@metageist We had 2 Nexus 5x phones and 2 6p . Both 5x failed, were purchased at the same time, both failed in the same week with boot loop after the same update. The first one was replaced with Nexus 5 the 2nd one we noped the fuck out of Nexus phones and went with Motorola.
(not covered under warranty despite being under 1 year old)
Yes I tried putting older versions of the files on the phone and this did not work.
I thought the Nexus route was the way to go, get updates are released but I am over that. My Nexus 7" first gen tablet needs to be downgraded be cause it runs so crappy. (Don’t get me wrong I love my 6p but Bluetooth is not working on with my stereo adapter because of the Oreo update)
I have lost that “wanting the latest and greatest feeling”.
My last phone the power button quit working, only way to get the screen to turn on was to remove&insert the battery. Once started I used tasker to make it wake up when I shook the phone. So for awhile, people would see me take my phone out of pocket and shake the thing before I used it. It didn’t occur to me what it looked like, but I actually liked it.
My new phone, can’t open it up to unplug the battery, so I guess I’d just be SOL.
I treat my phones with great care and caution. When I upgrade, the old phone is always in like-new condition, and I sell it on to recoup some of the cost of my new phone.
@mflassy You did well on the last one IIRC, and you’re into the Pixel right, so a modest little scratch won’t turn you upside down in the deal.
I always put my phones in a rugged case the moment I take it out of the box, and install a glass screen protector. After a year or more it’s still pristine under all that protection.
I prefer the Ballistic or Trident cases. Not a fan of Otterbox Defender. Though right now I have the iPhone in a Urban Armor Gear “Plasma Ice” case and I’m liking the slimmer profile quite a bit.
@ruouttaurmind i do the same thing my husban thinks the screen protectors are a gimic… but look whos phone isnt all jacked up!
He thinks that because the phone says it’s scratchproof so he doesn’t need anything.
@ragingredd i got one of the glass screen protectors on amazon on a whim for my current phone and i love it. wish i had checked them out sooner. had this one for awhile now (a year? more?) and still looks crystal clear. with the regular plastic ones it always looked like a giant smudge down the center of my phone which was actually a series of tons of tiny scratches as apparently i scroll with the side of my thumb and my nail touches the screen. (doesn’t matter that my nails are very short.) anyway, that kind of crap doesn’t happen with the glass one and i found it easier to ‘install’ as well.
@jerk_nugget they put them on when i get them, generally for free, i know nice dealership, I generally rip them off in the first week or two because they cause a serious increase in glare in the hot desert sun. Not supposed to and has been 3 or 4 different brands and all do it. Never ever never cracked a screen (save on a reader I dropped in a hotel marble floored bathroom.
I use a nice, and always clear case with a ledge. I prefer pure clear so I can skin the phone, last one couldn’t get a purse clear so never skinned it and it has never felt as special as the previous ones.
Haven’t skinned my most recent surface book either, need to go back and ponder that soon
@ragingredd My glass screen protector is broken in two places, my glass is fine. The screen protector may be more fragile, but it still seems to suggest it’s doing it’s job.
@Cerridwyn They’re not really intended to keep the screen from breaking, but from scratching and developing wear patterns.
Like @jerk_nugget, I’m hard on the plastic/film screen protectors. I work with my hands quite a bit at home, and my fingers are heavily calloused. I’ll wear a hole through one of those plastic protectors in just a couple months. Even the tempered glass protectors develop wear patterns after 6 months.
I’m not fully brushing the Pixel 2 off, after all, despite all the the leaks, especially those from yesterday, there’s still unknown information regarding them.
I have to wait until October 4th to reexamine my stance regarding the Pixel 2.
It’s not as generous as it might seem. The phone was a Kyocera (yes, really) HydroVibe. Besides having a model name that sounds like its only sold at Adult Expectations, it’s the worst smart phone ever produced.
It had a camera lens that made the first Hubble images look crisp.
It didn’t have much power to run apps, except when it needed to crash. It crashed with utmost expedience.
I sold my last phone on eBay. The lowlife who bought it left me a bad review because I wouldn’t refund part of the purchase price. Next time I will use Swappa.
@Ambiverbal what did he want the partial refund for? ebay can be a pretty…special place. i’ve had mostly good luck, thankfully. (with the exception of the guy that didn’t like the positive feedback i left for him and proceeded to send me several personally insulting messages on christmas day one year. then told me i was banned from buying from him, lol!)
My old phones go on to be replacement phones for my sisters. I’ve only had one fail on me, and it was a manufacturing fault, so it was replaced for free.
