Subscriptions were supposed to replace cable, then software, then heated seats, now phones. Funny how every innovation somehow ends with paying forever. If your business model needs me renting hardware I already carry everywhere, maybe the product isn’t improving fast enough to justify buying it?

If you cannot control the software on the device — including the OS — then you never bought it. You paid for it, but you did not buy it and therefore do not own it.

Don’t kid yourselves, the majority of people will eat this shit up

That’s exactly what I thought. I know so many people that just want the newest release just because “status”. Most of those people I know can’t actually afford it, they just prioritise it over other things.

And most of them are tech illiterate and don’t use 80% of the phone’s abilities.

They will love this.

Even without the FOMO, some people just want a working device.

It’s why leasing cars is attractive to some. They don’t care about the specs, they want one that works “well” and looks nice and are willing to give up nebulous "ownership"of a device that they don’t know or care how it works, that they can’t repair, so they can stop thinking about their choice and just always have a one available.

I don’t get that status thing, every phone looks the same to me. A black rectangle with screen in a generic case. Woo…

Yup, they already buy their phone on a payment plan for double the price, and get locked into a carrier at inflated rates. Eventually though, they could actually own their phone.

But they’ll just see a lower monthly price tag, and trade in the ability to eventually own the phone.

Maybe we just need more affordable phones.

There were lots of affordable phones before the AI companies bought up all of the RAM and flash.

I wrote this comment on a $150 phone which for all the purposes that I use it for, performs exactly as well as an $800 iPhone.

I bought my Samsung for $240 CAD, brand new, not refurbished.

I can’t tell the difference from an expensive phone. Less camera lens? I don’t understand why other phones are $1000 to $2000. Processor speed? On a phone? I’m not running games on this thing except online chess. It plays YouTube without ads. It makes calls and sends texts.

I just don’t get it.

Past $800, you’re not getting a better processor. The base iPhone and Galaxy offer the same chip as the Pro Max and Ultra, respectively, in most generations.

You’re only getting more cameras or screen. The $2000 ones fold.

Thata why apple made their new cheap MacBook out of some phone processors but wont let us have a dual OS on the phone if we plug it into a monitor. Because its powerful enough to do that, but we wont buy both if we can.

I buy one smartphone per decade. Why would I want to lease it instead?

Think of the recurring opportunity for emails about price increases and downstream shareholder value!

And why burden yourself with ownership really

I’m sure carriers still do payment plans

they do, but its seperate from the phone company itself charging a subscription.

The way I read that title: Apple and Samsung stopped innovating, now sales aren’t growing, so it’s time for enshittification.

Samsung added a 10x telephoto lens and i was excited to finally get that over the regular 2x or 3x of the time.

Then they stopped making them and went back to 5x.

This phone still works great

How good is the lens ?

Ive really enjoyed using it, pictures come out really nice. It helps to have something to steady yourself on though if you want the best outcome as your small movements move the window much more.

A 10x zoom might tempt me to upgrade… Not much else would.

“The intent is that the user will turn in their device every 12 to 36 months because they intend to upgrade regardless.”

No, I get a new device because I’ve broken the last one. The ones I give back, you can’t sell on the secondary market which is their intent.

I will not rent critical items.

There has been a large push to enter a subscription for eyeglasses, the large firms here keep pushing and pushing to rent glasses.

Fuck no, I refuse to have my eyesight be dependent on having to keep paying.

Same for music, I buy all my music through iTunes, I have never used Spotify, I refuse to be put in a situation where I am in financial trouble and I loose access to my music.

This is the same crap, I need a phone to be an active member of modern society, I will not rent that access.

Wait, sorry, a subscription for GLASSES!? They’re like $150 here if you want the name-brand ones, or covered by insurance if you don’t. Insurance is basic btw, $80 a month for a family of 4 for ‘basic extras’. I don’t know which country you live in, but I can take a wild guess.

Yeah, both our largest optician chains, Synsam and Synoptik, as well as others, are pushing subscriptions, hard.

Now, I am fortunate enough that I can afford to buy name brand glasses with the best lenses on the market, two pairs (one normal, one sunnies) cost me about €1500, but there are far cheaper alternatives.

