My phone is limping along now. No longer supported by its maker and with a seemingly unreplaceable battery, it is obsolescence in the palm of my hand. But it’s hard to bring myself to change it.
I stumped up for a decent spec and I’ve been pretty happy with it. Good screen, great camera, more than enough storage and I’ve never found anything it isn’t powerful enough to do.
The main thing wrong with it is the limited service you get from the manufacturer. If it can be supported for three years, it could be supported for ten. And constantly-good battery, i.e. swapping them over if need be, would be more valuable to me than runtime between charges. They could get me to pay for that and I gladly would.
A new phone is a fair chunk of change, particularly when I wouldn’t be unhappy with mine if it were better supported. It’s hard for me to trash a good phone to get another good phone. And the new phone will be more than this one was, presumably because they add capacity for things. But I’d be fine as I am. By pushing me back into the market, I’m going to consider other manufacturers. And if I’m paying out then I’ll probably choose one of the other makes. I assume these short lifespans are to keep me buying, but it’s backfiring. I’d keep buying service and support for the one I have, if I could. If I’m buying new, anything could happen.
I’ll probably wait for the next iPhone. I don’t like how expensive they are. I don’t like the stupid proprietry socket. I still don’t approve of removing headphone sockets. Built into its purchase price is a whole bunch of stuff I will immediately disable. But I don’t like how stock Android is clearly watching me, despite all efforts to stop data being harvested and sent back to The Mothership. I’d probably put up with it if I didn’t have to replace the thing, but it’s enough to stop me buying another.
I loathe phone-maker bullshit.
Also took my Mac to meet its maker, with 54 days of Applecare left. For a while the righthand speaker has had an irritating buzz. The repair, outside of Applecare, would be an amazing £575.
This also means my weeknotes will be written not published this week, as I can’t get Publii to work on my other Mac.