Thanks for all replies! But I still don't understand why you would need a hardware wallet, unless you frequently send large amounts of bitcoin.
There's really nowhere to use bitcoin as of today (I have owned bitcoin for 5 months, and still haven't had any real world use). And even if I find someone accepting bitcoin, it's pretty useless because of fees?
Because of this, I do not consider bitcoin a currency, but rather an alternative for gold/saving, with some advantages.
So since I can't use it anywhere, I don't make transactions that often. But I will keep a <$500 wallet on my phone, which I don't see any point in securing anymore than my phone is secured.
The rest of my bitcoins I intend to hodl. They are currenctly on an exchange, and I want to move them out of that exchange and hold for a year++ (unless hell breaks lose). So that's why I wonder if there's any point in buying a harware wallet for storage, since it would also need a paper backup... In other words, it isn't really safer to store.
Am I correct in assuming that a hardware wallet is primarily useful for anyone who actually use bitcoin for transactions? Not hodling, and not micropayments?
Yes, you are correct, if you want to hodl Bitcoin without sending transactions and if you are able to generate your wallet 100% securely, than you don't really need a hardware wallet. So, if you choose some other method for hodling, make sure that the wallet is created in secure environment - I'd recommend installing Linux on a flash drive (make sure that it is signed by trusted developers!), then unplug any other drives and boot your fresh Linux and use it to create your wallet (again, verify installations first). If you will do all this offline, you can create a cold storage which can be as secure as hardware wallet when done properly. Electrum has a good guide on it:
http://docs.electrum.org/en/latest/coldstorage.html