The average price of a mid-range smartphone has risen quite a bit in the last two years. Even companies like Xiaomi, which previously stood out among the competition for offering models like the Lite series at really reasonable prices and with a good level of features, followed this path and as a consequence of this, said series is no longer small when it comes to prices. .
Let’s continue with Xiaomi as an example to illustrate this trend, since for years it has been one of my favorite companies for the price-performance ratio of its smartphones. He Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite arrived in the Spanish market with a price of 319 euros, a figure that was not entirely cheap since it exceeded the barrier of 300 euros, but that offered an interesting value both for its successful hardware configuration (it had a Snapdragon 710) and for its cameras (it had three cameras and one of them was a wide angle) and for its construction quality (it was finished in aluminum and glass).
The Xiaomi 12 Lite, launched in July of last year, has undergone significant improvements at the hardware level, which is normal considering that there is a three-year difference between it and the Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite, but its price rose to 449 euros, and along the way the aluminum chassis was left to implement a plastic one. We have a more powerful and capable terminal, which is normal due to the passage of time, which is 130 euros more expensive and has a lower build quality. I think the problem is obvious, right?
We have also seen this upward price trend in the smartphone market in mid-range terminals from other brands, especially those that focused their strategy in a similar way to Xiaomi’s. In this sense, Realme would be another good example, since I perfectly remember that in 2019 I bought a Realme 5 Pro with Snapdragon 712 SoC, 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage capacity for only 200 eurosand the current equivalent model, the Realme 10 Pro with SoC Snapdragon 695, exceeded 300 euros.
The big manufacturers justify this price increase based on two big keys, the increase in costs and the higher quality and features of the mid-range. A priori we might think that it makes sense, but the truth is that this increase in benefits It is nothing more than a natural consequence of the passage of time and the evolution of hardware, and that the increase in costs in the end does not serve to justify a price difference that oscillates between 100 and 200 euros.
Personally, I think that the prices of some terminals that were icons of the mid-range due to the price-performance ratio have reached a ridiculous level, and that they have lost a good part of their meaning, especially since in many cases this increase is very difficult to justify. . I would not pay more for a mid-range smartphone, if I wanted to spend more money I would go directly for the high-end. And you, what do you think? We read in the comments.
