According to a survey conducted by WalletHub, more than 1 in 5 Americans believe it is worth going into debt to purchase one of the new iPhone 15 series handsets. That is half of the 2 in 5 who do plan on buying one of the new 2023 iPhone models. Is it better to finance the purchase of your new phone or pay it off at one time? Nearly 2 in 5 say that it is better to pay off a newly bought handset in installments.
Phone shaming is a thing. If you don’t believe us, watch the reactions of an iMessage chat group made up of teens when an Android user joins the discussion. Text bubbles turn green from blue and features like end-to-end encryption, read receipts, typing indicators, and high-quality images all go away. The Android user gets to hear insults like, “What’s the matter, your pops can’t afford to buy you an iPhone?”
Of course, what these iPhone-totin’ teens don’t care to understand is that if they were to join a chat between two Android users using RCS (found in the Messages by Google app and others), text bubbles turn green from blue, and features like end-to-end encryption, read receipts, typing indicators and high-quality images all go away. The only difference is that Android users are less likely to mouth off with insults.
And that leads us to the next survey result. More than 1 in 3 said that they would characterize someone who always has the latest iPhone model as “wasteful” while 21% would think of them as being rich. Similarly, 16% say that not owning an iPhone is a sign that someone is struggling financially.
60% of the Americans surveyed said that they are willing to try a budget carrier and nearly half of the respondents said that they consider it unfair that postpaid carriers check your credit score. Nearly 3 in 4 say that the new iPhone models are overrated. And more than half of the Americans surveyed said that Apple does not pay enough in taxes.
The survey had 240 online respondents in the U.S. and according to WalletHub, the data was normalized by age, gender, and income so the sample would reflect U.S. demographics.
