> I.e. you’re conveniently leaving out the _entire_ set of reasons this isn’t the case.

Would you like to list those for the phone? I don't think your analogy is fair at all.

Well, considering I also made the point that computers range (very roughly, work with me here) from $500 - $3500 depending on how upmarket they are, and phones range from $100 - $1500 depending on how upmarket they are, I can’t make an argument for why they’re more expensive, because they’re not.

I can list a _few_ EXAMPLE reasons for why they cost what they cost though, even if that’s higher than you expect them to cost, but this list is by no means exhaustive so don’t attempt to break them apart detail by detail. Just get the essence of my opinion from these. There’s incredible engineering and design challenges in the competitive market of smart phones, typically making electronics smaller (such as the motherboard) makes them more expensive, not less. Their cameras on phones are FAR better than any on laptops, and my phone has 4 lenses where my laptop has 1. Camera lenses and sensors at the higher end are _expensive_ in a way a laptop keyboard component or other example is not. Phones support many features computers do not (like in the Ferrari example, Toyota corollas don’t have race mode), qi charging, 5G modem, touch screen (some laptops have this but many computers don’t), etc to name a few. Phones these days also tend to be waterproof in a way computers aren’t, another design challenge. The screens need to be way tougher to survive breakage, etc, etc, there’s just so many things that you have to design for in phones that you don’t for computers.

I hope that gives you some idea, and as a side note, it worries me slightly that some of these weren’t at least a little obvious to you. Or maybe they were, and you just wanted to hear my take, and I shouldn’t assume things so uncharitably. Either way, hope that helps.

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Dylan16807 4 days ago | parent [-]

Well none of those are on par with a Ferrari expense except sometimes the camera. I wasn't asking for ways a specific feature could cost a bit more than the laptop version. Yeah I can come up with those myself, and many of them cut both ways like screens and durability.

And the comparison wasn't all phones and computers, it's phones like the pixel versus a decent baseline computer.

	▲	jama211 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Fair enough. I will say the point of the Ferrari analogy wasn’t to demonstrate that the features would have a similarly astronomical gulf in price between one model and another, it was merely to demonstrate the issue with cherry picking features when talking about price differences. So, none of my examples had to meet a “Ferrari expense” as that wasn’t the purpose of the analogy. But yeah, I think we understand each other.