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Sony’s just dumped the pre-order price for the good-looking Xperia Z on us. What’s the price of entry for the waterproof “superphone” club? Why £529 of course. Ouch.
That’s iPhone 5 money, and well, we thought that was rather expensive in the first place, especially when you compare it to the awesome Nexus 4 at just £240/280. Mind you, if you pre-order the Xperia Z now, you’ll bag yourself a pair of Sony MDR-1R headphones, which are worth £300-odd.
I was impressed with the Xperia Z in my brief first play, but even I would baulk at paying over £500 for a smartphone, now that Google’s set the bar with its sub-£300 beast, even if it is specced up to the nines and waterproof. What about you? Tempted to shell out Apple-money for an Android? [Sony]
Ah, tits.
Yeah, my sentiments exactly.
But PAYG Xperia Z is available at Three for only £449. Granted you need to unlock it, but the unlocking fee is only £15.
It’ll come down in price pretty quickly, but not significantly.
None of the OEMs will ever charge Nexus 4 money for their flagship model. After all, they’ve got huge profit margins to maintain.
Do you mean you’d baulk? I think only the Incredible Hulk bulks when he’s cross.
Hey, you calling me puny?
Not at all, Mr Gibbs. I don’t doubt for a moment that when you’re in the gym, pushing out the reps, it’s the anger at rising gadget prices that gives you the motivation to keep going.
Oh, I noticed you changed the article though.
Damn right, it makes me so damn angry, I burst my clothes, and become a massive ball of rage. But I don’t go green though. Don’t know what Bana’s doing wrong to go green, yuck.
I was thinking that maybe he’s not calling you puny, but referring to some part of you anatomy
You went there, did you?
OK, first it was Hat Kannaford, now Bam Siddle. Up next – Gam Sibbs.
I noticed that Someone Else hasn’t posted in over a week. Just sayin’.
It’s not that different in price from other smartphones. the Nexus 4 is really the exception to the rule and what a sweet exception it is.
Even my wife said that she finds it more good looking than her iPhone 5 yay!
Queue up Sony, you’re right after RIM, sorry PlamBerry! Oh wait hold on, I love my ps3 and to be ps4 owner so….
Well, I’m glad I stuck to Plan A and bought the Nexus 4 on Wednesday
I was tempted by the Z only because a) between having an 4.7″ screen and 5″ wasn’t that much difference to bother me and b) more importantly, it’s the first Sony phone I liked the look off for ages.
However, my Plan A was always (since my initial disappointment at the iPhone 5) to buy a iPad Mini at £269 and then a Nexus 4 at £279, which is only a little more than an iPhone or now a Xperia Z. Pleased with my plan
you plan to use a Nexus and an iPad :O expect nuclear holocaust!
it’s called being impartial not being totally blinded by Apple. I’ve had a 3G/4/4S and the 5 just didnt cut it for me, neither did the iOS. So why iPad Mini then I hear you say? Well I wanted to like the Nexus 7, but I just find the screen too small and aspect ratio lends itself well for films, but not for all the other media comsumption I do. Saying that the iPad Mini is far from perfect (the screen res is the most disappointing thing about it)
I know what you meant, I just wanted to get in before the fanboys from both sides jump on. I also use devices from both sides. Nuclear holocaust was just a tiny weeny bit of exaggeration
Despite the Nexus 4′s price, I can almost guarantee that the rumoured Motorola X phone will be more along the £500 line itself, too. I’d say that Google taking the price hit on the Nexus devices is worth it for them to have a “breakthrough” brand that they can focus pushing play store content for.
Of course, it’d help if they markteted the Nexus devices better and had sensible supply lines, but maybe next year.
The Xperia Z does at least look like it’s -worth- the same cost as an iPhone. The fact they’re both quite pricy as is, though, is a bit of a kick in the teeth.
Probably won’t matter much given that it’ll mostly be purchased on contract, though.
The lack of marketing is part of the budgeting of the phone I know Google are an advertising company but they still loose money if they fill up slots with there own product.
I find the trend for selling hardware at a loss a bit disturbing from a anti competitive and long term economic standpoint. Not content with giving content away for free they’ve now moved onto hardware, you can’t sustain everything with Advertising revenue, soon they’ll be nothing left to advertise, it wont be economical to do so, because it’ll either be given away or sold at a loss. Its rapidly becoming a snake eating its own tail in my opinion.