Left my phone (Nexus 6p) on the roof of my car while putzing around vacuuming out and cleaning up the cars. Wife runs out needing to drive to the post office (I know, right?) before it closes and asks to use my car since I’m in the middle of working on hers. “Here are the keys, honey!” and off she goes. 10 minutes later I figure I should check text messages and can’t find my phone. It takes a minute of searching before I remember the events leading up to me putting my phone on the car roof. “Oh, Fiddle-dee-dee!” I muttered as I walked to the end of the driveway where, surely, it must have fallen off when she braked to a halt before driving away. No, not there. Well, it’s probably at the stop sign just at the end of the street where, certainly, it would have slid off. Not there. “Sweet mother of pearl!” I exclaimed, while rationalizing that, of course, the phone slid onto the windshield where my adoring wife would have secured it safely in the car on her way to the telegraph office. Not the case at all. Upon her return she described hearing a thump at an intersection about two miles away, between our home and the pony express station. “Heavens to Betsy!” I shrieked, and sprang into action trying to track it down. There’s a lot more to the story, involving a soccer tournament, scrutinizing customers at a nearby Caribou coffee, carefully tailing a white BMW, hastily scrawled notes and a meeting held at a neutral location, but to make a long story short, that phone was completely fucked.
@vfrdirk Nice storytelling - definitely got some giggles out of me. I appreciate stories that make me giggle. Sorry 'bout your phone though. That didn’t make me giggle
@vfrdirk Next time your phone is lost (android phone) ask google. “find my phone” Do it now to make sure it is set up and works, and you are fast at doing it because every second counts when your phone is lost.
That’s what I used to discover that the phone was no longer at the intersection, but rather at the nearby middle school. “Meddling kids!” I said. So, I drove over there to shake my finger at them. That’s where I found the soccer tournament and hundreds of cars and thousands of people. I went back, and my wife and I hopped I her (now spotless) car and fired up mobile hotspot with a laptop and spent the next couple of hours giving chase to the moving target that was my phone. Ultimately, we made contact with an incredibly nice mom who saw the phone getting run over multiple times driving her kids back and forth to the tournament and pulled over to collect it. When I thought she was hiding out at Caribou, she was actually next door at the Verizon store trying to get help identifying the owner! And she even apologized for not being able to answer my frequent calls to the phone because the screen wasn’t responding…
@vfrdirk I have an app on my tablet and phone called Find My Device. It will remotely locate it’s partner and give me a map to it, and I can use it to make my phone ring or tablet sound an alarm. When we were traveling together I set it up on my friends’ phones so if one got lost any of us could find them. I didn’t tell them that it was also a way for me to track them down in an emergency.
I dropped it, so I replaced the screen. Months later the battery swelled up. The swollen part of the battery was no good, so effectively I had a phone that needed to be charged almost all of the time.
I wore out the USB connector on the phone and it failed in a very unfortunate way. One of the connector contacts came off and got wedged into the bottom of the connector, shorting the positive USB connector to something that was grounded.
When plugged in, it would get very hot and smoke came out. Now it needs a new USB connector, some replacement traces on the PCB, the new battery, and the shell was damaged where the battery was swelling. I decided it was time to get a new phone.
I had decided to go for the LG G4 because at the time it was one of the only options that still had a removable battery and external SD card slot but then after about 9 months it did the fun Bootloop that a lot of folks with that phone experienced so I spent a frenzied night trying to get it to boot up long enough to back everything up. First by freezing it in the freezer which worked (shockingly) but only for a minute and then by using a hair dryer on it to super heat it, which did the trick (yippeee!) The next day I went to Sprint where they handed me a brand new LG G5 no questions asked. It was pretty awesome all in all. Got everything backed up and got a brand new (CURRENT) phone! I never get the current phone because I’m cheap so that was pretty sweet!
@davechait Yeah it was a trick that I found online that supposedly helped the hardware inside work properly long enough to boot it up so I could back everything up. It didn’t work long enough for me so I tried the other method of heating the elements up and that worked like a charm!
first (second-hand) smartphone: dropped the lid of an aquarium tank on it and destroyed the screen
second (also second hand) phone: it was an old iPhone and i used it until it just wouldn’t turn on any more
third phone but the first one I’d ever bought new: left it on a rusting cross-continental flight and it was gone forever
current phone: refurbished Moto X2 that gets dropped onto concrete on a regular basis and survives unharmed despite only having a cheap Body Glove case on it
Mom somehow locked herself out of her phone and Google Account so even though there was nothing really wrong with her Galaxy S7 we traded it in for an S8 which I took and swapped my S7 over to her to give her ease of familiarity. The S8 isn’t drastically different but my mom has trouble with changing inputs on the TV so…
I still have it but I’ve had 2 company phones since, and I had to buy a new phone when I got reorganized. The old phone was just a cell phone, the new one is 4g.
I’m on T-mobile Jump. My phones get traded in to help pay towards the next shiny Iphone. I’ll be waiting for the next model that actually supports T-Mobile’s new 5g.
My current phone is an LG G4, which has had to go in for service twice, once for the bootloop, and a few weeks ago because the left half of the screen started glitching out. I went back to my old HTC One (M7) which quickly frustrated me with its purple camera problem and a battery life so short I had to keep it plugged into a power bank at all times.
