Debate: How much should a flagship phone cost?

$700 MAX for the top end flagship. As it was always meant to be.

I thought for sure there was a debate just like this one a month or so ago.

Yes the prices are NOT in line with reality...but then again reality is relevant! If, you play your cards right, you should never have to pay full price for any so-called flagship! Now if you are determined to buy at full price on day one then, well....you're probably going to pay full price. But with the fact that these things really do not change hardly at all from year-to-year getting last years model - OMG - is the better bet and will save you $$$$$$$. Or, many mid-range models are more than capable for 99% of what 99% of end users even need! So if you can get trade in discounts, or freebies or sell the previous model on Swappa then in most cases you will not pay even close to what the OEM's are trying to get out of you. YMMV

A flagship should be no more then double its bill of materials cost, so for the S23 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro Max base models it should be around $900, this would put phones like the Fold Z5 and competing foldable phones in the $1300 range for retail.

In an ideal world a phone really shouldn't be costing more then $800 given that most of the hardware is cheap as chips and most of the software is simply carried over with a few tweaks to it, but then again, chip makers are absolutely creaming smartphone makers, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor was selling for around $180 per unit which is just bonkers Vs apple A16 Bionic at $110 per unit

I'll pay whatever my next foldable costs no problem.

I don’t care what the flagships cost or anything in that matter. I purchase within my calculated and set budget. Honestly buying a regular iPhone for example or FE Samsung model, you get 85-90% of goodness of their pro/ultra model.

don’t forget that todays regular model was yesterdays pro model - and somehow everyone survived with the last years pro model last year.

That's an interesting take... It's true about iPhones, but what about Android? I don't think the Galaxy S23 has anything to do with the S22 Ultra...

Do you believe foldables are here to stay?