N1b Guys the Pixel 10 Pro XL was launching at 1.200$. Would you say that the Signature 27 with its processor and battery alone is not 33% better to justify the launch price?
For me personally? No, since I don't care about these things. The Tensor never slows me down in anything I do, I easily get all day battery life on GrapheneOS. Paying the premium for no personal benefit is a waste ti me. You could make the same argument about folding phones, but I don't need a bigger screen either.
N1b Blame AI, the economy or Motorola if you want, but I prefer to look at it from a distance and see an expected and logical release of a cutting edge premium device that happens to be most secure and private thanks to GOS.
I haven't bothered to voice this thought before, but I feel like Motorola is betting on a very specific target audience - us, the GrapheneOS community - to mark up prices and hope that we'll spend the bucks no matter what, just because the phone runs Graphene and is not a Pixel. It doesn't help that this phone was also hyped a lot by the community and made it into multiple news outlets for the exact reason of being the first non-Google GrapheneOS compatible phone. I'm pretty sure the Sig27 would have received a lot less coverage if it weren't for GrapheneOS support in the first place and not nearly as many people would care about it or consider it, based on the specs alone.
I get that Motorola wants to sell as many of these as possible, it just feels like they're taking an unnecessary advantage of the situation. It's just not what I (and many others) have expected.
I feel like Motorola themselves are confused who they're marketing to. On the one hand, a big chunk of media coverage this phone has received is for the fact it's a GOS compatible device and on the other, it's an over the top spec monster aimed at hardcore users, with super pricy tech stuffed inside of it.
The message that is sent by this, seems to me like: you can have privacy too, but you gotta be able to afford it.
The feeling I get is that they're trying to justify the price this way. And I'm pretty certain a big chunk of users can't afford it.
My final concern is: if this flops and the sales figures don't represent what Motorola was aiming for, what's the future gonna be like? Are future devices going to be in the same price range? There is no confirmation that Qualcomm will make cheaper SoCs with MTE support from what I know. Is Motorola going to bail out in that case and end the partnership because it isn't worth it?
I'm really rooting for this to succeed, I truly am. I just have a really bad feeling that corporate greed will sabotage this great opportunity before it really even started.