I’m tired of buying phones where the manufacturer acts like it doesn’t exist a year after it came out. LG never upgraded the G4 to last year’s version of Android, even though it was only a year old when that came out. I don’t know why LG thinks that would entice me to keep buying their phones if they’re just going to abandon them. At this point I feel like I either need to buy the new Pixel or shudder make the switch to iPhone.
@Barney Then do I have the phone for you; its camera makes everything purple in anything less than full daylight! Sometimes you can’t even see what you were actually trying to photograph!
My last phone was a Sony Xperia M4 and there’s nothing wrong with it other than it’s a mid-range phone from 2 years ago and has the worst camera on any smartphone I’ve owned since about 2011. But it was almost 100% waterproof and my new phone is not at all waterproof since it has a removable battery, which makes me very nervous.
Nothing wrong with my last one (Lumia 640), but the 640 XL has a way better camera, so I upgraded. The path of cheap Windows phones is probably gone, though. I’ll stick with this until I find a good sub-$100 phone with a camera that’s not completely crap.
Motorola SLVR L7 - in drawer, still works, zero battery life
Samsung Upstage - sold on Craigslist
Palm Centro - stolen from car
Palm Pre - in drawer, 3rd replacement, touchscreen doesn’t work
HTC Evo 3D - in drawer, still works, so-so battery life
HTC One M7 - in drawer, decent condition, so-so battery life
HTC One M8 (Harmon kardon) - in drawer, good condition, decent battery life
Nexus 6p - current phone, replaced shitty stock battery with (much better!?!) cheap Chinese battery from eBay. Still at 99% health after 3 months. But a hair snuck in between the (easily broken while removing) back glass and camera during reassembly, so now it won’t focus close up. Also broke the nfc antenna while trying to swap it. Otherwise great condition.
Next phone I’m thinking Pixel 2 XL or Essential. And the nexus 6p will go in the drawer. Also might be considering a carrier change from Project Fi.
All my phones are my husband’s hand-me-downs and he turns in or sells my old phone to offset his new one. If it were up to me i’d still probably have my Razor from like 10 yrs ago (if in 10 yrs i haven’t broken it or the phone bricked or something) because i see no need to “fix what aint broke.” But thanks to him, who always needs hightech gear between work and exercise (gps for tracking, good audio for tunes while working out, etc) my phones are never more than a yr old, always have the latest updates and vpn/virus protection and all, and he carefully resets the old one before it’s gone. Gotta love in-house IT with (he thinks but I argue not) limitless budget.
Dropped in a body of water. By which I mean sent through the washer again. Just like the last three. Just one more reason why I stick with cheapo flip phones.
i turned it in for a new one (the discount on the new phone was a pittance but as i could no longer use the old phone i took whatever i could get) but i’d still be using it if i could. it had just reached end of life because i could no longer update the software without the phone grinding to a halt and eventually the old versions of apps i was happily using were unsupported rip! and then i got basically an identical phone and reinstalled all my shiz so it looked identical.
…actually my biggest issue was having to retire a phone case i had custom designed for me
@rtjhnstn
oh my, I must be in a time warp, is this 1950?
If a woman does not work outside the house, her doing the laundry, is fine.
If she works too and does all the laundry;
Guys, it has been proven that men who share the household duties, are much more attractive than men who do not, if ya know what I mean.;)
Speaking from experience too.
Whatever is in there, I wash it, not going to check, unless, it is a child’s. SOL
A while back I dropped (well knocked off a shelf on to cement) my beloved G2 and it got a crack in the screen and left the phone useless. Thought about getting another, but decided to go with the G5. GPS seems less accurate, but overall, satisfied.
I run through prepaid, so I buy my phones outright and LG phones seem to be by far the best value for new phones. Just need to be 1 generation behind, which I’m fine with.
@MrMark Just to clarify something that probably doesn’t matter and nobody cares about. It’s not a requirement to be one generation behind on the network, I’m just not willing to pay full retail for the newest version.
My last phone (Moto G, bought second hand on Swappa) currently in a Big Box of Stuff that’ll be sent to relatives in the Philippines.
/image balikbayan
Phone before that (Samsung S3) stopped charging for reasons unknown to me. I usually am pretty hard on my phones, but my current one (LG G5, bought by my mom as a birthday present) is pretty good so far.
If you don`t have a purpose for your old phone, donate it.
The HopeLine program collects no-longer-used wireless phones and equipment in any condition from any service provider. Used phones are then either refurbished or recycled. With the funds raised from the sale of the refurbished phones, Verizon Wireless donates wireless phones and airtime to victims, and provides funding and other contributions to nonprofit domestic violence shelters and prevention programs across the country.
Donate phones to soldiers. (Seems to me like most would have their own, but the program exists so I guess not.) Cell Phones For Soldiers has provided more than 300 million Minutes That Matter to our troops serving around the world, and it continues Helping Heroes Home via emergency funds that so far has assisted more than 3,100 veterans and their families.
@moondrake The 300 million minutes of free talk time can only be used in one chain of Internet cafes or for the US part of an international call from a defense department phone.
