I can afford the iPhone 18 Duo. I just don’t want it - The Indian Express

Take a trip abroad. Buy gold. Put it towards a car. Invest it. Or, if you are feeling particularly extravagant, spend it on a phone.

Apple’s much-awaited iPhone 18 Duo was launched on September 9, and almost immediately, all social media platforms were flooded with comparisons, hot takes and, of course, memes.

There were the predictable jokes about Apple entering a category other smartphone makers had explored years ago. There were comparisons with Samsung’s foldables. But the biggest reaction had little to do with technology.

The iPhone 18 Duo starts at around Rs 3 lakh, while the top-end model touches nearly Rs 5 lakh.

One meme comparing the top-end Duo with a Tata Tiago perhaps made the point better than Apple’s entire launch presentation could.

Because once a phone costs as much as a car, the conversation changes.

The question is no longer whether the phone is impressive. The question is whether it is worth it or not?

And before the tech bros arrive in my mentions to explain why I am wrong, there is the EMI argument.

Put it on a 24-month instalment plan and Rs 3 lakh works out to roughly Rs 14,000 a month. Add exchange offers, bank discounts and other deals, and the price becomes easier to digest.

For a certain section of India’s consumers, it is entirely possible to buy the Duo.

But that is precisely why I don’t think affordability is the interesting part of this conversation.

The more interesting question is: even if you can afford Rs 3 lakh, do you want to spend it on a phone?

I have used an iPhone for about a decade. And I still use an iPhone 14 Pro.

I haven’t switched to another iPhone because, frankly, I haven’t seen a compelling reason to.

What exactly is the new phone doing that mine cannot?

That may sound like sacrilege in a world where every September, we collectively pretend our perfectly functional phones have suddenly become embarrassingly obsolete.

That may sound like an outrageous question to anyone who upgrades every year. But it really isn’t.

Technology has become very good at giving us new things without necessarily giving us better reasons to need them. Every launch comes with a new camera, a faster processor, a brighter screen, a thinner body, a new form factor and a handful of features that are supposed to make the previous model look ancient.

And then there are the tech bros who will inevitably tell you that you simply don’t understand phones. Perhaps. Or perhaps I understand my phone perfectly well.

I know what I use it for. I know what I need it to do. And, more importantly, I have a brain and know how I want to spend my money.

I don’t need a new phone to tell me that I am doing technology wrong.

Not every shiny new object needs to become an urgent financial decision. That is also why I wouldn’t trade my iPhone 14 Pro for the Duo.

Not because I think the Duo is a bad product. It may be an extraordinary piece of engineering. If someone wants a foldable iPhone, has the money and thinks it is worth Rs 3 lakh, go for it.

But what would it give me that I don’t already have? And at that price, that question matters.

I could take my existing phone to London instead. I could spend those days seeing a new city, eating somewhere I’ve never eaten, visiting museums, taking photographs and coming back with experiences I didn’t have before.

One gives me a new experience. The other gives me a new hinge.

Maybe the problem isn’t that smartphones have become too expensive. Maybe we’ve become too good at convincing ourselves that we need them.

This is also why I find the constant obsession with upgrading smartphones increasingly strange. For years, we have been told that we need the next model — a better camera. A faster processor. A brighter display. A new feature.

And somehow, the phone we were perfectly happy with a year ago becomes inadequate the moment a new one is launched.

Yesterday, it was good enough. Today, it is apparently a technological embarrassment.

But most of us still use our phones to do roughly the same things — we take photographs. We message. We scroll. We watch videos. We work. We make calls.

Does it change its importance? I’m not convinced.

And that is the distinction I think gets lost in all the excitement around new technology. Something can be technologically impressive without being particularly important to you.

Apple’s own pricing makes this whole thing even more interesting.

Instead of doing what usually happens when a new iPhone arrives and cutting the prices of older models, Apple has kept the previous generations at a premium — and, in some cases, increased their prices.

That raises an interesting question: if the newest iPhone isn’t an irresistible upgrade for everyone, why make the older ones suddenly look more expensive too?

And if you actually put the iPhone 17 Pro and 18 Pro side by side, the specifications are similar enough that, for an average user, there isn’t necessarily some dramatic leap that suddenly makes the 18 Pro indispensable.

The company doesn’t need every iPhone user to rush out and buy the newest model. It just needs the upgrade cycle to keep feeling tempting. Keep the older phones desirable, keep the newest one aspirational, add a few new features, and suddenly the phone you were perfectly happy with starts looking like yesterday’s model.

Maybe that’s the real genius of the iPhone ecosystem. You don’t have to need a new phone. You just have to keep wondering if you should get one.

There has also been a lot of talk about the iPhone 18 Duo widening India’s class divide.

It is an easy argument to make. A phone that costs Rs 3 lakh will, by definition, be out of reach for most people. Put that next to a country where millions are still struggling with jobs, wages and financial security, and the contrast is hard to miss.

India’s economic divide is far bigger than any smartphone. The ultra-rich do not need a foldable iPhone to be separated from people struggling to make ends meet. That gap already exists, and a new phone is hardly going to make it more visible than it already is.

What the Duo does give us, however, is an interesting question about how we think about money.

The debate shouldn’t simply be about who can afford it and who cannot. It can also be about what people who can afford it actually want to spend their money on.

Because having Rs 3 lakh to spend does not automatically mean wanting to spend Rs 3 lakh on a phone. Being able to afford something and wanting it are two very different flexes.

For some, the Duo will be worth every rupee. For others, even those who can comfortably buy it, the price will simply make them stop and ask: why?

And that, to me, is more interesting than whether one expensive phone will widen a divide that India already has.

For years, the iPhone was sold as aspiration. The Duo seems to be selling something closer to exclusivity. And exclusivity is a strange thing to sell as necessity.

I can afford an iPhone Duo. I just don’t see why I should spend Rs 3 lakh on one.

I’d rather take my iPhone 14 Pro on a holiday.