My phone screen died very suddenly so I had to power on an extremely old phone to serve as an alarm clock.

What is it with Android and completely dying after a couple years' downtime?

Anyway, I think the only reason I replaced this phone was that it was insufferably slow and the immediate excuse to get rid of it was that the charging port corroded. So glad I keep these things around, even after moving house 4 times.

I have also quite a collection of old phones. They do have sentimental value. I never sell them. But now last few phones last long. What is your favorite phone design? For me it was the HTC S740. A marble. Back then, phones were still beautiful. Now they all look the same. No phone is exceptional beautiful or ugly. Well, the Lumia 920 had such a great gui, amazing.

My hubris betrays me yet again, for some reason I decided to connect it to the network. I don't think I'll be able to unlock the screen or even turn it off for the next 20 minutes while it chews through 3 years' worth of "super urgent" events.

@retoor No major preference either way really. I like standardization though, I think the current smartphone format is really good and engineering the fastest, cheapest, least fragile palm-sized touch screen Android device is a worthwhile competition.

I really liked the sharp angles of Lumias as well, Windows Phone was doomed but the design was miles better than the bubbly / neumorphic look Android is going for

@lorentz I think it also failed because of the way how to build apps for the windows phone. The old sucky windows mobile, you could juts develop for it with your default C# knowledge. For the windows phone they introduced such a weird system that I lost interest developing for it. But messaging tools like whatsapp looked amazing! So smooth.

@retoor Didn't Xamarin work fine?

@lorentz was that the name? Dont remember.

@chatgpt why did windows phone lose the battle?

@retoor
Windows Phone lost the battle primarily due to several factors, including the lack of popular apps, limited hardware options, and a late entry into the market dominated by iOS and Android. Additionally, Microsoft struggled to gain significant market share and failed to innovate quickly enough to keep up with its competitors.

get custom ROM maybe it'll be faster

something stripped of google apps

Had an app on my mom's tablet turn into adware slowing it down a ton. I can't remember if it was removed from the store, maybe check if you have only “correct” apps left over

@lorentz i should buy an radio alarm clock. Remember those?

my iPhone X works fine since 2019.

I will say though, I think there were some good ideas along the way that we should reconsider for future phone designs

- curved glass is more expensive, harder to protect, and less convenient to control as a touch surface

- If the outermost rim of the front face is plastic, the phone will practically never hit the ground screen first because of aerodynamics

- If the back of the phone is plastic, I don''t have to wrap it in an extra 3mm of plastic and rubber

Furthermore:

- The Sun is bright, and people generally can't turn it off. This should probably advise the top of the brightness ramp more than the battery. When your users are outside in glaring sunshine, they hopefully won't look at the phone that much anyway.

- The lock screen has a very large clock that I may want to look at, or show someone, without randomly revealing the screen below, so mechanisms that cleverly skip the lock screen like combining the power button with a fingerprint sensor are actually removing functionality.

- Weight has benefits; the only phones I ever accidentally left somewhere prided themselves in being exceptionally light. Also, you can literally always trade more weight for more battery life, so it's not like it's ever wasted.

"What is it with Android and completely dying after a couple years"

WTH are you doing with them? Even my 13 years old Android phone still operates fine.

I'm using a phone released 7 years ago right now and the only reason to upgrade is VoLTE/upcoming 2G+3G shutdown, otherwise I would likely continue to use it

@qwwerty my last phone the connector for usb c isn't working right. Comes unplugged easy. Thought it was lint in connector, but couldn't get any out. Also touch screen has become glitchy. It was about 3 years old.