I suppose what we’re really buying is another empty shell for our choose of OS to inhabit for another 3 years. The reason I choose an iPhone isn’t because it’s flashy: quite the opposite. You can always count on an iPhone.

In the last 2 years I’ve used for a period of more than a month each an S23, Pixel 8 Pro and Nothing 2a. These are all great devices for a lot of people yet I find little things like Google Pay just refused to work 40-50% of the time on all three. This is normally at the end of a large queue.

In a decade of using Apple Pay I can count on a hand with no fingers how many times it has ever failed to work in a shop. They can build the flashiest, foldiest, photographiest devices on the planet with a battery that lasts a month but if it fails at simple tasks like paying for a cheeseburger, what’s the point?