

Now is the worst time ever to buy an Android phone - kemper
http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/22/now-is-the-worst-time-ever-to-buy-an-android-phone/

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joejohnson
_Android phones have never been as impressive as they are today. They have
never been as responsive, as slim or as powerful. Their displays have never
been more vivid or more stunning. Their data speeds have never been as fast._

Yes, that's true right now. It was also true 2 years ago. It will be true next
year, too. Every successive generation has to be better than the last.

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Nowyouknow
The article SHOULD be titled "Now is the worst time to get locked into a two
year contract".

Blatant crap IMO.

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gcb
yeah. that will always be "true" btw.

at every point in time you could say "don't buy gadget X because any time now
they will have gadget Z available". and you will be correct. works for
cellphones, cars, kitchen knifes. anything.

~~~
ceejayoz
My 10 year old kitchen knife compares favourably to a new one.

~~~
gcb
So does my 5yr asus netbook. but plenty of people would say otherwise for
both.

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ceejayoz
That's a pretty dumb comparison.

With regular sharpening, a kitchen knife can be just as effective as a brand
new one for decades. It'll cut food just as quickly and efficiently.

A laptop may be workable, but it's going to become underpowered in empirical
ways fairly quickly.

~~~
gcb
as is missing the point of an exaggeration.

but again, my 5yr laptop still does everything i need at the same speed as it
did 5yrs ago.

in fact, using the 3.1 kernel i think it's even faster than 5yrs ago.

on the other hand, 2yr of sharpening my san mai honyaki blade made the
balancing impossible to cut the sashimi slices i used to cut when it was new.
They came out too irregular now.

Also, if i had waited only 3 months before buying that knife, i would be able
to buy the newer model with the nicer black handle instead of brow, which was
only available to the Maguro bōchō at the time. I still regret it to this day.

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r00fus
"and it features a 1.5GHz quad-core Tegra 3 processor, a 4.6-inch 1,280 x
720-pixel Super LCD 2 display, an 8-megapixel ...." blah, blah..

What about heat profile, battery life, and cost? Spec-lists may sway some
buyers, but most folks want to know how they can use those specifications to
make calls and do tasks.

~~~
tptacek
Also: these are all huge screens.

~~~
mhd
I wonder where this is heading. Either that's going to turn up to be an
unusable medium between tablets and phones, or we're watching the evolution of
the "personal computing device" who just happened to be that smaller because
they started out as phones. I bet it won't be long until someone calls out the
"post-phone era"…

(I'd bet against it, due to the pretty constant constraint of jeans and jacket
pockets.)

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caublestone
Of course phones are gonna get faster, more memory, better screens. Honestly
though, I just got a new droid, and yeah it's better than the old one, but not
2 years difference like it used to be.

I don't give a damn about specs. I care what I can do with the phone. I was
hoping this article was going to go in the direction of HTC is releasing a
beautiful and blazingly fast phone that integrates Dropbox storage (which is
true), improved speech controls, and a smart notification system that figures
out when you want to get things done.

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nextstep
>> These new smartphones will be slimmer, sleeker and more capable than
anything on the market today...

I have a year-and-a-half old iPhone. It has a great camera, a great screen
(the first "Retina" screen), and it is plenty fast and the battery lasts about
36 hours with normal use. All of the new features in newer phones are marginal
improvements over my current phone; the newest android phones are not leaps
and bounds greater than the previous generation. They are ~20% better, maybe?

The point is, this guy is probably just obsessed with having the latest and
greatest, even if it's only slightly better than phone he bought 3-6 months
earlier. Most people probably aren't that crazy about technology, and don't
have the resources to buy a phone more than once every two years.

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psyklic
The author completely didn't discuss the negatives -- the battery. The largest
battery life between the phones mentioned is 1800 mAh. This is just over half
of the battery capacity of the current-generation Droid Maxx (3300 mAh) -
which still has a slim profile and speedy processor.

For me, the 3300 mAh battery life is a definite current-generation game-
changer. Not having to charge my phone throughout the day, no matter how much
I use it -- and not having to carry around an extended battery -- is what I
care about. I'd gladly take that over a higher-res screen.

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NameNickHN
_For tech savvy smartphone users, committing to a two-year contract is brutal.
Mobile technology moves so fast that smartphones can seem outdated just months
after they launch._

There is a simple solution to this. Just choose a plan that doesn't contain a
subsidized phone. It's cheaper which means you have money left for the phone
you desire. Once that is outdated, just sell it on ebay or wherever and
purchase a new phone. And so on. Of course, the new phone will cost more than
you get for the old one, but you really can't have everything.

