Unfortunately, according to an obvious conspiracy of smartphone manufacturers, they intentionally do not make cheap models with support for 4K@60fps+OIS, although many SoC medium -level SoCs have long supported this. They do not give such a regime except top models (which, moreover, without exception with a vile low-frequency flicker on Amoled), as well as not the output of the videosigal on HDMI/DP (which is in 100% SoC) through the USB-C port.

Forcing people to buy only expensive tops, when many need only high -quality 4k video recording and photography, but not super fast SoC for games and all such garbage for children and idiots.

Prices are overstated 4-5 times in fact for all components.
In fact, optics and sensors in large millions of batches cost a penny, like everything else. And most of all, the extra charge for RAM and nand chips is striking. While a 500GB SSD in SLC (and not slow TLC mode, not even MLC!) mode would already cost $100, because 2TB QLC drives cost exactly $100. And immoral and greedy Apple takes the retail price of 8TB SSD for 1TB TLC disk inside iPhone...
While the population from the "golden billion" will have this easy money, they will buy smartphones for conditional "$1000"+. But gradually this will come to an end. Credit pumping comes to an end - there is a reckoning for everything at once.

The capitalists are not trying to improve civilization with some adequate minimum margin to maintain the development of the industry and pay normally to the workers and so that they themselves remain for a decent life, they are trying greedily to squeeze the maximum profit only in their pocket (Apple is one of the most immoral companies using cheap workers in Asia and paying them a penny ), which more and more limits real progress and does not at all improve the quality of life of people. In 99% of cases, shareholders are not interested in progress as a goal - they are only interested in the thickness of their own wallet. Like ordinary layers.
And there, somewhere on the side, scientists and "negro" engineers swarm, most of which, looking at this feast during the plague, also became immoral personalities and simply saw budgets and grants, who can...

Well, right, there are even more options with external storage than cloud. I rarely find myself without a connection. Even when I travelled to Peru last year, a fairly third world country, I was able to freely get on networks pretty much anywhere I went and backup hundreds of pictures and videos on the fly. At no additional cost.

If you make movies/videos frequently I can see the value in that for people to get the higher-tier storage models, as well as performance, I just don't understand how the high-end phone market is sustainable. Who is buying this stuff at $1200+?! I consider myself tech-aware, and I don't spend more than $500 on a device anymore.  I guess I am OK with second generation tech now?

And yes, I completely forgot (I'm joking) - only Pro+ versions of the iPhone 15 will have a usb 3.0 port at 5Gb/s from 10 years ago...

Quote from: indy on December 13, 2022, 17:09:52I'm showing costs in the $50-120/year range.

And then you find yourself in a place where there is no Internet or it is turned off. Or your account is blocked or the cloud is unavailable, or the connection speed with it is 100 times less than the speed of the SSD drive... )))

Instead of buying this garbage with a 700% markup, it's easier to buy a 4TB flash drive and dump the excess on it via OTG ...

For the vast majority of people, wouldn't it just be worth it to get a Cloud account with Apple, Google, Amazon, and invest in a lower storage phone? I'm showing costs in the $50-120/year range.

I have a 100G account that I haven't been able to fill even 20% of, so I always just get phones with the lowest storage and backup to cloud.