Skype charges nothing for calls from Internet cafes. So that part of the charity for veterans appears to provide nothing of value. I suggest more research on the phone donation part before giving them a phone. (I didn’t find the part of the website where soldiers apply for phones, so I didn’t see the terms and conditions.)
I also didn’t look in to the other charity.
I gave it a star, as donating a phone is probably better than throwing it away.
@moondrake Good call! I donate my phones to an organization that gets them to abused battered victims. They have emergency contacts programmed into the speed dial in the event that they are threatened with more abuse. Man, there are a bunch of “A holes” out there! Luckily they are offset by good people.
@accelerator@hamjudo The first link was for donation for victims of domestic abuse. That’s the national one, partnered with Verizon. Most local shelters also welcome the donation of working cell phones with chargers to be given directly both to people who have escaped their abuser but are afraid of reprisal, and those who’ve sought help but have not left or who’ve returned to the domestically violent setting. In those cases people at risk are able to stash the phone someplace to use in case of emergency. Even a phone with no carrier can be used to dial 911.
I kept them all and they are like my little phone museum.
Nokia 3588i
96x65 Color LCD
Analog and Digital CDMA
Sanyo MM-8300
176x220 Color LCD
VGA Camera with LED Flash
LG “Voyager Titanium” VX10000S
400x240 Internal and External LCD
Resistive Touch Screen
2MP Camera
128MB Ram
OS: Feature Phone
Samsung Galaxy S1 “Epic” SPH-D700
4" 480x800 OLED Capacitive Touch Screen
5MP Rear Camera and VGA Front Camera
Hummingbird 1Ghz CPU
512MB of Ram
512MB Internal Storage
Android 2.3
Samsung Galaxy S3
4.8" 1280x720 OLED Capacitive Touch Screen
8MP Rear Camera 2MP Front Camera
Snapdragon Dual Core 1.5Ghz
2GB or Ram
16GB of Internal Storage
Android 4.1.1
Samsung DUOS GT-E1182L E1182
Dual Sim Quad Band Feature Phone
LED Light and FM Radio
"The Africa Phone"
Blu Win HD W510u
5.0" 1280x720 LCD Capacitive Touch Screen
8MP Rear Camera 2MP Front Camera
Snapdragon 200 1.2Ghz Quad Core
1GB of Ram
8Gb of Internal Storage
Windows 8.1
Dual Sim
Nokia Lumia 1520
6.0" 1920x1080 LCD Capacitive Touch Screen
20MP Rear Camera 1.2MP Front Camera
Snapdragon 800 2.2Ghz Quad Core
2GB of Ram
16GB of Internal Storage
Windows 8.1-10
Microsoft Lumia 950
5.2" 1440x2560 OLED Capacitive Touch Screen
20MP Rear Camera 5MP Front Facing Camera
Snapdragon 808 Six Core (4x 1.4Ghz and 2x 1.8Ghz)
3GB of Ram
32GB of Internal Storage
@medz I have a hoarding tendency and want to keep all my old tech. Since keeping desktops and servers would take too much space I have settled on phones. I really do like my old Nokias. I would sacrifice someones child to get week long battery life again.
@crow Considering that Nokia had a color screen and I got it in Middle School… I don’t think I was old enough or business savvy enough for any previous gen of phone
The original Samsung flip-phone was donated to charity (apparently they still wanted and used them overseas).
IPhone 3G 8GB and IPhone 4s 32GB are both wiped, cleaned, and stored in their original boxes (because, why not?). Despite 3 and 4 years respectively of daily carry and use they are nearly pristine condition. It annoys my wife whose somewhat more beat up (same model) phone’s eventual breakage has been the driver for us updating every few years.
The secret is Magpul phone cases. And not spilling coffee on the phone…
Huh. No entry for:“It was a Galaxy Note and it exploded.” in your poll. Not that it happened to me. Mine tend to die rather uninteresting deaths and get replaced with unexciting new models. I prefer boring phones without exploding batteries.
I fell on my last one (which was also my first). Had it my hand and fell on some rocks, and caught myself with the hand that was still holding it. It survived with only some small scratches, but I was already planning on replacing it, so it wasn’t my primary phone for much longer anyway.
@alphapeaches I finally managed to stop bringing it to work with me so now it’s by my bed being used as a backup alarm in case I miss my usual one or accidentally turn it off or hit snooze too many times.
@Al_Coholic I used my old Moto x as an alarm, plus to make internet queries, for the first six months I had my Pixel. The damned Pixel was initially as responsive to voice commands as a rock; randomly turned off its volume so I missed calls, texts and alarms; and required 4 or 5 tries to make a phone call. After several updates and getting into a beta program for voice commands the Pixel is pretty reliable now. I keep the moto plugged in the bedroom just in case I ever need to dial 911 and the Pixel isn’t cooperating.
