Average rant about smartphones

I don't have a lot to write on this topic, I simply wanted to get this off my fingers. The smartphone industry sucks.

Big news, right? I'm not talking about their prices (it's obvious they're overpriced) or the way the materials are sourced (of course children are digging up your rare-eaths, but this is true for virtually all electronics and no, Fairphones don't make a dent in this statement). I'm talking about the fact that mere months after you've bought your brand-new smartphone, it's already considered obsolete. Fast-forward a couple of years, and software developers start treating you like shit. Whereas a computer from 2015 is still pefectly capable for everyday use (yes, gaming included), a phone from that period will never be able to deliver a satisfying experience.

Not because it isn't capable, it's the same phone after all. It is simply because everyone hopped on the bandwagon and bought five other phones in five years believing that if they don't, they will miss out on the cool stuff. And since the majority thinks like this, this has become a self-realising prophecy. Because why would developers bother creating and maintaining features for older phones if the userbase using them is negligible?

For 10 years and counting, I've stood strong against this mindset. I can count all the phones I've owned on... two fingers. The one I'm using now is a Samsung Galaxy S5, from 2014-2015. Headphone jack. Physical Home button. Removable battery.

The experience sucks. Not because it can't make basic things like phone calls or chat, its 2 gigabytes of RAM are more than enough for the job. But because of the reason I've talked about above, It's been abandonned by almost all major application developers. Everyday applications that most people around me use (and expect me to use) are either unavailable to me, or sooo slow that they cannot reliably be counted on. Now I don't care about Instagram and dookies like that, but making payments or buying bus tickets on the fly is impossible to me and simply browsing the web is in itself a chore. I'm lucky enough that Google Maps still kind of works, but I can wait a solid minute between me opening the app and me knowing where the fuck am I. And in no way will I ever log into to any account, because the last security update that Android (6, mind you) has received is from 2018, proving that no one gives a damn anymore.

The fact that it has lasted me this long is all the proof you need to understand that the industry sucks. It sucks because even though smartphones can last at least as long as computers do, they are artificially made obsolete (through the applications, the battery failing or the OS slowing down on purpose, I have a hunch that Apple isn't the only player in this field) so that the cycle can repeat again.

But I WILL NOT BE SWAYED. The fact that nobody wants these phones anymore means that I can get for very cheap other Galaxy S5's (I have a spare in case the one I have bricks) and batteries, which is the sole reason why I could keep mine for this long. I've burned through at least 4 batteries throughout the past decade. That's a thing people seem to have forgotten about, not counting Fair/Pinephone users. Collective amnesia FTW. And there is the possibility to install more recent versions of Android, thanks to (un)official builds of /e/OS and LineageOS. Although the process seems like a fucking chore, it'll be my last line of defense when the day WhatsApp drops support for Android 6 arrives.

Stay strong, fellow soldiers.