In America you can have whatever the top tier of vision insurance is available to you and it’s basically a $100 off coupon for frames. I’ve never not spent $300-$400 for glasses.

Well Apple and Samsung can kiss my hairy hoop.

With smartphones current prices and componants becoming more expensive they are realizing not a lot of people will buy a smartphone costing more than 1500 dollars. Especially when hardware is now good enough and people are starting to try to keep their phone as long as possible.

Making you rent your phone allow to hide how much it’s going to cost you and ensure them a steady cash income.

This!

How about you guys kiss the pimpliest part of my ass instead?

This is basically how my company gives us our phones. And i think it’s now our less standard

Let’s be honest here: A smartphone costs the same to develop, produce and so on, regardless of if you simply buy it or rent it. The companies need their profit, so they will not start renting you a phone when it is more profitable to sell it to you. It should make you suspicious that they want you to rent, because that kind of tells you that they will make more profit from renting than selling. That means that you will pay more for your phone in the long run without owning it.

The reason this is happening is because the cost of DRAM is ballooning the prices of all electronics and they are fully aware that people can’t pay the new higher prices even if they wanted to. Lower monthly payments is the difference between whether a lot of people buy an Apple or Samsung device at all.

I wouldn’t call this move nefarious on its own, but it is a dystopian side affect of the real problem which is DRAM price gauging.

All companies see there are more profits to be made if you let consumers pay your company monthly instead of once, while you do not let them own anything. It is disgusting.

Did you pay your rent yesterday?

Yeah, because these companies buy up all houses while there’s a housing shortage, so I can’t afford buying one myself as the market is fucked. So I’m forced into subscription.

Not beating the WEF’s “you will own nothing and you’ll be happy” conspiracy aren’t they

Well one part of that is true at least.

No. The only innovations these days are AI. If you don’t care about that, you’ll be fine with whatever.

My iPhone is pretty current from 2024, but my Android phone from 2019 isn’t much slower or less capable. It has less storage, but it has a memory card slot. There isn’t much it can’t do that the newer iPhone can, except for generate AI slop on device.

If you need AI, they’re gonna make you pay to play. If you don’t… just chill.

No, and also fuck off with that.

The only thing prompting phone replacement for me was battery life. And nearly all phones have shit ability to replace batteries (for now - EU rules incoming).

I bought a Fairphone 6 with /e/OS. I’ve left Big Tech behind. And I have a phone where I can easily replace the components. I don’t want to swap devices for 4-5 years, which makes ownership far more cost effective than leasing.

Also – with leasing, what happens when the renter is done with it? E waste, just like we have today.

Biggest issue is software support. You really do not want to run your banking app on an older, unpatched Android version

Or at least that’s what big tech wants you to think

Don’t worry the banking software running those apps is far older, unpatched, and just as vulnerable.

Oneplus 13 has two day battery life for me. Best phone I’ve ever owned. But I heard they are not going to release oneplus phones in Europe anymore so that sucks a lot. I dont want anything else.

No they just sell the devices to the secondary market

Honest question, what the fuck happens with phones that companies buy back? Is it for recycling? I can’t imagine that makes them any money, so is the bet just that its worth it for then to subsidize the cost of the new phone to keep you buying new ones more often? That doesnt feel like it adequately explains the practice

Apple is known for reselling and recycling.

Initially I used to only buy new phones when my phone became too slow - roughly every 6-7 years. Now I get refurbished or get it from someone else for free and replace the battery. My current phone is from 2018 and still works well. Why would I replace it?

Security updates.

Its probably about to stop getting them, or already has.

Or, maybe their CEOs can stick them in their asses.

Instead of innovating to create a better phone each year that users want, they seem more interested in just changing the business model. I used to be a person that would upgrade my phone every year or so, now I only start looking when my phone is within 1 year of end of life.

