I am not sure which I played first but the most memorable ones are Bubble Bobble for the C64 or Goriallas on a really old DOS PC. Putting in really high velocity numbers to make the exploding banana fly through the building rather than trying to figure out an arch was my favorite strategy.
I feel like when I was younger and phone tech was changing a lot in the early days of the iOS and Android the difference even 1 year made was sometimes huge. Nowadays it’s much more incremental. A slight processor boost here, a couple GB of Ram there. I think a large part as to why that is is two things.
One, the tech has stagnated to some degree. Innovation doesn’t exactly sell a phone to regular non tech folks, a stable “don’t have to think about it” experience is what most people are after.
Two, a lot more issues with the cell phone platform are solved with software rather than throwing around more powerful hardware.
All that being said when I was younger I loved the idea of bleeding edge tech in my pocket, I upgraded all the time. The appeal was more customization at a lesser cost to performance, I wanted all the bells and whistles and less of the jank that came with it. I’m a little older now and lean much more towards the “give me something that works and doesn’t crash for the 10 minutes I have to look at my phone” club.
For those that upgrade to the latest iPhone/Pixel every year no matter what, I chalk that up to lots of expendable funds. It doesn’t appeal to me any more but I can also recognize that there are probably plenty of people out there now, like I was 10 years ago, so it could also be a general interest in the tech and how the bleeding edge keeps pushing for faster, more efficient technology.
While I fell into a pattern where I intend to upgrade every 2 years maybe 5 or 6 years ago, I’ve noticed in that same time frame that both the cost of new devices has gone up significantly and the durability of those devices has dropped.
I’m very easy on my phones. They spend a vast majority of their time on my desk, or plugged into my car. I’m old and boring enough that “going out” involves sitting down at a table at a nice dinner with friends and then going home. That said, the battery life on my phones starts to degrade after about a year. Various flaws start to creep up in the device. I’ve already had to replace the screen on my Pixel 7 Pro once – though, to be fair, it took a tumble from the couch onto a hardwood floor, but even that, really, shouldn’t turn the screen non-functional.
It’s disappointing to see that planned obsolescence rearing its head.
Pixels have extremely thin screens, apparently. I tried to get the battery replaced on an otherwise perfectly functioning Pixel a few years ago, but it ended up being cost prohibitive because replacing the battery also required replacing the screen which was “potato chip thin” according to the repair guy, and it was almost impossible to swap the battery without breaking it.
what a masterpiece! still so charming and fun and challenging today! and OH the music (with an extra sound-chip in the cartridge to add more voices!!) <3
I generally start looking to replace mine around the time that Google Maps starts becoming laggy. That's usually around the 3 year mark for me. After 4 years things get pretty bad.
Nexus 5 -> Pixel 2 -> Pixel 6a
Practically every app update grows its respective compute and memory footprint. And over time, it adds up. Combine that with the big jumps in resource usage that come with OS updates, and eventually things just start slowing down.
I use my phones until the battery life is too degraded to be practical and the phone is too damaged to have the batt6replaced. My Samsung A71 is about 3 years old. Some months ago I noticed the battery was pillowing. Since it was still holding charge for more than a day, the guy at a repair shop (where I took it to get a new battery) just punched a pinprick to deflate it, and it’s still going strong.
Which will work fine right up into your phone explodes. You don’t punch a pinhole to deflate bulging batteries you replace the battery. The bulging isn’t dangerous in and of itself, the bulging is a symptom of a problem you are ignoring.
I appreciate your concern, but it’s been 3 months, and it’s still holding a good charge.
I suspect it was a single event where it overheated and gassed. I kept using the phone for weeks thinking my phone case had deformed (I didn’t notice the small bulge, but the case’s power button wasn’t aligning well with the phone), before I realized it was the battery.
When it dies, I’ll get a new phone. If I still have both hands.
I switched to the Poco F5 from my Mi Mix 2S. Overall I think it’s probably the best bang for buck in the category. If you know your way around MIUI’s shennanigans, it should be pretty great. The only complaint I have (it’s really small) is that I was used to tap the power button for shortcuts, but now that becomes weird because it always unlocks the phone.
The Google Pixel 7P that I have now I bought because I dropped the 6P on the ground so bad that it wouldn’t even start. The 6P I got because it had significantly better camera and was faster than the OnePlus 6T I had before. I know you say 100mp doesn’t make a difference from 12mp but there’s really a huge difference in image quality with the Pixel compared to the 6T, especially in low-light conditions or when you zoom. And it’s not just me, people have been commenting at how good the pictures are without even knowing what phone I own.
I also enjoy new features like the gestures to control apps. Overall, apps and the OS get slower because new features keep being added, and security updates stop coming, so I need to renew the hardware to keep up. I use the phone for hours a day every day, all year around, so I think it’s worth putting some money into it. But I don’t get a new one every year. Maybe 3 years, or possibly 2 years depending on what gets released.
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