Get used to it: your next phone will cost over $1,000

Thanks to the death of carrier subsidies, phone prices have been creeping up well above the $1,000 mark. Why? Because these devices are now cramming a powerful processor, huge screen, and an amazing camera into a package small enough to lose in an airplane seat.

Many pundits are displeased with this trend but it’s here to stay. As Jon Gruber writes:

There are way more people on the planet who?d rather have a $1,400 phone and a $400 laptop than the other way around. But you?ll never see a tech reviewer claim that $1,000-1,400 is ?hard to justify? for a laptop. It?s ridiculously out of touch to argue otherwise. And, the fact that top-of-the-line phones have reached these price points does not negate the fact that truly excellent phones are available at much lower prices.

In other words, there are cheap phones and expensive phones, the expensive phones do amazing things, and you’ll pay to have access to those amazing things. While it was nice to get a free upgrade every year back in the olden days, those commodity phones rarely actually needed an upgrade because the features available were limited.

Given we all use our phones far more than we use our laptops, the pricing makes perfect logical – if not financial – sense.