People are tired of gimmicks

This year has been awesome for consumers looking for affordable phones with top-tier hardware. Previously if you were looking to cop a phone that had great specs and hardware for cheap, chances are your only option was a phone made by Xiaomi.

But times have changed, drastically. The Pocophone F1 is just the latest phone to be launched worldwide that has disrupted the established norm of paying flagship prices for flagship features. Xiaomi’s price-busting phones have been joined by offerings of Huawei and their sub-brand, Honor. Hell, even ASUS who earned a bad rap of outing badly-priced phones last year managed to out-OnePlus OnePlus with their ZenFone 5z.

It’s becoming obvious now that in the world where top-tier flagships regularly go past Php 50,000, having a competitive price tag is now the killer feature. Aside from a few notable exceptions, there hasn’t really been a killer feature the past few generations that have really convinced people to fork over ridiculous amounts of money for a flagship.

Huawei’s meteoric rise to #2 illustrates that fact pretty well, since a large chunk of smartphone sales that got them to the second spot is from their more affordable sub-brand, Honor. The creation of Pocophone and the F1 isn’t an accident or coincidence – it’s the ultimate expression of price as a killer feature, and until we get to truly game-changing features like bendable phones and displays that allow for truly bezel-less smartphones, more and more people will opt for the most practical option available.