For some reason I though I’d sold some of my last phones on ebay, but after clearing out some shelves and cupboards in our house, I’ve found my last 3 phones before my current phone, and they all still work fine. It’s interesting how large current phones are now compared to phones from over 10 years ago – we definitely had a period of phones getting smaller, and now we’re carrying around tablets in our pockets.
Here’s the oldest to last phone I replaced:
From left to right:
- T-Mobile myTouch4g – this is from roughly 2010. I had it for a few years then reached that stage when it started to slow down so installed a custom Android ROM, Lineage. This always seems to be my sign where I need to upgrade, when I start messing with custom ROMs. Pretty sure I used this phone for at least 3 years. Given it’s small size, it’s noticeably heavy in the hand, maybe because of the solid metal back plate.
- Samsung S3 – used this phone for 5 years, and only upgraded because the battery started to only just last for a whole day before needing a recharge. Still, 5 years for continual daily use is pretty good innings. I would have used it for longer if it wasn’t for the battery life decreasing
- Samsung S8+ – probably my favorite phone so far. Even though I recently upgraded to an S21 ultra, I used this phone at home as a music player while working from home (before most recently getting replaced by an iPad)
As a comparison in size to my current S21 Ultra, here’s the myTouch and S3 to the left, S21 Ultra on the right:
It’s interesting seeing the increase in size. My S21 feels completely normal at this point, but the myTouch4g is small enough to fit within my hand.