Mister Xiado wrote:

but I cannot use them for anything, even emergency telephone service as US carriers eliminated the 2G/EDGE network to make more space for LTE.

Oh dear. I had no idea it looks so dark for ol' GSM (and alikes) around the world. Still using my phone from ~95/96 here, and thought that
being able to do this was somewhat naturally; I thought that a working 2G network is something so very basic that it will never be shut down.
At least not within a couple of years. If I think about it, there are so many GSM modules installed that do their communications via good old SMS..

I knew people who would just keep old phones and a charger in their glove box in the winter (do not leave anything with an LCD and a battery in your car in the heat of summer), just in case they needed to call 911, as that would still work on a phone with no paid service. Now you have to have at least a UMTS (3G) capable phone, and hope its battery hasn't melted down yet.

I still use a Blackberry Leap, which is the last Blackberry OS 10 phone, with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard. It’s outdated for most people now. You might ask yourself: ‘why do you still use it?’

- I do care about my privacy
- I don’t use apps like fb, instagram, whatsapp or linkedin
- the battery life is superior compared to most new phones
- the performance of the operating system is still like new, despite all updates
- camera is very reasonable
- the back of the phone has a rubberized finish, so you don’t need a cover, nor does it slide out of your hand
- 4G reception is great
- it was cheap when I bought it (2016)

In the past I have owned several weird smartphones, including a Nokia N93 (first camera/phone hybrid with optical zoom) and a Nokia communicator model (that thing was big!). The early 2000’s were great mobile phone years.

Now you can choose out of the Android or iOS duopoly with their respective major phone manufacturers. Even Windows Phone is gone now. Not very interesting, bad for prices (ridiculously expensive iPhones!) and worse for privacy.

My phone is the BlackBerry Z10. Functions well as a camera, does 60fps at 720, and runs a lot of stuff thanks to a cracked-out Google Botnet runtime I loaded onto it, but the last battery for it was made around 2015, and I'm on my second battery now. While it can run solely off of USB power (dunno about stuff like the video camera), I don't see it lasting for more than another two years. After working for AT&T for a decade, I'd rather never deal with phones ever again, even as a portable screw-around computer.

SpectriaForce wrote:

- it was cheap when I bought it (2016)

What kind or argument is that? Why should someone hold on to something just because it was cheap? Quite the contrary: the more expensive an item is, the more careful I handle it and the more I try to preserve it to get more use out of it.

I kinda miss those screen plus alphabet keyboard candybar phones, Nokia made some good ones, and then just started to make only some budget models, and then just stopped. I really like that nokia is rereleasing 3310 and 8110 modern versions. But i really like a modern Nokia E72 or something like that.

blurks wrote:

SpectriaForce wrote:

- it was cheap when I bought it (2016)

What kind or argument is that? Why should someone hold on to something just because it was cheap? Quite the contrary: the more expensive an item is, the more careful I handle it and the more I try to preserve it to get more use out of it.

It would cost me a lot more money to buy a new phone that has the same qualities. The price / quality ratio is still great.

From 2007-Present:

Motorola Razr V3M (still have this phone) (2007-2009)
Samsung Alias (full keyboard) and has a battery issue (2009-2012, 2014-2014)
Sony Ericsson Xperia Play R800X (2012-2013)
Nokia Lumia 928 (2014-2016)
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (2016-Present)

About the old Nokia E7x and similar phones, what many maybe do not remember is that many of these old phones were already middle to high end smartphones themself that probably had much higher build costs starting for example from the main processor/baseband. Nowdays most keyboard features phones often if not almost always share the same one or two hw main "cpu" that has incredibly lower costs compared to what could have been the price of the usual ARM11 369/434/600Mhz version of the S60 3rd edition smartphones and probably even cheaper of the Xscale ARM11 (probably slower compared to the S60) cpus of the S40 models.
Before these 4G newer phone models (having a much faster cpu), most 2007 S60 3rd editions old smartphones would probably laugh of most of the modern 2017 2G/3G feature phones in every departments not to mention they had much more ram before . The 4G models finally use a modern ARMv7 dual core processor, but here I don't like these html5 os in terms of general speed, apps and battery usage at least from the experience with the firefox os. Also I don't think these will ever see many applications like S60 phones had.

Still have my old Nokia 6310i which i loved, and my Lumia 410 (which got outmoded but i kept as a spare then forgot about). Other old phones either broke, wore out, or in one case i actually sold (my XDA, which i miss much like Palm pdas). Tried using the 6310i recently, but some things it's hard to go back to; had a similar experience with an old landline phone with the old pulse dialling dial which earlier in life was the norm: it's tactile and cool but where we are now takes too effing long to dial.

Ì still have a lot, but not all, of the phones that I've been using previously, all the way back to 1997.

I have these phones still:

Alcatel OneTouch Easy
Ericsson A1018s
Nokia 6150
Samsung SGH-2400
Samsung SGH-T100
Siemens S55
Nokia N73
Blackberry Bold 9900
Samsung Note 4
iPhone 6
iPhone 6s
iPhone X (current phone)

I have had a couple of others, among which the first Nokia N-Gage... What a disaster of a device that was 😀

Salient wrote:

Ì still have a lot, but not all, of the phones that I've been using previously, all the way back to 1997. […]
Show full quote

Ì still have a lot, but not all, of the phones that I've been using previously, all the way back to 1997.

I have these phones still:

Alcatel OneTouch Easy
Ericsson A1018s
Nokia 6150
Samsung SGH-2400
Samsung SGH-T100
Siemens S55
Nokia N73
Blackberry Bold 9900
Samsung Note 4
iPhone 6
iPhone 6s
iPhone X (current phone)

I have had a couple of others, among which the first Nokia N-Gage... What a disaster of a device that was 😀

I had the NGage QD version and I'd say it was one of my favourite phone ever. I used it for so much time until I let the market convince me to "upgrade" to newer model, also cause I needed a faster modem than its GPRS one with the not really stable bluetooth connection. But even back then with its 104Mhz ARM7 processor and the S60 os it could do almost anything it should be expected from a modern smartphone.