Need a poll answer like: “Went kayaking on the Mountain Fork river, forgot the phone was in my pocket, got tossed from my kayak, and discovered the phone in said pocket after 3 hours on the river”, or something to that effect.
I was gifted the first iPhone way back when it was first released. That was an awesome and expensive gift from my ex. I was very skeptical but, I figured since she took all the cash, stocks, and high end stuff from the house when she left she could afford it and it helped her with her guilt issues from totally screwing me. I still have it and it still works great. (I only use it now for the awesome Texas hold’em poker game on it.)
I had a original one plus one that was going semi strong still till about two months ago and a drop on the ground killed the touchscreen. I’m on straight talk so no way to get a free upgrade. Waited for the one plus 5 announcement and ended up laughing g at the $500 price tag.
Got a ZTE majesty pro straight talk burner as a replacement right now. Barely has enough memory for ten apps.
Need a new one but I’m not paying the outrageous price for a unsubsidized phone and considering going back to a post paid plan if I can get cheaper tv and internet bundled with it.
Where’s the ‘gave it to the gf because she trashes her phones’ option? I treat mine like royalty and usually trade them in after two years in pristine condition. Gave her my iPhone 6+ last year when I bought the 7+. She never appreciates anything, I should’ve just traded it in for the $250 it was still worth.
used to keep my smartphones boxed up, and collecting dust. now, the only old phone i still have is my OG Droid.
most of them have been passed down to family/friends when replaced.
my first flip phone was passed down to my BFAM Ryan when i got my Razr.(got stolen out of his car before he could activate it)
the Razr went to my brother in law, who used it for another 5 years or so.
that was replaced with an LG Dare. (within the 2 years went through about 4 of them, thank you insurance!)
after 2 years that was replaced with my OG Droid.
after 2 years that was replaced with an LG Lucid(amazon wireless deal for $.01)
some where in here the dare went to my friend kim, as she had the same model as a hand-me-down from someone else, and hers died.
after 2 years that was replaced with a first gen MotoX (customized through Motomaker)
after 2 years, replaced with a MotoX Pure Edition (current phone, again customized through motomaker)
Last November, just in time for his 15th birthday, i gave my Nephew Landon the First Gen MotoX.
The battery swelled up to the point where I was holding the bottom of the screen on with duct tape. I bought a new one before attempting the battery replacement myself (which was incredibly simple). Was a backup phone for a while, then I gave it to my father.
I generally buy a 2-year-old iPhone on eBay and sell the previous phone. But this cycle has been disrupted by Apple’s failure to release a plastic phone after the iPhone 5c (which i really like.) I’ll probably buy a pink iPhone SE in the next year or so.
It bootlooped, got it fixed for free (despite no warranty), sold it, and bought a Pixel.
@mflassy I’m almost at the 1 year mark for my Nexus and I’m confident it will have an issue 1 day out of warranty.
@metageist
No Nexus was released in the last year.
@metageist We had 2 Nexus 5x phones and 2 6p . Both 5x failed, were purchased at the same time, both failed in the same week with boot loop after the same update. The first one was replaced with Nexus 5 the 2nd one we noped the fuck out of Nexus phones and went with Motorola.
(not covered under warranty despite being under 1 year old)
Yes I tried putting older versions of the files on the phone and this did not work.
I thought the Nexus route was the way to go, get updates are released but I am over that. My Nexus 7" first gen tablet needs to be downgraded be cause it runs so crappy. (Don’t get me wrong I love my 6p but Bluetooth is not working on with my stereo adapter because of the Oreo update)
I have lost that “wanting the latest and greatest feeling”.
My last phone, I sold it. MotoX 2nd edition.
@mflassy they said they’ve had the phone for a year, not that it was a phone released a year ago.
@mflassy same thing happened to mine. LG G4
I said I dropped it in the poll, but it was more like it found its way to the floor and it was stepped on. The screen was cracked beyond repair.
@ninjaemilee
Well, there’s your problem: your supposed to replace the screen, not repair it.
My last phone the power button quit working, only way to get the screen to turn on was to remove&insert the battery. Once started I used tasker to make it wake up when I shook the phone. So for awhile, people would see me take my phone out of pocket and shake the thing before I used it. It didn’t occur to me what it looked like, but I actually liked it.
My new phone, can’t open it up to unplug the battery, so I guess I’d just be SOL.
@sykl0ps what is it, an iPhone?
I treat my phones with great care and caution. When I upgrade, the old phone is always in like-new condition, and I sell it on to recoup some of the cost of my new phone.
@ruouttaurmind
On Wednesday, I was disappointed by the leaks regarding the Pixel 2.
I would have bought a broken Pixel 2, gotten it replaced, and then sold my Pixel, but I don’t think I’ll do that now.
Meanwhile, I noticed a slight scratch on the back glass panel, so I can’t sell it in mint condition on Swappa.
@mflassy You did well on the last one IIRC, and you’re into the Pixel right, so a modest little scratch won’t turn you upside down in the deal.
