Phone used to interest me a lot in the late featurephone/early smartphone era, when companies were just throwing all sorts of weird shit at the wall and see what stick, everything was new and interesting, I have fond memories of downloading Java games from WAP sites, Windows Mobile 6, Android 2/4.
Now I think it's fair to say that I hate modern smartphones, they have nothing in common with the innovative phones of the past, almost like they were designed with the sole purpose of being as far away from them as possible in every way. You used to be able to get a smartphone between $100-300 just fine, or ~$500 for a flagship at most meanwhile now $300 is considered the bottom of the barrel, $500 as the preferable minimum if you want something that doesn't totally suck. SD cards, headphone jacks, removable batteries and minimal spyware/bloatware, freeer OS and ability to change it was also the norm. Past Android 5 (equivalent iOS 7/iPhone 6? never was an apple guy) smartphones have started to lose a lot of appeal for me, which then was made extremely obvious when the iPhone 7 removed the jack for absolutely no reason (by which time a much higher percentage of Android phones started to lock in their batteries) and especially with the X introducing that ridiculously ugly cutout in the screen while raising the price to the now standard above $1000 and within months nearly all Android phones too have copied that horrid design and started dropping the jack too on top of the slowly rising prices even at the low end and soldered battery becoming the standard on all models. Microsoft an BlackBerry gave in for good around this time too ensuring theres no one capable of challenging these trends going forward.
That's not getting into the surveillance conducted by modern smartphones, I never really liked Google as a company just used the search engine, but I stopped around this time due to some leaks. Android was basically completely independent at the very start, there were cool indie apps developed while big companies were focusing on iOS, that was the draw for me, that all changed past Android 5, most new features were things tied to Google services which have mostly replaced the default AOSP apps too so conveniently stuff like the SMS messenger or the Dialer would leak info to Google about your phone communication behind your back or even more importantly without the consent of your contacts, obviously alongside all the rest of your usage. Not that I knew most of this at this time I just didn't personally get into Google services past search ever and disliked the perfectly good AOSP apps being replaced with Google ones that beg me to sign in and such, preferred Microsoft at the time, I would've continued with a Windows Phone but availability was very bad in my area basically through its entire life so I settled for Android and it was fine at first due to its openness.
Around Android 9 time now which leads to today, I smash the screen of my phone, by this time I still don't know all the technical details of just how absolutely shit Android has become aside the feeling that something is wrong, I reluctantly buy a Moto One with Android 9 because at this time I'm still in the mindset that obviously I need a smartphone, how would I not in 2019?
This is the phone I still use and will use until it bricks as I absolutely hate it, its stock Android which now mean all Google through and through, the screen is way too big and impossible to use one handed, the battery is locked in and it has that fucking cut in the screen for the camera that I never use that they just had to include for everyone else who by this time was completely addicted to social media (everyone I knew IRL went from laughing at facebook users with me around the time of Android 2 to being completely addicted to whichever top social app by this time). I actually started to research Android because I was really pissed off by all the Google bloat, garbage like bing.com/maps forcibly being redirected to Google Maps on every browser, found out just how bad the spying that Google Play Services does actually is. I would've loved to install a custom ROM at this point even though I've never done it before and was worried about bricking it but none were available, so I just have to settle for removing most Google services with ADB from my user. (I never got into custom ROMs because nearly none of my phones support them and I was satisfied with old stock Android, by the time I realized how bad Android has become custom ROMs have basically died out on most phones)
I switched nearly all my apps to FOSS ones from F-Droid and GitHub and uninstalled ones I don't need, never update them unless required. With how much I hated my new phone I just began to use it less, I never used it a ton as most people do today but now im basically at the point where I never use it for things I can do on my PC faster, better. I can call, I can look up something if I have to, I have 2FA, I can take quick photos, so really not very often. I've picked it up multiple times earlier on out of habit, scroll through my app list and think to myself "This is useless, it literally cant do anything cool" and immediately put it back down, which is the opposite of what attracted me to Android 2 to begin with, I spent a good bit of time messing with it, looking for cool new apps, figuring out what else I can assign to NFC tags.
As it stands right now, I'm over smartphone unless theres gonna be some major change which I don't expect considering how much bigger and more profitable the smartphone industry became once they implemented all the restrictions that drove me away, there is Sailfish OS which is cool and I'd be down to use, but it requires an expensive Xperia, is paid itself and not open source. There is GrapheneOS which is definitely the way to go for anyone who cares about privacy and still wants to use Android apps and is not disgusted by Android as a base system itself but you need to use the horrible Pixel phones and give Google money directly. There are the linux phones which are cool but none of them are available here so thats not happening and thats basically it, as far as modern phones go there is absolutely nothing that has been put to market in soon enough close to a decade that I'd be happy to use. So my current plan is to just go back to my Android 5 Lenovo i got on contract for $20 (phone contracts, thats another scam, go prepaid if you can, especially if your country allows you to get one without identifying yourself to the carrier that way, which is another thing I shouldn't go off on if I don't wanna rant for even longer) just bought a new battery for it for $10, once my Moto One bricks and once that bricks (it already is a bit slow but again enough more than enough for me) back to dumb phones, probably the ones I already own, all the new ones are so crap they're not really worth using, old Nokias or WM6 are superior in every way.
If things don't improve, long term I might even wanna go without a mobile phone of any kind (I guess using one as an iPod Touch would still be fine for quick photos, music, notes, etc on the go just without a network connection), I just found out about how the shutdown of 2G and 3G in some countries will lock out many 4G/5G phones from being able to call as phones specifically need to be approved for VoLTE by the carrier so say goodbye to your custom ROMs and debloating or importing cooler exclusive models from other countries, and with being unable to call unless you comply and continue to shell out hundreds of dollars every few years in this grim future for whatever garbage they're gonna throw out I see absolutely no reason to take part any longer. You can get an X86 tablet for cheap (or a netbook i guess or a Steam Deck) which future phones are probably going to be bigger than anyways and just have a real computer with you, run an android emulator if you really need it, full websites with good adblock, tons of storage etc and just use a VoIP number thats cheaper and requires no identification if you're in a bad country.
