How is that not relevant? If you’re looking to spend a minimal amount of money for a phone that will last a while, Android is arguably poor value since you’ll be replacing it sooner.
I don’t believe the Boots Theory of Socioeconomics applies here. It rarely applies to luxury goods.
1. A phone can easily be lost, stolen, or damaged beyond repair. A $25 phone isn’t 8x more likely to break than a $200 phone, so the damage/lost/theft risk is much higher with the $200 phone.
2. People that buy $25 phones are presumably okay not having access to the latest versions of apps and the latest security updates.
3. $25 is 8x cheaper than $200. Even if we assume a rapid rate of replacing the $25 every 6 months it would take 4 years before the $200 phone pays off. That’s a poor ROI for $175, and the $25 phones will probably last longer than 6 months.
So far my phones tend to last until the screens break or the batteries give out. On one occasion I upgraded because a particular OS version level supports a la carte app permissions. I'd be really surprised if an Apple phone would have been cheaper than a small handful of cheap phones over the span of 20 years. To be fair I could have bought used / refurb iPhones. And it looks like my plan offers a new iPhone SE for around $300 when all is said and done.
Now had I been really smart, I should have invested the savings in Apple stock ;-)
The Boots theory sounds clever, but of course would need to be supported by evidence.
See the Boots Theory of Socioeconomics: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-r...