I always put my phones in a rugged case the moment I take it out of the box, and install a glass screen protector. After a year or more it’s still pristine under all that protection.
I prefer the Ballistic or Trident cases. Not a fan of Otterbox Defender. Though right now I have the iPhone in a Urban Armor Gear “Plasma Ice” case and I’m liking the slimmer profile quite a bit.
@ruouttaurmind
The funds which are set aside to waste on stuff I don’t need have gotten a nice boost as of late.
Although I’m contemplating wasting it on a Chromebook. I just don’t know where to start, although I know that this is out of the question.
@mflassy What was leaked that you’re not liking about the Pixel 2?
@ruouttaurmind i do the same thing my husban thinks the screen protectors are a gimic… but look whos phone isnt all jacked up!
He thinks that because the phone says it’s scratchproof so he doesn’t need anything.
@ragingredd i got one of the glass screen protectors on amazon on a whim for my current phone and i love it. wish i had checked them out sooner. had this one for awhile now (a year? more?) and still looks crystal clear. with the regular plastic ones it always looked like a giant smudge down the center of my phone which was actually a series of tons of tiny scratches as apparently i scroll with the side of my thumb and my nail touches the screen. (doesn’t matter that my nails are very short.) anyway, that kind of crap doesn’t happen with the glass one and i found it easier to ‘install’ as well.
@jerk_nugget they put them on when i get them, generally for free, i know nice dealership, I generally rip them off in the first week or two because they cause a serious increase in glare in the hot desert sun. Not supposed to and has been 3 or 4 different brands and all do it. Never ever never cracked a screen (save on a reader I dropped in a hotel marble floored bathroom.
I use a nice, and always clear case with a ledge. I prefer pure clear so I can skin the phone, last one couldn’t get a purse clear so never skinned it and it has never felt as special as the previous ones.
Haven’t skinned my most recent surface book either, need to go back and ponder that soon
@ragingredd My glass screen protector is broken in two places, my glass is fine. The screen protector may be more fragile, but it still seems to suggest it’s doing it’s job.
@Cerridwyn They’re not really intended to keep the screen from breaking, but from scratching and developing wear patterns.
Like @jerk_nugget, I’m hard on the plastic/film screen protectors. I work with my hands quite a bit at home, and my fingers are heavily calloused. I’ll wear a hole through one of those plastic protectors in just a couple months. Even the tempered glass protectors develop wear patterns after 6 months.
@jqubed
I should clarify.
I’m not fully brushing the Pixel 2 off, after all, despite all the the leaks, especially those from yesterday, there’s still unknown information regarding them.
I have to wait until October 4th to reexamine my stance regarding the Pixel 2.
@mflassy Holy crap. I just looked at that link to the Pixelbook. W. T. F. Nearly $2K for a CHROMEBOOK???
I gave it to a friend in need of a new phone.
It’s not as generous as it might seem. The phone was a Kyocera (yes, really) HydroVibe. Besides having a model name that sounds like its only sold at Adult Expectations, it’s the worst smart phone ever produced.
It had a camera lens that made the first Hubble images look crisp.
It didn’t have much power to run apps, except when it needed to crash. It crashed with utmost expedience.
A phone call was not really a thing it did.
Don’t get that phone. And don’t abuse simile.
@afullbeard I used to know one of the guys in that band.
/youtube hydrovibe
@afullbeard Ooohhh, I’m sorry for your friend.
I nabbed a HydroVibe at Target on Black Friday a couple of years ago. $10 seemed like a good deal at the time…
I keep my last phone for a spare…
I have a shoebox full of old phones.
I sold a brick phone for quite a lot on Ebay a while ago.
I sold my last phone on eBay. The lowlife who bought it left me a bad review because I wouldn’t refund part of the purchase price. Next time I will use Swappa.
@Ambiverbal what did he want the partial refund for? ebay can be a pretty…special place. i’ve had mostly good luck, thankfully. (with the exception of the guy that didn’t like the positive feedback i left for him and proceeded to send me several personally insulting messages on christmas day one year. then told me i was banned from buying from him, lol!)
My old phones go on to be replacement phones for my sisters. I’ve only had one fail on me, and it was a manufacturing fault, so it was replaced for free.
Saved it for sketchy Internet activity
Left my phone (Nexus 6p) on the roof of my car while putzing around vacuuming out and cleaning up the cars. Wife runs out needing to drive to the post office (I know, right?) before it closes and asks to use my car since I’m in the middle of working on hers. “Here are the keys, honey!” and off she goes. 10 minutes later I figure I should check text messages and can’t find my phone. It takes a minute of searching before I remember the events leading up to me putting my phone on the car roof. “Oh, Fiddle-dee-dee!” I muttered as I walked to the end of the driveway where, surely, it must have fallen off when she braked to a halt before driving away. No, not there. Well, it’s probably at the stop sign just at the end of the street where, certainly, it would have slid off. Not there. “Sweet mother of pearl!” I exclaimed, while rationalizing that, of course, the phone slid onto the windshield where my adoring wife would have secured it safely in the car on her way to the telegraph office. Not the case at all. Upon her return she described hearing a thump at an intersection about two miles away, between our home and the pony express station. “Heavens to Betsy!” I shrieked, and sprang into action trying to track it down. There’s a lot more to the story, involving a soccer tournament, scrutinizing customers at a nearby Caribou coffee, carefully tailing a white BMW, hastily scrawled notes and a meeting held at a neutral location, but to make a long story short, that phone was completely fucked.
