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The end of the road for the Nexus One

The end of the road for the Nexus One

Posted Jul 26, 2010 11:32 UTC (Mon) by wookey (subscriber, #5501)
In reply to: The end of the road for the Nexus One by sorpigal
Parent article: The end of the road for the Nexus One

I have never understood this. It's quite true, but I just don't understand why people don't include recurring/ongoing costs when they work out how much something costs overall. i.e. do $30 * 12(or24) months + $200 vs $600 and note that after say 18 months they'll be saving money. This applies to many areas of life (cars, phones, utility bills/energy efficiency etc). I don't mind if people still take the 'higher installments' route, perhaps because they don't have the cash upfront; it's the way that few people even bother to make the comparison that I find hard to understand.

Perhaps it's no wonder the western world collapsed under epic debt levels, given how even simple arithmetic seems to be beyond much of the populace.


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The end of the road for the Nexus One

Posted Jul 26, 2010 11:39 UTC (Mon) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]

Ah, but you're over-simplifying. If you just buy the phone, you can't actually use it to make calls yet. So in reality, while the arithmetic is simple, you still have to compare plans w/ and w/o phones, and not all plans are offered the same, etc.

The end of the road for the Nexus One

Posted Jul 26, 2010 21:18 UTC (Mon) by pphaneuf (guest, #23480) [Link]

I dropped 20€ in a Vodaphone store in Portugal for a pay-as-you-go card, and got my previous Android phone working just fine. Here in Canada (and in the US too, although for slightly cheaper), you absolutely have to have a plan, with some expensive extras for data, and if I wanted the cheaper plans, the subsidy wasn't as good (I paid $250 for my iPhone 3G instead of the advertised $200).

There's a bit more to analyze, yes, and I understand it might be an acceptable compromise. For me, since I enjoy travelling, having an unlocked phone has a significant extra value, and as a hacker, having a phone I can play with is also an extra value. Both of these might not apply, or only partially, if you do not travel as much, or are not a hacker.

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