An important thing to note here is that this isn’t anything new. This is what a significant amount of people have already been doing for years through their carrier. I don’t have any statistics on hand for this, but I personally don’t know a single person who has bought their phone outright. Everyone just leases their phone through their carrier around here, and upgrades as soon as they’re allowed. Hearing people complain about their cellphone plan cost increasing or poor cell service but being unable to switch carriers until their phone is paid off is a common thing to hear, as carriers have been using their phone leasing programs as a substitute for plan contracts for awhile now.

Leasing your phone through your carrier with the ability to buy or turn it in at the end of the term has been the name of the game for a very long time. What Apple and Samsung are doing is just trying to entice you into going direct through them instead of your carrier which is actually a good thing.

If you’ve been buying your phone outright then you shouldn’t use a program like this, but if you’ve been leasing your phone through your carrier I’d actually recommend switching to just doing the same thing directly through the manufacturer since it frees you up to switch carriers whenever you want.

I should have kept reading before posting. You basically said the same thing I did only better. 😂

I buy my phone’s on either back market or swappa. Paid half of the price for a perfectly good phone. That are guaranteed to work too

Serious question: How is subsiding a phone over three years and then trading it in at the end of those three years to get another phone any different from leasing ?

Yes

You should buy it. Every time. Fuck subscriptions.

some subscriptions are fine though, like email or a vpn.

you could argue there should be no need for a vpn but… it is what it is

Services as subscriptions: fine. They are ongoing agreements that require an unspecifiable amount of labor, it makes sense to pay as you go.

Subscription goods? Fuck that. If I am in posession of it and responsible for maintaining it in a specific state of operation and quality, I basically own it anyway.

Charging me monthly for a pocket-sized computer with the added stipulations that the seller gets to dictate what I’m allowed to do with it, probably installs spyware on it (on top of the OEM and OS spyware), and if I break it (or otherwise violate the terms of use) I have to buy it anyway and they still get to keep it? They’ve basically reinvented a mix of payphones and library PCs, but more invasive and more expensive

They’ve basically reinvented a mix of payphones and library PCs, but more invasive and more expensive

No this isn’t even the same thing. Library PC is made available to you for free (paid via taxes). Payphone was a bit a different breast, as they supposed to make phone service available at any place when before we had cellphones, although they were also available for free (you paid for making calls though).

Over here they want to remove ownership. Instead of owning a house, you rent an apartment, instead of owning a car you pay to use self driving one, instead of owning a movie or music (yes, I know) you pay for streaming service, and now you won’t even own the computer in your pocket.

Basically they want society where we don’t own anything and only pay subscription fees to live. This push toward that world is called technofeudalism. Only billionaires own things and we are just serfs at their mercy.

Lots of vpns claims are fake but whatever.

yeah i just wanna hide my ip from random websites, they don’t need to know my ip

i couldn’t care less about what vpn providers say, i don’t even know what my vpn provider (proton) “promises”.

I want an essential phone. Not too basic and not too “smart”.

Lease your phone so that you have enough money to finance a pizza.

“YOU OWN NOTHING!!”

And you love it!! Whether you like it or not.

You will own nothing and like it

Maybe, if there’s a way to fake every single detail then unlock the bootloader and load another OS, that is unless the GSM module dosen’t has some unique ID

If your current plan is to buy the latest and greatest phone today, sell it in two years, and then buy a new top of the line phone, then Apple’s new lease program looks like an attractive option. They’ve priced it such that, over the course of the lease, you end up paying about the cost of purchasing the phone minus its resale value. Leasing looks convenient because it saves you from having to find a buyer.

It also keeps phones out of the secondary market, which benefits Apple. Off lease phones are used for warranty replacements, or sold as refurbished through official storefronts instead of person to person.

Once Apple’s leasing program kills off a competing used phone market, they can also raise the cost of the lease to reflect that, which also benefits Apple over the longer term.

Apple would be stupid not to try leasing their phones.

There’s always going to be a robust used market for phones that were purchased outright, to be resold on a different cycle than every 2 years (plenty of rich people changing phones every year, and plenty of people replacing on a 3, 4, 5, or 6 year cycle). You can expect the market to basically settle on a curve where it depreciates along a predictable rate.

Leases don’t really change that, any more than leases changed the market for used cars, or even certified pre-owned by the same dealers and organized by the same manufacturers who sell new cars.

