except that what you get is not proportional to what you paid for and that is exactly the reason why I'm not interested in top models of anything anymore because they don't justify the price difference from mid ranged models.
Let's foregt phones for a second and look how many other devices are out there which can be upgraded and get prolonged life with SW only. When did you last time heard that some AV receiver or TV did get SW update which enabled some new codec or something? "Oh, no, that's not possible, you have to buy a new model". Yeah, right
If that is free market and it is so benificial to every participant then how come that so many known names are exiting from doing what they did for years or strugling to stay in it? Everyone is complaining that there's no profit in low-end and mid-ranged products but at the same time they are doing nothing to make high end products worth more in the eyes of the consumers. Everything is dead and forgotten after warranty period of 12/24 months.

i believe i gave some details:
4.5" screen at 960x540 (vs 5.2" screen at 2560x1440)
dual-core CPU with low IPC with a cut down GPU (vs 4+4 CPU with high IPC and a console class GPU)
1GB of low bandwidth DDR2 (vs 4GB of LPDDR4 on a 128bit bus)

i could also add:
LTE basic (vs Cat6 LTE with global coverage - hello america)
flexi plastic chassis (vs waterproof metal chassis with curved glass)
32GB low grade EMMC flash storage (vs 32GB+ of eMMC 5.0)
8Mpix blurry-focus camera (vs 20Mpix enormo-sensor camera)

look, i'm not ragging on the Jolla phone, i firmly subscribe to the anandtech mantra: there's no such thing as a bad product, merely a bad price.

the Redmi 2 with 2GB/16GB / Snapdragon 410 / 4.7" 1280x720 @ circa £130 makes a mockery of jolla at £200.
the Ubuntu phone @ circa £140 makes a mockery of jolla at £200
the motoG v2.0 with 5.0" 1280x720 / low-IPC quad-core / 16GB / LTE @ circa £150 makes a mockery of jolla at £200

you. cannot. sell. that. hardware. for. £200. anymore!

Hmm. Depends. These phones have been made to be disposable nowadays; just how great a deal are these high-end-hardware devices if they'll be heading into the trash in twelve months? The manufacturer is going to drop them like a hot rock asap, and try to get you to buy their next beautiful-disposable product. (I mean, that's gotta be the main reason anyone would create a locked bootloader in the first place...)

I'm still happily using my N900s. I sincerely doubt any other smartphones of that age are still in heavy use. Over time, the price I paid for them is certainly less than the total someone would pay for buying these less-expensive phones over and over and over again...

I did not ask you for details. I said that the answer is in details.

People care about different details. I don't see much difference between a Fiesta and a Lambo. Both can get me from A to B. If anything, the Fiesta is more useful as I could not pack a family with 2 kids and go on holiday in a Lambo. So I cannot see the justification for the price difference.

I see you have a similar blind spot for the price difference between Ubuntu and Jolla.

The cost of the Jolla phone is pretty ridiculous if you just do a spec comparison with a mainstream product.

It's like asking Lambo to make a Ford Fiesta, to re-use pichlo's analogy. It'll be way more expensive, not as reliable as the Ford and require a team of mechanics to follow you around in another car unless you're a car mechanic yourself.

No sale today?

I would hope a day's warning, no?

@aegis this isn't directed at you.....

Keyword being just... We've had this debate over & over....
It's been explained in great detail why it's not fair to compare apples & oranges, as though they're apples & apples.
Jolla's building all it's sw/infra from the ground up, & with less combined resources going into MeR/Nemo contributions (relatively speaking).
Android ODM's of Jolla's size or slightly larger don't have the same overheads in this area, not even close.
Much bigger players (& no doubt a mass of smaller ones) in the Android "ecosystem" are carrying most of the load there.

Why can Canonical/BQ get it that low?[1] Apart from having many of the same advantages (albeit less pronounced) as the aforementioned, hard to say why exactly.
I won't delve too deeply, as it's mostly 'tea leaf reading'....
They do have a much bigger pool of cash at their disposal (thanks Mark), so can afford to make next-to-nothing in profit, also, the load/risk[2] is being spread between them.
Whatsmore it sounds like Canonical has at least 1 more hw partner in the pipeline, all at diff. price points, so none of them are competing directly with one another (initially).
Which is good, because if you're making a tiny profit you'll want to maximise the no. of units you're shifting, by ensuring no one else is shifting at the same PP.

It needs to come down a little bit more, but I understand why there must be a slight premium over what "BQ's of the world" charge for -roughly- equivalent hw.
If the Nemo/Sailfish nursery pond gets much larger, then we may see this change with some Sailfish ODM's.
But Jolla is perpetually failing to get others on-board, so I really don't know any more...

[1] Lets be clear, spec-for-spec I think it's a few rungs below the Jolla "overall", but that'll differ from user to user, as we all have diff. priorities on hw features
[2] Financial, technical, logistical etc.

This is funny... They didn't even bothered to remove the fricking buttons from the glass.

eww buttons on front
i wont even touch it with a long barge .