How do you like them Apples? Tim Cook's iPhones sitting in the tree, feeling unloved by the Chinese

Exactly. Improving only 0.5% would make it the "best" but it doesn't mean it's sufficiently better to get people to splash so much cash for an upgrade.

But not the best value, obviously.

The only thing the XR has going for it over the 8, is that it will take two SIMs. But it still has a fucking notch. So, unless you're heavily invested in the walled garden, and the Chinese have their own walls, there are lots of reasons to go with one of the much cheaper copycats.

Re: What did they expect?

What is the addage? Buy on the rumour, sell on the news.? Or is it the other way round? Basically, as a retail investor you're screwed anyway and should stick to low-fee indexed funds.

Re: What did they expect?

There is also that one can get one "almost" as good a couple of revisions back for 10% of the current price. They are nice phones for many, they'd be freakin' awesome at £75.

Re: Huawei

Completely true, even worse, Apple China (according to Chinese relatives), put out an Ad dissing Huawei; and the Chinese DO NOT LIKE foreign devils dissing Chinese brands.

I am surprised that they sold that many; I would REALLY like to see a monthly breakdown, because I didnt see a single iDevice on sale in China during my 3 week stay over Christmas.

Re: Huawei

Yes between the trade war and Huawei bashing in the west (whether deserved or not) Apple has a big hill to climb to sell phones there when patriotic Chinese will want to support their own brands.

If the situation was reversed and say South Korea was picking a trade war with the US initiating tariffs and threatening even larger tariffs, and they were looking to ban sales of iPhones locally, I can imagine that there would be a pretty good sized backlash against Samsung in the US and help sales of phones from US companies like iPhones and Pixels.

Samsung?

My Note 3 got it's last update possibly in November. Granted, it has not had an Oreo OS update, and is on older OS because of that. But it got updates.

Remember, you *are* comparing a top price Apple phone to a bottom priced Android here right? As who making an Android set does not update their flagship phones for customers?

Re: Overpriced

Hang on, no S-Pen? Without the S, any phone is only a phone, no matter how shiny.

Re: Overpriced

To be fair you should compare the the price of the Pocophone to Iphone XR 128GB price ( £799 ).

Also to be considered is the fact that Pocophone has very limited LTE bands which covers Europe and most of Asia compared , Iphone XR has wider LTE Bands cover to include the US LTE Bands. I usually leave my Pocophone at home ( UK ) when I go to the US and take my Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact.

There were complaints that the latest Iphones have poor RF Performance / Signal Reception after they were launched last September, I wonder whether it has been sorted out.

Re: Overpriced

>PRICE - the F1 costs £330 the Iphone X with 256GB costs £949

£312 when I just looked now but hey that's Amzon's pricing algorithms, up and down like a tart's draws and it will probably have gone back up the next time I look.

Re: Overpriced

I'm not sure that's what you mean; a 128GB ROM wouldn't be very useful in a mobile phone...

Re: Overpriced

I agree with your point but you are missing a few costs that Apple incur:

Service, warranty and sales support in the country of purchase.

A working mobile payments infrastructure via NFC

A proven software patching program running over multiple years.

(maybe) marginally less bug ridden software.

Now for £279 you can get all of the above with an Honor 10..... thats a more painful comparison still.

(Except maybe the marginally less bug ridden software - Im betting the Poco is similar to the Honor 10 in that respect). MIUI vs EMUI is probably much of a muchness.

Don't worry that's in hand. With the expected move to USB C, every loyal fanbois is going to have to fork out for new leads.

Surely nobody of any brain expects any old USB C lead is going to work on an Apple device?

For Sale: Genuine Apple USB C super-dooper charging cable, cures all know ills, required to charge iPhone XI. Only £30, plus P&P.

I was thinking 50%, but then I'm a tight Aberdonian.

Re: Asking for a friend...

I'm not 100% but my guess is the best answer is anything that'll run LineageOS?

Or BlackBerry, they were making noises about privacy and security?

Re: Asking for a friend...

They're pretty niche these days but Blackberry still put security front and centre.

Re: Asking for a friend...

Asking the question another way... are there any phones out there that put security and privacy at the front and centre of their offering?

Any non-smartphone, for a start.

If you're thinking of a smartphone, no matter what model is chosen, you really need to avoid the main Google version of Android, and ensure that no Google apps or services are loaded - which probably means not being able to access anything only available through Google Play. You need to use a non Google browser, set to use DuckDuckGo or other semi-secure search engine, you'd ideally need to configure a VPN, and disable all types of backup and sync functionality. And of course you'd need to avoid Facebook, and make sure that only apps you approve of have access to things like your contacts, location data, media, browsing history (so no Amazon app, for example). And even if you pay for an app (eg to avoid Google Maps), it doesn't mean the paid app won't collect data - look at the permissions for Tom Tom GPS Navigation Traffic.

It isn't a good situation, but if you REALLY want privacy, then the smartphone user experience is a lot more constrained than you might wish.