It's the little things: Why cheap phones suck in 2016

When my colleague walked in toting his new phone, I was impressed for all the right reasons. A shiny new Samsung galaxy-something is nothing to sniff at.

Naturally, checking out the phone and lowkey putting it through its paces, the conversation seeded into how much damage the acquisition wreaked on his saving.

"120 thousand," he smiled.

I smiled too, thinking this phone is so cool  but come on, that's unreasonable. 120,000 on a phone. At once. More than half your salary? Don't be silly.

Side note: I am Ijebu and culturally disqualified from spending more than a certain 5-figure amount on a phone, at one go. 

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So the other day - yesterday - we found ourselves walking through two 20-feet tall lorries which were waiting, side by side, to offload at Marina. The little space, and reflective ground - from the rain that has just ceased - and the sun streaming in, left us with the kind of feeling you'll get walking through a muddy open-top cavern in the Grand Canyon.

"This is unbelievable," he said pulling out his phone. I looked, bemused at first. I soon clocked on to his thinking and blurted: "Holy dumplings, this is surreal."

We are millennials. With smartphones. With Instagram accounts. And a sense of balance. So we did what you've probably figured already.

Click. Click. I was taking pictures with my phone. Not liking what I was getting I looked up from my phone.

"Lemme see what you have," I yelled to him from across the strip.

I saw the pictures he'd taken and my first impulse was to throw my phone under the tyres of one of those lorries. Clamber up to the wheel. And drive over it till all that's left is the flattened rubbery plastic that used to be its casing.

My budget BlackBerry 10 phone camera hardware was a sore excuse for a camera.

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I love this phone, though. I am typing this little story on it. It's just, "why can't it even make an effort in the camera department?"

Then again, it began to come to me; why that other phone came at such steep pricing. It's those little things as a camera that can capture details as minute as your nostril hair that make the difference.

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This is why I can wait for modular phones to be around. I will build a phone out of a BlackBerry outer-casing, Sony Camera, iPhone innards, JBL speaker, and a Nokia battery. I'll add other fancy stuff, and change things up and anytime I want.

Note: The modular phones - at least as promised by Project Ara - doesn't involve as many OEMs or allows this rare display of liberal inventor's asshollery. But hey. Let's dream a little. 

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So you are asking: what does this have to do with you? Nothing. Not everything is about you. Get off my lawn.

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Sidenote: The headline for this article was going to be "It's the little things" but then I thought, no one would click that, so boring. So I added "why cheap phones suck in 2016" for clicks' sake. 

Featured Image via: goodfon.su