mobile phone price

[sony mavica]

so i bought a cheap mobile phone alcatel pop c3 (4033E) about 5 months ago for $35nzd and it works really good i was amazed how well it worked because of how cheap it is

so i have been on the site gsmarena comparing my phone with other phones that cost a lot more like $120+ and 9x out of ten my phone is a little better or about the same or the only thing on the other phone has that makes it better then my phone is the screen has more colors as my phone is only 256K colors but has the same screen resolution and ppi pixel density

so what i wanted to know was does the screen really make the phone worth more money?

[Brumby]

... does the screen really make the phone worth more money?

Whether it's worth more money is not an easy question to answer.  A better answer is how much you can sell it for.  That relies on the perception from the marketplace, which is, in turn, a function of consumer knowledge and, very importantly, marketing.

The big names set the screen properties very high on their feature brag list, so the market has come to adopt this as a measure of how 'good' a phone is.  Whether their needs demand a high quality screen rarely comes into it.  A couple of years ago, I bought a cheap 9" tablet for about $70.  It's screen resolution is only 800 x 480, but it's good enough to play a movie.

[Rerouter]

It comes down to many factors, but a main one would be what the phone company actually wants to charge, at those lower prices it tends to be flog the phone to get them on a plan,

[sony mavica]

It comes down to many factors, but a main one would be what the phone company actually wants to charge, at those lower prices it tends to be flog the phone to get them on a plan,

the phone i have was not on any plan

[Zero999]

Is the display the only thing which is better? 18-bit colour is more than good enough for most applications and I doubt you'll notice that much difference with slightly more bits per pixel.

There may be other more significant things, other than the colour depth which are superior such as the contrast ratio and speed of the display and will make much more difference to the image quality which you've not raised here.

[janekm]

That phone came out in September 2013, so most likely it was being sold off as EOL. You could get similar phones for similar price from no-brand companies today but it's really tough to make any money at that kind of price point so not much from larger brands (aside from phones which are subsidised for plans or pay as you go).

[Kilrah]

In those super low end devices what sets the price (both for the components and the final unit) is typically how little demand there is for them.
They're made from components that are dirt cheap because they're leftover stock that nobody wants anymore and getting anything at all for them better than them taking space or throwing them away (and potentially having to pay for that).

Then the product itself may end up discounted heavily just to get rid of it because again nobody wants it which is likely the case here since it's already 2 years old, if there's still stock it's really that it wasn't successful and getting anything for it is that much you don't lose extra.

[stmdude]

While this isn't exactly a high-end phone, I can tell you that from my experience in speccing/architecting a few high-end phone, the screen is _by far_ the most expensive component in a modern high-end phone.

Typically, the screen runs anywhere from $50 to $100
The camera: $10 -> $40  (depending on spec, of course)
The SoC: $15

Other parts that are in a phone that are expensive, but aren't thought of as often:
The PAs for the RF parts
The touch-screen
The five or so custom flex-cables
The flash LED and driver