Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series is available for preorder today and ships on March 11.
Or you can get a ruggedized smartphone, charge it twice a week, and pay about 1/3 what the S26 is likely to cost.
https://www.sonimtech.com/products/phones
There’s no way I would ever pay $1300 for a phone. I could buy a new HF radio for that, use it for 20 years then sell it for more that half of that. The phone will be worthless after a couple of years.
I am on the S22 which is now 4 years old and as you say worthless. The only thing i can say is yeah the phone may be 1k or more but i would hope nobody is buying it at retail. When i got this one it was 1k, but my phone trade in brought it down to $500 and they offered a deal that added another $100 off by doing that so it was only $400. I hope i can continue buying new phones every 4ish years around the $500 mark, definitely won’t go higher myself.
That’s why I buy them used a few years after release. No reason to create more e-waste plus they’re still premium devices even if two or so years have passed. That being said, Samsung began enshittifying their phones generation after generation.
Especially when you can buy really great (arguably better) models from Samsung’s own A Series lineup for like $400.
I’ve been buying mid-range devices since mid 2010s (Nexus 5, Xiaomi Mi A1); mid-range devices were fine then and even more so now. The one drawback was camera quality, but IMO this has been resolved. These days I stick to the Samsung A series. I bought my A73 in mid 2022 and I see no reason to upgrade (although battery charge is starting to become an issue, although it’s manageable). It’s too bad Samsung sunset the A7X series.
I can’t imagine spending more than $500 - $600 on a smartphone (and even that is pushing it past the optimal spot on the price to performance curve).
The only problem with Samsung A series is that the phones are huge. Phones the size of base S model are rare. Beyond Samsung S series there is only Pixel (which has its own issues) and some Chinese models.
I am one of those people who likes huge phones, even back when they were called Phablets (I also had company provided Note 3 and aNexus 6P).
My last two phones were around $250 and have done everything I need. They have SD card slots, headphone jacks and physical sim cards which the higher end phones are lacking. I don’t care about camera quality. I have a nice DSLR if I need good pictures.
So nothing new or interesting yet again
who is the public for these phones? I had all mine below or equal 300€
