People love iPhones for various reasons, but let us explain why you should avoid them altogether.
Apple has one of the most consistent fanbases in the world. Almost every iPhone Apple launches ends up taking over the market for good. This is primarily due to the experience Apple creates, which depends on factors like user-friendliness, luxury product feel, and social status that comes with owning an iPhone.
But, regardless of the Apple experience, if we look at them objectively, we can easily find strong reasons—overpriced, poor repairability, and fewer features, to mention a few—not to buy iPhones. Here, we’ll list our top six reasons to avoid buying iPhones.
1. The Apple Tax
The “Apple tax” colloquially refers to the unreasonable profit margins Apple charges on its products. This means where an iPhone costs Apple $400 to make (end-to-end), it’s typically sold for $1,000 and beyond.
While sometimes the reasons why iPhones are so expensive might be justifiable, for the most part, the Apple tax simply makes the device too expensive to purchase. It’s not that the iPhone) is difficult to buy, and the rest of the journey is easy—no. Apple also charges a hefty premium for its accessories (like a charger for the iPhone).
So, every time you want to get an accessory for your iPhone, you will have to pay the Apple tax hidden in the accessory’s price. One good example is the USB-C to Lightning cable, which sets you back $19.
2. Poor Repairability
There are three sad things about the repairability of iPhones:
- The Apple tax doesn’t just extend to iPhone’s accessories—but repairs as well.
- Users can’t have their iPhones repaired from anywhere besides the Apple-certified technicians who charge you the Apple tax.
- Apple doesn’t, in most cases, repair the damaged iPhone’s component (even though it could be repaired) and simply offers to replace it with a new one—which is, again, super-expensive.
This poor repairability issue has given Apple a lot of heat and has become a huge debate on the right to repair as well. So, if you gather the courage to buy an iPhone and the additional accessories and somehow end up damaging it, you’ll have to spend a lot to get it back into its original condition.
3. Fewer Features Than the Competition
Sure, with Apple, there’s always hope for innovation—the Dynamic Island on the iPhone 14 Pro is a perfect example. But, most features that have been in the market for a long time come to iPhones very late.
Here are a few commonly available features in Android phones which Apple still hasn’t made available on iPhones:
- iPhone lacks the on-screen fingerprint
- iOS lacks app cloning and multi-user support
- USBC
- Foldable screen
And although the list of advantages of Android phones over iPhones has gotten shorter over the years, if you want to enjoy cutting-edge technology (say a foldable screen), iPhones may not be an ideal option.
4. No expandable memory
Another reason not to buy an iPhone is that it doesn’t have expandable storage space as products by their competitors are. For example, once you buy an iPhone, you cannot expand its storage space with a SD card.
iPhones are manufactured in a way that you cannot expand their local storage at all. Compare this to other products by manufacturers like Samsung, whose phones you can open and insert an extra SD card thereby expanding its storage space.
5. Limited Design Options
This might seem like a bit of stretch, but it’s nevertheless true: Android phones are available in all shapes and sizes, whereas iPhones aren’t. Tech manufacturers typically target all different classes in society.
They release flagship, top-of-the-line products as well as budget ones—all with different designs and color choices. But Apple releases only a handful of phones each year, which too, mostly have limited colors and design options.
On the bright side, iPhones have the widest range of third-party accessories (like iPhone cases) available. So, you can still make some design choices on your end—phew.
6. The Walled Garden
Last but never least: Apple’s ecosystem, aka the “walled garden,” is a reason to purchase, but at the same time, stay away from iPhones.
Apple can lock you to its services and products with seamless connectivity features, tempting you to shell out more on its other products. For example, if you purchase an iPhone, you cannot keep yourself from purchasing AirPods or an Apple Watch just because they work together so well.
While this has its huge upsides, these Apple accessories come with a hefty price.
The Other Side of the Coin
Infuriatingly high prices, lack of commonly available features, lack of design options, and a very exclusive ecosystem—Apple sure has a lot of areas to work on to make iPhones more lovable to the masses.
But again, if we only consider the reasons not to buy iPhones, we’ll start believing that Apple is the root of all evil. However, the opposite of this statement may be true when you consider why people buy iPhones.
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