I've been using my good reliable Galaxy Note 10 for about 3 years now, it still works like a charm (except for the battery, which was pretty lacking even at the beginning). It's one of the best phones I've ever had.
My phone journey just shows how spending a bit more on a phone can make it last longer. As a young fella, I always used cheap phones that would last about a year, which isn't a good sign at all. Back when smartphones had like 4GB or 8GB of storage and you couldn't install anything except for whatsapp and maybe a small game or two, because you had no storage. Once, my dad offered me a Nexus 5X. Both of our phones broke at the same time, so we decided to order them together, that was my first phone with 32GB of storage and with actual software updates. It was a brilliant little thing, it worked so damn well, and my dad's unit got to last until last year! Keep in mind that we bought them in 2016.
From then on, I did have a couple of cheaper phones, but they started lasting less and less, unlike my trusty old nexus that could still work fine if it wasn't for the faulty SIM card slot that never got fixed. Cheap phones were slow, clunky, heavy, had lots of bloatware, and they just become laggy bricks within a year or two. About 4 years ago, I pulled the trigger and got myself a OnePlus 7T. The first expensive phone (it was €400 I think) that I paid for myself. Loved that thing, until it got stolen. Unfortunate, but I thought "yeah, this could've lasted way more if it wasn't for that incident, might as well get another phone at that price point".
And here I am, with my trusty Note 10. I ended up installing Lineage for the sake of more software updates, and I didn't have much to lose since I lost the stylus the very day I installed Lineage (lol). Still works, the screen is quite unresponsive sometimes, the back panel has no adhesive left so it comes off, and the camera quality sucks on custom ROMs. But it still works great.
I'm thinking that my next phone will probably be a Sony. They offer quite compact models (they're rather tall, which I dislike, but rumors say that they'll make it shorter this year), they still have headphone jacks, and they still have SD card slots. Simply perfect for someone like me who dearly misses those two features and likes smaller phones. But for now, I'll try to make this phone last for another year or two, maybe even three, who knows? Then I'll get myself another quite nice phone.
Side notes:
- I've never gotten an iPhone. I've considered the 13 mini, but it still used lightning and I dislike how iOS doesn't support sideloading or FLAC files natively. I'd also miss the SD card slot and the headphone jack, so I think it's just not for me.
- Sony PLEASE start offering 256GB or higher models on your Xperia 5 series. Once you go 256GB there's no way back.
- While I know that many manufacturers offer headphone jacks and SD card slots on cheaper units nowadays, the fact that my current phone is more powerful than half of them says a lot about long term usage. Oh, and I hate big phones, which is where the whole market is leading to nowadays. Save me from this misery
