My hand-me-down phone journey
- Nokia C3 (2013)
had it for 4 months, did the job, and had no complaints
- Blackberry Curve 9380 (2014)
Based on BlackberryOS it was clean and the experience was amazing, quite reliable, and had great battery backup whatever I say about that 5MP camera is less that’s how good it was at the time.
- YU Yuphoria (July 2015)
With this Andriod entered my life. Yuphoria ran on Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 MSM8916, with quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz and Adreno 306 GPU. Mine was 2GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage (11.83GB available to the user) with microSD support.
On the software side, the phone ran Cyanogen OS 12, based on Android 5.0 Lollipop 🍭. The OS looked very close to stock Android but had a ton of useful features and this made me aprreciate and undertand the value of clean OS experience.
I exchanged for my dad who got iPhone 6s and I took his Sony, it was in excellent condition hence got a great resale value no regrets **
- Sony Xperia Z (July 2016)
During this time I was quite occupied with high school and didnt really care much about phone but I do remb this phone never disappointed despite being used for a 10 months.
Glass front, glass back, aluminum frame . Qualcomm MSM8994 Snapdragon 810 ,Octa-core (4×1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 4×2.0 GHz Cortex-A57) and Adreno 430 GPU. The IP68 was something astonishing to me those days as I discovered it after dopping it in pool for roughly 2-3min.
Used it for 18 months and exchanged it for Mom’s new phone taking her Nexus
- LG Nexus 5 (Jan 2018)
This phone is a Legend also I think inspiration for Google’s Pixel. This phone had the best Andriod experience.
Qualcomm MSM8992 Snapdragon 808 (20 nm) , Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and used it till Android 8.0 (Oreo), my version was 16GB 2GB RAM. Got me through high school and using it felt like a flagship experience.
It incurred some physical damage so I had to switch, I had planned to get a new rig finally shortlisted few options but yet again I pivoted to hand me down but this time it was gonna be different.
- iPhone 5s (Aug 2019)
Never did I dream to be an iOS user yet here I was. Getting a hang of the new interface was quite a jump but I got and it was quite impressive. A phone of that size did pack a punch Apple A7 (28 nm) iOS 7, upgradable to iOS 12.5.6 and GPU PowerVR G6430 but never went past iOS 10 for the sake of hardware.
The 8 MP camera on it would put some of today’s budget to midrange to shame and it could shoot 1080p@30fps, 720p@120fps.
Used it 2021 Aug but it was getting difficult for the hardware to cope with the new heavier os and apps so it was time to pivot
6.2) Samsung S6 (Feb 2020- July 2021)
Used it as a secondary rig during lockdown streaming and media due to its screen size compared to the iPhone 5s , Exynos 7420 Octa (14 nm) Android 5.0.2 (Lollipop), upgradable to Android 8.0 (Oreo), TouchWiz UI , charged it today for the sake of post and OS kinda reminds me of Nothing os.
- iPhone 6s (Aug 2021- Aug 2024)
I’d rather call it a soldier for performing in a time beyond its hardware capabilities and that too for 3years no amount of appreciation is just for what it has endured.
Tumbled on various surfaces and a single not dent, and water damage twice yet came back like it was nothing, went to iOS 13 and it was heavy for it so I became a digital minimalist in terms of apps and storage.
8 Aug 2024 was the day I went for 10k, it came pouring down and I was sceptical of water damage but it was inevitable, that was the end of a 3yr journey with 6s 😢
For the past month, I’ve been trying to find the right new phone and my experience with previous phones made me set 3 criteria
a) Future-proof device
b) Performance-efficient hardware ( as per 2024 standards LPDDR5x, UFS 4.0, IP 65 & usable AI are a must)
c) Cleaner OS experience
Based on my research I shortlisted
OP Nord 4
Nothing 2aPlus
Both are decent phones but don’t completely meet my criteria and either choice will be a compromise on one or two criteria.
I can wait till Feb 2025 max for phone 3, but would it be worth it provided Phone 3 comes out till then or settle for the above choices?
Ps. 8) Moto G5s
Meanwhile, I’m using this spare G5s and don’t how long would it hold………..