There will be times that the predefined lease terms will unexpectedly prove to be either beneficial or detrimental to the consumer. Sometimes external factors will affect the entire used market, like currency issues, or component pricing issues (imagine if RAM prices dramatically swing again for new devices in a way that affects the value of the already-sold devices out in the world), where the predefined lease prices turn into a windfall for someone. Like in 2021 or so when expiring car leases allows the lessee to buy out the car at the end of the lease for much cheaper than the car itself was worth.

It’s generally going to be a less than ideal financial decision to lease, but it also won’t collapse the used device market and it won’t be that far off the practice of selling your old phone when you buy a new one.

Yeah I generally switch every 5 years or so, and my old phone generally just rots away in a drawer. Leasing might actually make sense for use cases like mine (or not, I haven’t looked at the numbers). Might also give me less anxiety about accidentally scratching the thing.

I waited 8 year to get a newer phoner that was better than my previous phone in all respects at the same price. And even then it was mostly a convenience upgrade because my old phone was still working well.

Why the hell would it be worth it to lease a phone?

It depends a lot on how heavily you use your phones. I’m a heavy user and my batteries degrade heavily in 2-3 years. That leads to overheating, poor performance, and of course poor battery life.

The cost of replacing a battery is high for most phones. Sometimes higher than buying a new phone at a similar level of performance.

I’m doing 1-2 battery cycles per day. A light user might go through battery cycles at a quarter of my rate, and would not have those problems.

Was high. Europe changed the law <3

Seeing is believing, they probably find some loophole to fuck with the system.

They will try to male the battery in only compatible with onemodel or some kind like this.

Right to repair solves that, by mandating against designs which make simple replacements exorbitantly expensive for no good reason.

Fuck that.

So they’re coming to terms that nobody wants to buy what is basically the same kind of phone now a days for higher price… and so now they want to scam people by “upgrading” to what they think will be cheaper when in reality, it’s probably not…

My last few phones were super cheap kinda no name phones that i just debloated. My phones usually crack because of work or whatever. Now i bought a used pixel 10 to install custom firmware on it, and thought that i’m on the edge of techonology now for the first time in 10 years. Lik idk. It’s maybe a bit faster and the fotos are better… Perhaps?

They can buy my left nut.

I’ll buy it. Three fiddy?

$3.5 trillion. No low ball offers. I know what I've got.

No low ball

Ironic considering what I’m getting

Who would’ve thought consumers, in an economy propped up by an AI bubble, wouldn’t exactly be risking their financial stability for last year’s model bút with AI bloat- and spyware, or some extremely vulnerable folding party trick? Apple’s partnership with Klarna should set off alarm bells with regards to demographic being targeted; as for the intent of the buy back programs: furthering control over the second hand market. The AI circle jerk has created the perfect conditions for this anti-ownership model, and the innovatively stale industry is sparing no time to capitalize off it (Samsung for both the consumer- and enterprise segment).

…Motorola please pls pls sign deal with graphene OS

Rent your phone so you can rent an app that'll allow you to access your internet banking and pay for all the rents, including the rental of payment services for rental paying?

No, thanks, I'll cut through this whole Rube-Goldberg machinery of "living in society", straight into applying for a leasing for my next six-feet-under wooden house instead. I'd love the view, grass and chrysanthema at my roof, buzzards as my faithful company (whether it'll be part of the legalese leasing terms or not, Mother Nature doesn't care about that, and neither do I as I'd be long gone (or should I say, long bones) at that point).

!technology@lemmy.world

I bet we’re 1 generation away from cheap “clones” with (pure) Linux on them.

What do people need? A A57 octo core, 8GB RAM, 256/512GB storage, and a 100€ screen…

Throw in the usual stuff (sim, gps/galileo, wifi, bt) plus maybe a card reader, swappable batteries, audio jack for us nerds out there and the craze can be done with.

300€ from china (made in eu/us for 1100€ coming next decade)…

Good or bad, I see it coming! (Just after the linux desktop 😁?)

Jolla and SailfishOS inbound

No better then android. Actually worse it isn’t open source.

