Oh the old phones still technically work as in they can still be wifi-enabled MP3 players, download APKs and play games and read ebooks, even take notes and do basic calculator/weather functions. But as phones and messaging platforms they're dead so they can't be used a smartphones anymore. I'd be carrying both my S5 (the oldest smartphone usable in 2023) along with my Thunderbolt to do what I can do with just the S5 for the nostalgia. Which is saying something since I wasn't there when the Thunderbolt came out in 2011, but in 2020 and up until late 2022, it was a nice ride. I loved that thing, even if everyone else hated it. Sense 3 was just awesome. Nothing today feels as nice or as well-made. Just flat, cheap and basic. Boring.
A very unique time and era of great early Android development gone....because carriers couldn't or wouldn't find a way to keep 2G, 3G, 4G LTE and 5G going all at once, even though they obviously were until February 2023, so it can be done. I hate futurists...they say all this about 'going green' by not including charging bricks or manuals, but then you look at the fact they basically reduced all the early smartphones to e-waste and got rid of removable batteries and carriers ensured only mostly modern smartphones work today, which, exempting the Galaxy S5 due to 'accidental VoLTE compatibility', means no phone with a removable battery can be used 100% anymore. They basically promote disposability and constant upgrade cycles (and app developers encourage it even more with many apps today popping up messages demanding you update to continue to use the app) at the same time they get rid of useful stuff like manuals to 'promote a better, cleaner planet'
It's a bushload of bushwah, if you ask me, and one reason I opted out of buying anything new today. Even my Nintendo Switch was purchased second hand (and it's a V1, not the V2 or whatever the modern one is called)
There's no device made in the last 10 years that will ever stand the test of time like vintage tech can still do. I got tech that dates to the freaking 1950s that works with minimal repair and sometimes works out of the box, because it was made to be serviced, repaired and kept. Tech then was meant to be passed down or sold secondhand. Today? toss it into the trash and buy another one. How anyone sees that as sustainable is a mystery. Worse is that culture frowns on anyone keeping anything old enough. People comment all the time that '2007 called, they want their laptop back' at me using my 16 year old Dell laptop running Windows 7. Hey, it works, futurist, go frell off!
It's even worse when I tell people I don't do subscriptions, or don't support the 'you'll own nothing, and be happy' model that promotes software and tech as a service (see: Windows 10, Google Stadia, Apple Arcade, Youtube Music (no more buying songs), and stuff such as Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Paramount+ to name a few). I do physical media, and the closest I got to streaming is purchases tied to many platforms, including Amazon Video, Amazon MP3, Apple iTunes and using period-correct hardware (as in 2009-13) to play it all. No HDCP mess, not even HDMI. I'm using CRT TVs also.
I refuse to live in the dystopia that they're trying to build out. That makes me a freak to most people, and a pariah to others. The lines such as "adapt to the future or be left behind' and 'why don't you get with the times, man' are typical futurist rhetoric that grows tiresome. Why does it matter to them what I do or don't do? I refuse to participate in their bright, 5000K LED, clinical hospital designed home life, complete with those annoying swoopy 'live laugh love' decor. I refuse to use a smartphone bigger than my hand, and if I could, I'd give up smartphones entirely and just use my rotary because tech today sucks and is still not getting better. My 16 year old Dell has more character and quality than any modern laptop I tried, and that includes the MacBook Pro.
