Adjusted for inflation, the 1983 Motorola DynaTAC phone would cost $10,380 today. The cost of cell phones dropped significantly after that, but has slowly been rising again in recent years, largely because we still buy them at higher prices.
Are phones becoming too expensive?
The original iPhone launched for $400. The current cheapest iPhone is the iPhone 12 mini, which costs $729 for the 64GB model, which isn’t enough storage anyway. The original Samsung Galaxy started at $599, and now the cheapest model is $799. That’s quite a jump, and usually gadget prices go down, not up. So what’s going on?
"Apple and Samsung have dominated the market for years, so they can charge a premium, especially for their flagship phones," Beth Klongpayabal, analytics manager and author of a new report on phone prices at Savings.com, told Lifewire via email. "Apple in particular has been seen by many as a luxury brand for decades, which allows them to do this."
In the past, we bought our phones by going to the provider’s store and seeing what was available for a reasonable monthly fee. We never knew what the prices of the phones were, and we didn’t care. Now, it can often be cheaper to buy a phone outright and sign up for a prepaid plan. And somehow, we’re still happy with those prices.