It is partially open-source, as I understand it, the core OS is, but some UI components on top etc. are still closed source.

docs.sailfishos.org/…/Sailfish_OS_Source/

Um. Isn’t this what people already do? Phone comes with contract. You don’t own it.

No? Unless you chose to do it that way!

I don’t know many personally that choose the installment contracts, but I can see it can be convenient for some. But “you don’t own it” only applies to that case, which from my point of view, seems the rarer case than just you know, buying it.

I’ve had ten phones since 1997 and never done it like that.

Didn’t Google used to have Pixel Pass where you get a new phone every 2 years? Then they killed it before the 2 year cycle was up?

Imaging companies promising you a new phone after 2 years and then canceling the program at 22 months and then said oops, here $50 store credit…

Never do that. You should always fully own and control your communication and computation devices. It’s a matter of privacy.

Even if you buy an iPhone outright you don’t fully control it.

That’s why I don’t buy Apple products…

Last phone was an iPhone 13. Current is the 17.

I don’t game so unless something catastrophic happens I don’t see myself needing to get a new phone for a very long time.

I have no interest running “AI”, either.

As former IT, most people seem to go from iphone 12/13 to 17 in the last year. Anecdotally, my wife and I went from S17s to $300 motorolas. My parents take the rotating yearly “upgrade” offer and seem fine with that

Depending on what moto does with graphene I may just need that instead.

Same. I upgraded bc my 13 was starting to show signs of age. I would’ve waiting until it catastrophically gained, but with the ai/chip crisis I figured there was no way future iPhones were going to be cheaper, so I got a 17. Looks like I made the right call

Those big corps sure lust after subscriptions. Damn those old paper magazines for giving them yet another unoriginal idea!

Apple, Samsung, and any OEMs leaning on this can get fucked.

Just like with cars. If you always have to have the latest and greatest, need to be seen with “the best”, replace your phone frequently then yes leasing is cheaper than buying. This would be stupid but people seem to do this

Fast fashion is trashy. But people will do whatever to make the illusion of affluence because that’s how some hope to get into the club.

I only buy hardware which supports installing free/libre operating systems and applications.

So, Android.

For now

No, Pixel.

Absolutely fucking not. Im not going to lease something that contains my private information ever.

Dumb coonsomer would get this dumb products and then for next new dumb products.

used unlocked phone market has been my go to for decades

Same, two to three year old phones for 10th the price on eBay as long as it states clean imse has been awsome

My Samsung S10 has headphone jack and expandable storage 😎 7 year old phone, bought it used for $130

and no security updates

I guarantee you that’s also a reason why they’re thinking about this system. If people sell them back their old phones or lease them, the second hand market will suffer immensely.

They want a future in which only they own property, and everyone else has to rent even the freaking air.

Hummm … Go f yourself.

Of course they want to make upgrading more attractive because it is less attractive now that it ever has been.

If you want people to buy new stuff, making that stuff different from the old stuff they already own would be a good idea.

I will go without. I will drag a PC and a mobile router everywhere I go before I rent a phone. Can these asshole corporate bullshitters just go to mars already so we can be free of them?

“guaranteed buyback” just nerfs the used market.

Is it really a buyback if you’re only leasing the device?

All the plans here are lease to own I think, Ontario Canada.

F-them! I’m quite happy with my DeGoogled Fairphone 6.

I mean lots of mobile providers have been providing phones as part of their subscription model, that has going since the 2000s.

That is not convenient at all, but some folks don’t want to downplay 1000+$ and they really want an iphone or whatever.

It seems to me Apple and Samsung want to get their fair share of that (still sucks though cause its all in the “you don’t own anything”)

Groooooss. You’ll own nothing and you’ll like it.

It’s time for some right-of-first-sale legislation that kills off the subscription-for-everything scam.

1. It should be illegal for a lack of a subscription to prevent operation of something you’ve bought.

2. Same goes for requiring connectivity.

3. If the subscription service terminates, reverse-engineering to maintain continuing operations should be protected by law, and the manufacturer should be required to provide the specifications to the public.

4. DRM to prevent access to subscribable features should be illegal.