Especially teens and college students
Source: i’m a college student
I have never ever ever encountered a single person who treated their iPhone as a status symbol.
That’s nuts, you’ve never heard anyone tease about green chat bubbles? Never heard the joke “I don’t talk to poor people”? Didn’t see all that stuff blow up extra when the air pods came out?
you definitely have, they probably just didn’t mention it to you specifically
Why do you think they do? That’s not a thing in reality. That said, I don’t chat about mobile phones with a lot of college students at this point.
Not a youngster, but I would say because it’s a simple choice. Don’t have to think which brand sporting Android is better and definitely don’t have to worry about what custom ROM to install. Troubleshooting between different models can be a pain. People just want something that works out of the box without having to be an expert.
1 choice (mainly) vs (too) many choices.
I can’t think of a single mainstream android phone manufactuer that requires any expertise setting up their phone out of the box (for doing anything an iPhone can do).
You then have the option to install 3rd party software or a custom ROM but that is not required, just a bonus that isn’t available to Apple users.
I mean, don’t you just log into an account these days and it’s all there?
Certainly no more complicated than setting up an iPhone.
I used Android since they first came out and not once did I ever needed to worry about a custom ROM.
Let’s be real and just say that Apple is doing anticompetitive things and not getting in trouble in the US yet.
If there was another decent mobile phone, the same size as the SE, I would seriously consider it.
ASUS Zenfone 10
Can’t unlock bootloader :(
Otherwise I’d be typing this comment on one right now. It’s the only otherwise-perfect device that I could find earlier this year. Why did they go out of their way to modify AOSP and lock everyone out of their own device…
Oh wow. That’s unfortunate. It’s an enthusiast phone. It’s a requirement.
Some people need to justify their choice to overspend on something…
Nobody will actually mind if you brag about how you bought a new phone. Also if you are not a rich person you having an expensive phone means you did something smart to “cheat the system.”
As an example I had an old coworker when I used to work at a warehouse and he would combo things like service provider sales to buy an iphone.
He did sound smart when explaining the roundabout way he got the phone despite making same money as us. And I don’t mind what other people chose to spend money on.
What I do mind is college students thinking macbooks are some “programmers’ laptops.”
I had to constantly hand-hold group members that think they can get away with not learning how to code and using AI for all the homeworks because they bought a mac and that makes them a good programmer anyway.
“But I thought the program should automatically wait for the threads on this line since it’s POSIX.”
Yes I love troubleshooting professor’s makefile for an OS I don’t have because you never learned your own laptop has a symlink from gcc to clang.
I see my deGoogled Android device as a higher status symbol than any overpriced stock Apple device.
It’s not the phone, it’s your age bracket. You can say the same thing for other stuff like shoes/clothes, cars, etc. It’s peer/societal pressure, FOMO, and other factors that teenagers and young adults feel are important. People care less when they get older. My iphone is a utility device to me, and I’ll keep using it until it dies or security updates stop, instead of upgrading every year.
Cheapest iPhone is $600, cheapest android phone can go as low as $20 (like those walmart prepaid phones locked to a carrier).
When the average person think of android, instead of thinking about a flagship samsung phone, they think of the lowest budget phone.
So in their mind, if you have android, you’re automatically categorized as “poor”/“cheap”, regardless how much it actually costs.
I‘m the tech guy most people ask for help. If they want a new phone, my first question is for how long it should last and what their price range is - then I mostly suggest an iPhone. You get 5-6 years of support for $600, while Android you need to pay that every 1-2 years.
I‘m the tech guy most people ask for help. If they want a new phone, my first question is for how long it should last and what their price range is - then I mostly suggest an iPhone. You get 5-6 years of support for $600, while Android you need to pay that every 1-2 years.
Incorrect. A Samsung Galaxy A16 (USD $200) has 6 years of security updates.
Since when does Samsung do that? I switched back in 2017 and haven’t been interested in the mobile phone market since the Galaxy fold 2
The Galaxy A12 was released in 2020, it had 4 years of updates, Galaxy A15 released in 2023, had 5 years of updates, Galaxy A16 released in late 2024 (for the US, it was early 2025), now has 6 years of updates. S-Series phones (most of those cost $550 and above) have 7 years of updates)
It’s just security updates tho, new features are not guaranteed for budget phones (like no “AI” features for A-series phones, but then again, its just more marketing gimmics anyways, who really uses those?), but its secure enough for banking.
As a grown adult, I don’t care what people think about phone brands or multi billion/trillion companies when compared with more of the same. But it’s like sports teams. It doesn’t mean much but it can be fun with friendly rivalries. People who take it seriously though? Not to be taken serious.
I use one because I value privacy. I also have an Android phone from 2019 I like more for a few reasons. I like both. I also like both Xbox and Nintendo. And I don’t hate PlayStation. I don’t use Windows, I use Macs, but at work I’m unofficial IT, people come to the Mac user for help with Windows 10/11 because I know that too, it’s just not what I use at home. I still have like 30 years of experience with Windows. I also have a favorite (gridiron) football team. And I’ll tell you why they suck but I’ll never stop rooting for them. (Don’t have a favorite (association) football club.)
I think tribalism is for people who use things to identify themselves. When you stop doing that, tribalism starts to look dumb.
they haven’t outgrown being incredibly stupid and some never will.
My daughter wanted an iPhone when she was in high school because her friends played the arcade games together on it. That was the only reason she wanted it.
Because they paid a lot of money for them and they need to convince themselves that it was worth the cost.
I remember a friend of mine whining about how my text bubble was a different color and it “made it weird” to text because of that.
By then I was already super over the whole tribalistic iphone/android bs from people I know when it wasn’t being meme’d on, so I just told her “you can either get over it, or we can stop talking and being friends”
Wouldn’t you know it, the color of a text bubble isn’t enough to end a friendship over.
Because they’re teens