Supermarkets have been doing this for decades so I doubt it’s a problem as long as it’s approached in the right manner
The thing with Supermarkets and loss leaders is they’re designed to get you into the store so you’ll buy other things which aren’t sold at a loss, similarly Nintendo’s tactic of selling the consoles at a loss was to make money on selling the hugely expensive cartridges, after which all console makers adopted the same model. But these days as I said content is free or relatively low cost, so they’re not going to make the money back. unless they push up the price of apps and content
Big budget games are not free or cheap. They need to pay for the big development costs, if you’re refering to mobile gaming then these aren’t exactly what Sony or Microsoft are peddling
No sorry I didn’t make myself clear on that point, I just used Consoles as an example of when selling at a loss works when you can charge £40 for a game, but its not the same with Smartphones or tablets, its ad supported or 69p that is if you want to stay in the charts, Im kind of over stressing the point somewhat obviously their are some exceptions to the rule and of course the hideous Freemium model, but 69p or free seems to be the growing trend.
Also back on the subject of consoles how much longer do you think they can continue selling games at that price when the average user can have the convenience of using a tablet and fully expect to grab games for free, and when the price of games goes down so will the consoles subsidy resulting in a greater hardware price.
We Know games cost money to develop I certainly do, but does Joe Bloggs or for that matter does the CEO of a company actually care they are destroying another industry in order for them to gain a monopoly in another.
Selling handsets at a loss to gain 30% revenue share of 69p isn’t going to cut it and anyway even at a higher price that would require Google to create an Apple style walled garden ie stop other App stores from cashing in on their subsidy, which at first glance is fair enough but as I originally said is ultimately anti competitive and monopolistic.
You’re correct in a number of ways but, what you have to think is these handset won’t be sold sim free most of them will be sold through contracts and it’s the retailers who stump up the cash for it, and they make a return from the contracts.
I actually think google were taking a different tact and rather than use it to simply sell their products, but a form of advertising, the more people see the handset the more likely others will purchase it.
Working in a phone shop for over a year and the amount of times you explained it would be cheaper to buy the handset outright than pay £45 a month contract x 24 and people would still rather go on contract
Yes I agree there is the mobile contracts to consider but the fact is you can buy the Nexus sim free for the same price, Also its not just Google who are at it or indeed limited to Mobile handsets theres also the Amazon Kindle fire to consider, although Amazons model involves forcing users to use love film, again anti competitive.
But with the increased rate of piracy and apps being forced down in price how much money are Amazon actually going to claw back and what damage is it going to do to the rest of the industry with other manufactures forced to follow the same low spec low price business model in a bid to compete. Im sure Amazon is hoping they wont be able to compete and if they did win a monopoly what would happen to pricing then ?
Of course Googles business model is quite different they basically want a complete monopoly over search engines at which point they would practically own the internet, and be able to charge businesses what they want to advertise on it not a good thing ! but then off course that ad revenue will eventually dry up as more and more companies go to the wall trying to compete with heavily subsidised products. what next from google cheap TV’s, in an already strained industry.
This is all very well and good for the consumer in the short term, but in the long run its either an Orwellian nightmare or economic disaster with media, entertainment and electronics firms going to the wall left right and centre, as you can see its already happening.
Most people won’t be paying that though, all they’ll see is something like £30pm on a two year contract
Three’s started offering pre-orders at £34-£36 depending on the plan. (£36 being the unlimited data One Plan – a solid choice from someone who’s been abusing it for over a year).
Actually quite tempting..if you factor in selling the MDR-1R for ~£200. That way it’s only going to cost you ~£250 if you preorder form Three. But then you need to be in the first 1000 to preorder.
Scrap that, you only get the headphones if you go on one of their 24 month contracts.
Where did you get £529 from? I just pre-ordered mine from Three for £449 + £10 credit. Soon as it arrives, bye bye iPhone 5
“What about you? Tempted to shell out Apple-money for an Android?” what like the Galaxy S3 or the HTC One X or Note 2? There is no way anyone would buy these phones if they cost the same as an iPhone, or?
this wont sell well lol
Or buy it from 3 on pay as you go for £450 + the free headphones
Yup, and those headphones are said to be worth £200 right?
Whats the big deal? I remember the SII being the same price when that was released, I presume the SIII and One X were similar prices on release too. The Nexus 4 is the exception but I’ll put that down to it being ‘The Google device’ – and besides, this phone specs wise destroys the iphone
I’m not impressed, it’s basically like the last this generation of Smart Phone before all the new stuff comes out later this year.
Personally I’m excited to see what Nokia have if the rumours are true about the 808 being refreshed running Windows Phone 8.
This is among the first of the 1080p brigade. Pretty soon, all of the OEMs will be jumping on the 1080p bandwagon. That should keep them occupied for most of the year.
I can’t see how the next generation can improve much, aside from following the dull, time-honoured formula of bigger screens, faster processors and newer OS. A proper PureView phone would shake things up, but that might be more of a niche device than a game changer.
This doesn’t make sense. New stuff is always coming out in a year or so.