I paid not-that-much-less for a laptop I use to write code, and spend less time on it than I do deriving value from my phone?

That's kind of missing the point? Sure you spent a lot on your laptop, but it isn't (as) a significant portion of your income, presumably.

A typical developer is spending much less on a phone as a % of their income, whereas a typical iPhone buyer is spending much much more — to a surprising degree.

The difference is that most professional developers aren’t spending their own money for their work computer.

Agreed, but setting laptops aside, would you spend ~1.8% of your pretax income on a phone? — And not for the best phone either, just the base pro, or an upgraded regular model.

I certainly wouldn't, but a lot of iPhone users are. I'm not judging, I'm genuinely surprised.

I only spend 15% of my pretax income on my 15 year mortgage. But I make BigTech money working remotely. So I find that question kind of irrelevant. I definitely don’t expect the average person to only spend 15% of their income on housing.

Expenses don’t scale linearly with income.

When I was making $22K a year in 1996, I bought phone for $300, was that too much to spend on a cell phone too?

To a first approximation, no one buys their phone outright in the US and 62% of people replace their phone every 3-4 years (https://www.nevis.net/en/blog/how-often-do-users-change-thei...). So they are only spending .45% of their income on a phone.

Apple released a security update for the iPhone 5s released in 2013 earlier this year. There is no reason to replace your phone every year.

I wasn't comparing general living expenses, I was comparing iPhone ASP to the income of those buying them. $1k:53k is less affordable than $300:22k accounted for inflation — for tech that is much more mature and commoditized today than it was back then.

Again, it's just surprising and not a value judgement.

Roll back maybe 10-12 years ago. I had a Tomtom in my car, maybe £200. An iPod. Probably the same again. A point and shoot camera. Same again. A 3G WiFi stick and contract for my laptopp. A personal laptop that saw a lot of use. A dedicated Sonos hardware controller. A GPS on my bike, and of course an actual phone (N95).

How many of those devices have been coalesced into one £1200 iPhone. I call that a result.