@vfrdirk Nice storytelling - definitely got some giggles out of me. I appreciate stories that make me giggle. Sorry 'bout your phone though. That didn’t make me giggle
@vfrdirk Next time your phone is lost (android phone) ask google. “find my phone” Do it now to make sure it is set up and works, and you are fast at doing it because every second counts when your phone is lost.
@caffeine_dude Similar feature from Apple: Find my iPhone.
@caffeine_dude
That’s what I used to discover that the phone was no longer at the intersection, but rather at the nearby middle school. “Meddling kids!” I said. So, I drove over there to shake my finger at them. That’s where I found the soccer tournament and hundreds of cars and thousands of people. I went back, and my wife and I hopped I her (now spotless) car and fired up mobile hotspot with a laptop and spent the next couple of hours giving chase to the moving target that was my phone. Ultimately, we made contact with an incredibly nice mom who saw the phone getting run over multiple times driving her kids back and forth to the tournament and pulled over to collect it. When I thought she was hiding out at Caribou, she was actually next door at the Verizon store trying to get help identifying the owner! And she even apologized for not being able to answer my frequent calls to the phone because the screen wasn’t responding…
@vfrdirk I have an app on my tablet and phone called Find My Device. It will remotely locate it’s partner and give me a map to it, and I can use it to make my phone ring or tablet sound an alarm. When we were traveling together I set it up on my friends’ phones so if one got lost any of us could find them. I didn’t tell them that it was also a way for me to track them down in an emergency.
I dropped it, so I replaced the screen. Months later the battery swelled up. The swollen part of the battery was no good, so effectively I had a phone that needed to be charged almost all of the time.
I wore out the USB connector on the phone and it failed in a very unfortunate way. One of the connector contacts came off and got wedged into the bottom of the connector, shorting the positive USB connector to something that was grounded.
When plugged in, it would get very hot and smoke came out. Now it needs a new USB connector, some replacement traces on the PCB, the new battery, and the shell was damaged where the battery was swelling. I decided it was time to get a new phone.
@hamjudo What exactly was the straw that broke your camel’s back??? The phone was a menace from the moment that the battery began to swell.
I had decided to go for the LG G4 because at the time it was one of the only options that still had a removable battery and external SD card slot but then after about 9 months it did the fun Bootloop that a lot of folks with that phone experienced so I spent a frenzied night trying to get it to boot up long enough to back everything up. First by freezing it in the freezer which worked (shockingly) but only for a minute and then by using a hair dryer on it to super heat it, which did the trick (yippeee!) The next day I went to Sprint where they handed me a brand new LG G5 no questions asked. It was pretty awesome all in all. Got everything backed up and got a brand new (CURRENT) phone! I never get the current phone because I’m cheap so that was pretty sweet!
@qwerty82 what did the freezer do? Allow you to back up your phone or somehow make sprint take it back?
@davechait Yeah it was a trick that I found online that supposedly helped the hardware inside work properly long enough to boot it up so I could back everything up. It didn’t work long enough for me so I tried the other method of heating the elements up and that worked like a charm!
I use it for porn, err, I mean surfing the web.
@ConAndLibrarian
first (second-hand) smartphone: dropped the lid of an aquarium tank on it and destroyed the screen
second (also second hand) phone: it was an old iPhone and i used it until it just wouldn’t turn on any more
third phone but the first one I’d ever bought new: left it on a rusting cross-continental flight and it was gone forever
current phone: refurbished Moto X2 that gets dropped onto concrete on a regular basis and survives unharmed despite only having a cheap Body Glove case on it
Mom somehow locked herself out of her phone and Google Account so even though there was nothing really wrong with her Galaxy S7 we traded it in for an S8 which I took and swapped my S7 over to her to give her ease of familiarity. The S8 isn’t drastically different but my mom has trouble with changing inputs on the TV so…
I still have it but I’ve had 2 company phones since, and I had to buy a new phone when I got reorganized. The old phone was just a cell phone, the new one is 4g.
I’m on T-mobile Jump. My phones get traded in to help pay towards the next shiny Iphone. I’ll be waiting for the next model that actually supports T-Mobile’s new 5g.
My current phone is an LG G4, which has had to go in for service twice, once for the bootloop, and a few weeks ago because the left half of the screen started glitching out. I went back to my old HTC One (M7) which quickly frustrated me with its purple camera problem and a battery life so short I had to keep it plugged into a power bank at all times.
