean the skill of pointing the camera in the right direction, not that of fiddling with the settings.
It doesn't run "heavy" apps, like 3D games, but I don't play these on my phone, the controls and small screen are not great. So I don't need that massive computing power. In fact, I only need these gigabytes of RAM because of how terribly bloated mobile apps have become.
And the worst part is that I can't even use my phone as a general purpose computer. Despite being the more open of the two platforms, Android is so locked down that I can't have fun with the hardware and still use it as a daily driver.
A smartphone is like a game console, like the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is an underpowered device by today's standards, but who cares about the hardware, its only value is the games it plays, and Nintendo makes damn good games in that power budget, making it a damn good console. Same idea for smartphones, they are defined by the apps they run, and the apps I want to run run on low end smartphones, so why buy an expensive phone For real work, I use a PC, with a large screen, a mouse, a keyboard, and an OS with a usable filesystem, that PC, while decent, is actually cheaper than a flagship phone.
And yes, the camera, pretty much the only thing worth getting expensive phones for for most people, but still, there are limits to what these tiny sensors can do. And as I said before, we have already passed to point where for most people the real improvement can only come from the one taking the picture.
It doesn't take the best pictures but it is not a blurry mess either, more than enough to complement my terrible skills as a photographer, and by that I mean the skill of pointing the camera in the right direction, not that of fiddling with the settings.
It doesn't run "heavy" apps, like 3D games, but I don't play these on my phone, the controls and small screen are not great. So I don't need that massive computing power. In fact, I only need these gigabytes of RAM because of how terribly bloated mobile apps have become. And the worst part is that I can't even use my phone as a general purpose computer. Despite being the more open of the two platforms, Android is so locked down that I can't have fun with the hardware and still use it as a daily driver.
A smartphone is like a game console, like the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is an underpowered device by today's standards, but who cares about the hardware, its only value is the games it plays, and Nintendo makes damn good games in that power budget, making it a damn good console. Same idea for smartphones, they are defined by the apps they run, and the apps I want to run run on low end smartphones, so why buy an expensive phone For real work, I use a PC, with a large screen, a mouse, a keyboard, and an OS with a usable filesystem, that PC, while decent, is actually cheaper than a flagship phone.
And yes, the camera, pretty much the only thing worth getting expensive phones for for most people, but still, there are limits to what these tiny sensors can do. And as I said before, we have already passed to point where for most people the real improvement can only come from the one taking the picture.