It's not "pedantic." I was confused by "ten years old" written more times. But mentioning the community etc it appeared to be about something that I maybe don't know. The Newton was discontinuited in 1998 so now it's more like "20 years old device." Just "2011" makes the text clearer.

Please (mods) add it to the title.

also helps explain why the author would refer to smartphones taking 3-4 hours to charge, which is no longer the case. I was initially confused by this claim and thought he was stacking the deck in his comparison.