Remember when phones actually packed even more features than last year's model? when an upgrade was an upgrade? When UI was decent to look at instead of a poor copy of Tandy Deskmate? When we had actual choice and variety over the illusion of choice today?
I remember. I was there. 2010. We had more phone options, keyboard sliders, sliding media controls, candybars, flips, smartphones like the N95, more than two Mobile OSs such as WebOS, Symbian, Meego, and even phones that fit inside your pocket? yeah. i miss those days. Today it's three names which exist, all looking the same, with the only unique options being the Galaxy Z Flip or Fold, the rest relying on name recognition, such as Nokia, but only being that in name only and not fooling anyone with more than two brain cells left, and no features. today feature removals and gimmicks such as USB C which nobody even asked for, exist, but we do the same things today with phones that we did in 2010, yet the 2010 phones feel more like the upgrades. Too bad carriers decided against the will of the people to kill off the 3g networks and non voLTE networks and force anyone such as myself to get something they hate, when they already had something they loved, to make the world even more homogenized and samey.
I'm sick of it. We don't have choice, but we depend on the smartphone, so we are forced to buy whether we want to or not. We cannot vote with our wallet unless we want to ostracize ourselves from society overall. you can't even apply for a job without a smartphone today.
There is literally no reason for WebOS and Meego to not exist. Meego is open source for crying out loud as it's Linux. WebOS got open sourced after HP killed it. why is it only Apple or Android? Competition breeds innovation, but corporate interests hae reduced the options and therefore cause this stagnation and there seems to be no way out.
Is it so hard to find a phone with a sliding keyboard, a skeuomorphic UI, and VoLTE support while still offering a removable battery and headphone jack? I find it totally laughable that phone makers cite 'helping the planet' by not including a charging brick, but go out of there way to promote e-waste by sealing the battery inside where you're more likely to break the phone trying to even open it, or actively oppose right to repair like Apple does, by for example, disabling Touch ID if you replace the screen. The most 'green' tech is tech that survives, not tech that's disposable. There is literally zero reason to not expect the 30 year lifespan out of something, that was once the standard. We used to demand things built to last. When did companies decide that satisfying consumer demand no longer matters? I really don't understand it. We have the power, they seem to disregard it. They only care what shareholders want, when they should care what WE want. That worked fine for decades until something changed overnight in the 80s.
Typed this on a vintage Dell Latitude D6500, from 2010, which runs Q4OS, which has a desktop environment that's a fork of KDE 3 with all the period-correct apps. But still supported in the modern era. This laptop only set me back $50 at a vendor mall, but has far more features than a modern laptop. It even has NFC and an sd card slot, and a DVD writer. When I am pushed by futurists to a world I hate and want no part in, I fight back by finding vintage solutions to each and all problems, often which feel like upgrades in comparison. While they want a world in which we 'own nothing and be happy' I will own everything, and they will be pissed.
