Why I Never Buy Cutting-Edge Smartphones or PCs | Hacker News Reader

Why I Never Buy Cutting-Edge Smartphones or PCs

howtogeek.com

22 pointsbentocorp13 comments

I may be a little more "temporally ludditish" than the author. I have bought the cheapest unlocked cellphone that Best Buy, Staples, or Costco had to offer. Most times on Black Friday.

I typically paid 150 to 250 Canadian. They last 2 to 3 years and meet my needs right up to the next purchase. I am due this year for a switch.

As for PCs and Laptops. All are old BF buys or rescued "garbage". I am setting up a Dell Latitude E5420 (2013) for a current need. (Official disposed by my employer and intercepted before sent to electronic recycling.) Other resurrected acquisitions that are operational are from 2013 and 2015. I can do this because "what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career".

I like keeping this systems out of the garbage for a few more years.

>I typically paid 150 to 250 Canadian. They last 2 to 3 years and meet my needs right up to the next purchase. I am due this year for a switch.

Seems penny wise pound foolish compared to getting something like an iPhone SE or a low end pixel (eg. 7a) which have 6-8 years of support, rather than the 1-2 years support you get from low end phones.

There could be secondary factors. If you're physically hard on your devices, you might be scuffing up screens and permanently smooshing USB sockets with a couple years of hard use. Yes, they might be repairable, but the breakeven math is getting pretty close.

Replacing every 2-3 years also means replacing the battery every 2-3 years, which you were likely going to want to do eventually anyway.

TBH, I don't get the flagship phone thing at all. When my employer was paying, I got some of them-- a Lumia 1020, a LG V10, and a Samsung GSII-- and I didn't really use any of the performance. The phone that was the biggest upgrade for me was a Umidigi F1, because it really had two-day battery life for the first time.

>TBH, I don't get the flagship phone thing at all. When my employer was paying, I got some of them-- a Lumia 1020, a LG V10, and a Samsung GSII-- and I didn't really use any of the performance.

With the proliferation of javascript heavy SPAs and electron apps, you'll definitely notice the performance difference even if you're not gaming or whatever.

I'm not interested in cutting-edge smartphones anymore. Not sure what's the advantage because my use cases are pretty minimalists:

Whatsapp, email, social medias, online shopping, mobile banking, and a little bit of photo editing.

On the other side, cutting edge PC is a way more attractive thing cause it allows you to play 3D-intensive games on max setting, for example.

I have a thing for old worn stuff. Like to reuse my old trainers for walking some extra distance and such. With Linux, computers don't slow down with every update. I use an old Nettop as a Debian server. Unlike Raspberry it comes with an UPS of sorts.

An older laptop makes a fine server. Even if the battery only runs for 30 minutes, it is ample time to gracefully shutdown. Running RPi's on a UPS negates the initial lower cost. When I use RPi as a microserver (without a UPS), I install Alpine Linux and make the root FS read-only. Seems to marginally improve reliability.

I have a 2015 Dell whose keyboard does phantom input and trackpad is dead. It has a sata ssd now. Can I trust it as a backup server?

I presume by "backup" you mean somewhere you'd backup your files from other systems. If so, I'd be more concerned about the SATA SSD, they do wear out. Probably not a sufficient reliable system to entrust with your critical files.

Laptops lose their value too fast

Now a self built PC can last a long time if you build it in mind with future upgrades, mostly RAM

I notice that lots of folks use their laptop at a desk all the time. So could have a more powerful desktop system, with bigger screen(s) for the same investment cost. Besides batteries on laptops tend to go bad fast if they are constantly being charged.

Yep. But I can work practically everywhere with my laptop (I'm a mobile app dev and ocassional back-end dev).

No question PC is still #1 for upgradibility. If I'm an avid gamer or a video editor, then yes definitely will use PC, instead.

In Apple ecosystem. The iPhone Pro keep more of its value then iPhone. ( depending on region ) So in reality you actually spend less then $200 if you sell it within 2-3 years, for 120Hz screen, better camera, usable zoom, and better battery life. Which isn't really a bad deal to be honest.

iPhone 16 would have been close to perfect if it had say 3X zoom and 120hz screen. The weight and thickness of Pro also make it slightly harder to hold.

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