You are NOT BUYING an $800 phone, Mad Dawgg. You are misdescribing the product, MadDawgg. A phone makes and receives phone calls. A phone that can do that is worth $20.
For $800 you are buying a battery powered, miniaturized fully functional computer, which includes a high-quality still camera, an HD video camera capable of recording hours of content, a digital music and video player, a wireless Internet access and eMail access device, and a personal digital assistant. . . which just happens to have the ability to make cellular phone calls as a bonus. For all of that, $800 is a bargain.
The Flagship unlocked Samsung phone on release was $50 more expensive than an unlocked iPhone. Miniaturized pocket computers with phone capabilities are expensive. There is really no avoiding that fact.
You can get a cellular phone company to subsidize (actually, sell it to you on a time payment plan) your purchase of one over a two year period if you sign a contract with them or you can buy it for full retail. You can also choose to buy one that is a couple of years older technology that is somewhat less expensive. The choice is yours.
For 350 bucks I bought a new laptop.
"Miniaturized pocket computers with phone capabilities are expensive. There is really no avoiding that fact."
I see. I got a brand new fire phone with a one year contract for 99 cents. In fact I got two of them. Our plan has 4 phones, two fire phones 1 track phone and a high end blackberry that my wife uses for work Her work place gave her the phone and gives her a per diem to pay for her part of our plan. Our plan totals 130 bucks a month we have data and unlimited calling and texting. And the data we hardly ever come close to using our limit in fact we just were informed that our unused data is being rolled over. Now add to that I got Amazon Prime free in the deal. Plus 5000 points to buy apps that I still have not used. (1 point is roughly equal to a penny) Consider all that I got in the deal I am sure you will agree my fire phones were anything but expensive.
The other choices I had with the same company and plans was a minimum two year contract plus almost 300 bucks down for an android phone and all the way up to 900 bucks and a two year plan for the high end iPhone BTW all of those plans had an additional monthly surcharge ranging from 5 bucks for the android to 25 bucks for the highest priced iPhone.Why anyone would choose to pay all that extra money is beyond me but hipsters gotta be hip I guess.
Eventually the highend phone phenomenon will go the way of drive in theaters. There will still be some but it will be a novelty. It will only stay viable as long as the hipster crowd believes having [Insert uber-cool name brand phone here] makes them the hippest of the hipsters. Once that meme dies its over for overpriced high-end gadgets.
O