iPhone X will be most expensive smartphone sold in SA

Every September for the past decade Apple has gathered the faithful and showed off its latest pocket-size supercomputers.

Dubbed the iPhone, these marvels of miniaturisation have irrevocably altered the world in which we live.

Apple didn't invent the smartphone, in the same way it didn't invent the tablet computer, smartwatch, MP3 player or even the computer mouse.

Instead, it's proved incomparably adept at building the most beautiful, user-friendly or desirable of these products. In doing so, it's changed whole industries.

The smartphone is now ubiquitous and though the iPhone isn't the bestselling smartphone, we have to thank Apple for creating the market that now benefits so many individuals and firms.

The California-based company has tended to make the most expensive devices in whichever category it chooses to play, and the iPhone X (pronounced 10) continues this ignoble trend.

The top-end, 256GB version of the handset is expected to cost upwards of R20,000 when it goes on sale in South Africa, making it the most expensive mainstream smartphone to grace our shores.

Unless you work in mobile and must have the latest and greatest iPhone for professional purposes - or status-related ones - you're almost certainly better off hanging onto your existing handset. As motoring journalists always tell me about cars, the best phone is the one that's paid off, after all.

Of course, that's not to say I don't want the new iPhone X, even though I clearly don't need it. Thankfully for Apple's shareholders, I suspect the company will sell the handset in droves until next year, when we get to do it all over again. That's the price of progress, right?

• Craig Wilson is the editor of consumer technology publication Stuff magazine and a speaker and industry commentator.

• This article was originally published in The Times.