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SIGH PHONE

The only reasons to stay with the iPhone right now have nothing to do with the iPhone

AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
Looking beyond the phone.
  • Mike Murphy
By Mike Murphy

Technology editor

Published Last updated on This article is more than 2 years old.

My iPhone X is fine.

I picked up the $1,000 rectangle of glass and aluminum on launch day. I’ve been on Apple’s upgrade program since it launched in 2015, which means I pay a monthly fee, currently $56, and get each new iPhone as it’s released every year. I switched my main phone from Android to iPhone in 2014, with the launch of the iPhone 6. I’ve been there through the iterative years of the designs with the iPhone 6, 6s, 7, and 8. I’ve continued to pay for these phones, because, as my colleague Akshat recently put it, “Apple was producing the best damn phones in the market.”

But Apple no longer has a monopoly on quality. Samsung’s most recent phones were my favorites of last year, and for half the price of the X, there are are now many phones that are nearly as serviceable, including the OnePlus 5T. Even Apple’s own iPhone 8 Plus, which is $200 less than the X, share most of the same components, barring the display.

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