The average price of a mid-range smartphone has risen quite a bit over the past two years. Even companies like Xiaomi, which used to stand out from the competition by offering models like the Lite series at really reasonable prices and with a good level of features, have followed this path and as a result, the said series is no longer small when it comes. to the prices..

Let’s continue with Xiaomi as an example to illustrate this trend, as it has been one of my favorite companies for years for the price-performance ratio of its smartphones. He Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite arrived on the Spanish market with a price of 319 euros, a figure that was not exactly cheap, as it crossed the 300 euro mark, but it offered an interesting value both for its successful hardware configuration (it had a Snapdragon 710), for its cameras (it had three cameras and one of them was wide-angle) and for its construction quality ( was made of aluminum and glass).

Launched in July last year, the Xiaomi 12 Lite has undergone significant improvements at the hardware level, which is normal considering that there is a three-year gap between it and the Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite, but its price rose to 449 euros, and along the way, the aluminum chassis was left for the realization of the plastic one. We have a more powerful and capable terminal, which is normal given the passage of time, which is 130 euros more expensive and has a lower build quality. I think the problem is clear, right?

We have also seen this upward price trend in the smartphone market in mid-range terminals from other brands, especially those that have focused their strategy in a similar way to Xiaomi. In this sense, Realme would be another good example, because I perfectly remember that in 2019 I bought a Realme 5 Pro with a Snapdragon 712 SoC, 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for only 200 eurosand the current equivalent model, Realme 10 Pro with Snapdragon 695 SoC, exceeded 300 euros.

The big manufacturers justify this price increase with two big keys, the increase in costs and the higher quality and features of the mid-range. A priori, we might think that this makes sense, but the truth is that this increase in benefits It is nothing more than a natural consequence of the passage of time and the evolution of hardware, and that the increase in costs ultimately does not serve to justify the price difference, which is between 100 and 200 euros.

Personally, I think that the prices of some terminals, which were icons of the middle class due to the price-performance ratio, have reached a ridiculous level and that they have lost a significant part of their meaning, especially since in many cases this increase is very difficult to justify.. I wouldn’t pay more for a mid-range smartphone, if I wanted to spend more money I would go straight to the high end. And you, what do you think? Read in the comments.