I was re-reading (again, I forgot how many times) one of my favourites writings of Scalzi, “Being Poor”.

It opens with the line “Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs“.

A couple of months ago I changed my phone for a new one. I’ve switched from a flip-phone (a Sony R306) to a Motorola MotoG. On the way I lost five days of runtime on a single charge and that peace of mind that I can bump it into everything without caring that much or that I can leave it unattended on a table and no one will part with it (and also the AM radio).

On the other paw, it is developer friendly, has a ton of shiny and distracting things and syncs without a hitch.

Back again to what made me think of it.
It is advertised as a cheap entry level phone and it kind of is on other countries. At the exchange rate and taxes back then I paid a fair price compared to what it would cost had I bought it on an foreign shop.

However, it is not (at least to me) worth what it costed if I only wanted a phone to IM and talk instead of a development tool. It was more or less the same amount of money that I spend on three months of food. Many people earn less than that sweating blood on never ending days.

On a few minutes I traded money worth three months of food for a device that fits in my palm. It was an investment that paid for itself in a few weeks but I still feel quite strange.