The original iPhone cost $500 and adjusting for inflation that is about $800 today. I don't remember phones costing $300 since before the smart phone era. Even Walkman phones cost $500 in the early 2000's.
You do know the modern smartphone is the most technologically advanced consumer good that has ever existed? Like at no point in history has there ever been something so small, complex and intricate in the hands of so many people. The new iPhone is going to be very expensive - it’s a luxury item and marketed like that.
They can definitely make phones for $300 and you can buy a smartphone that is more powerful than the original iPhone for $50. It probably will be a bit slow running modern apps but it may possibly still be workable for a while.
It fundamentally has the same capabilities as the original iphone. You can browse the web, check your emails, watch movies, play simple games.
The only difference is that now you can play graphicially intense desktop-style games, but no one really does that. And also it has some sattelite phone functionality. The cameras are also better, the battery life is better, but it all doesnt fundamentally change the way you use it. The complexity over last year's smartphone is unnessisary.
Now that everyone in the world is basicially required to use a smartphone, the only way for big smartphone to make more revenue is to sell each consumer more smartphone per smartphone.
You're correct. Ultimately 99% of the stuff you do on a phone is identical to 10 years ago. I know exactly 0 zero phone gamers. I do know some who play, like, the pokemon trading card game.
Cameras have improved, but less than you think. Most of the improvement is in low-light, but in well lit scenes we actually sort of peaked 10 years ago. It's gotten slightly worse now, believe it nor not.
But you can't legitimately run a phone from 10 years ago, because while everything is the same, the software uses 100x as many resources. That sort of tricks people into thinking "oh it must be doing so much more!"
But... is it? Think back. Instagram 10 years ago, YouTube 10 years ago. Yeah... it's basically the same. Some argue they've regressed. I'm sure we've more than 10x the code size, but nobody sees that.
Web browsers have also gotten much more complex, but again, you won't notice it. We have a lot more fringe web APIs like webusb but like... the regular web browsing experience for 99% of tasks is identical.
I think there have been some niceities in web apis like webgpu, websocket, webrtc, PWAs. But they are limited in weird ways, and the fingerprinting has never been worse