I’m tired of buying phones where the manufacturer acts like it doesn’t exist a year after it came out. LG never upgraded the G4 to last year’s version of Android, even though it was only a year old when that came out. I don’t know why LG thinks that would entice me to keep buying their phones if they’re just going to abandon them. At this point I feel like I either need to buy the new Pixel or shudder make the switch to iPhone.
@jqubed After years on Win phones, then Android, I switched to Apple for exactly this reason.
@jqubed I love purple.
@Barney Then do I have the phone for you; its camera makes everything purple in anything less than full daylight! Sometimes you can’t even see what you were actually trying to photograph!
@jqubed Hahaha. Maybe I’ll pass on the phone.
My last phone was a Sony Xperia M4 and there’s nothing wrong with it other than it’s a mid-range phone from 2 years ago and has the worst camera on any smartphone I’ve owned since about 2011. But it was almost 100% waterproof and my new phone is not at all waterproof since it has a removable battery, which makes me very nervous.
Nothing wrong with my last one (Lumia 640), but the 640 XL has a way better camera, so I upgraded. The path of cheap Windows phones is probably gone, though. I’ll stick with this until I find a good sub-$100 phone with a camera that’s not completely crap.
@narfcake
Also, because there are no apps, you probably get decent battery life on the phone.
Motorola SLVR L7 - in drawer, still works, zero battery life
Samsung Upstage - sold on Craigslist
Palm Centro - stolen from car
Palm Pre - in drawer, 3rd replacement, touchscreen doesn’t work
HTC Evo 3D - in drawer, still works, so-so battery life
HTC One M7 - in drawer, decent condition, so-so battery life
HTC One M8 (Harmon kardon) - in drawer, good condition, decent battery life
Nexus 6p - current phone, replaced shitty stock battery with (much better!?!) cheap Chinese battery from eBay. Still at 99% health after 3 months. But a hair snuck in between the (easily broken while removing) back glass and camera during reassembly, so now it won’t focus close up. Also broke the nfc antenna while trying to swap it. Otherwise great condition.
Next phone I’m thinking Pixel 2 XL or Essential. And the nexus 6p will go in the drawer. Also might be considering a carrier change from Project Fi.
All my phones are my husband’s hand-me-downs and he turns in or sells my old phone to offset his new one. If it were up to me i’d still probably have my Razor from like 10 yrs ago (if in 10 yrs i haven’t broken it or the phone bricked or something) because i see no need to “fix what aint broke.” But thanks to him, who always needs hightech gear between work and exercise (gps for tracking, good audio for tunes while working out, etc) my phones are never more than a yr old, always have the latest updates and vpn/virus protection and all, and he carefully resets the old one before it’s gone. Gotta love in-house IT with (he thinks but I argue not) limitless budget.
Dropped in a body of water. By which I mean sent through the washer again. Just like the last three. Just one more reason why I stick with cheapo flip phones.
Just got the tracking number for my new phone this morning.
i turned it in for a new one (the discount on the new phone was a pittance but as i could no longer use the old phone i took whatever i could get) but i’d still be using it if i could. it had just reached end of life because i could no longer update the software without the phone grinding to a halt and eventually the old versions of apps i was happily using were unsupported
rip! and then i got basically an identical phone and reinstalled all my shiz so it looked identical.
…actually my biggest issue was having to retire a phone case i had custom designed for me
@jerk_nugget Me too! I had a lovely photo of Simba on my Moto X case, I could just show it to people without having to wake up my phone.
My wife didn’t check my pockets and washed it.
@rtjhnstn Couldn’t you also have checked your pockets?
@jqubed
His wife was probably cleaning out used clothes in the closet, rather than just doing the laundry.
@rtjhnstn
oh my, I must be in a time warp, is this 1950?
If a woman does not work outside the house, her doing the laundry, is fine.
If she works too and does all the laundry;
Guys, it has been proven that men who share the household duties, are much more attractive than men who do not, if ya know what I mean.;)
Speaking from experience too.
Whatever is in there, I wash it, not going to check, unless, it is a child’s. SOL
A while back I dropped (well knocked off a shelf on to cement) my beloved G2 and it got a crack in the screen and left the phone useless. Thought about getting another, but decided to go with the G5. GPS seems less accurate, but overall, satisfied.
I run through prepaid, so I buy my phones outright and LG phones seem to be by far the best value for new phones. Just need to be 1 generation behind, which I’m fine with.
@MrMark Just to clarify something that probably doesn’t matter and nobody cares about. It’s not a requirement to be one generation behind on the network, I’m just not willing to pay full retail for the newest version.
My last phone (Moto G, bought second hand on Swappa) currently in a Big Box of Stuff that’ll be sent to relatives in the Philippines.
/image balikbayan
Phone before that (Samsung S3) stopped charging for reasons unknown to me. I usually am pretty hard on my phones, but my current one (LG G5, bought by my mom as a birthday present) is pretty good so far.
If you don`t have a purpose for your old phone, donate it.
The HopeLine program collects no-longer-used wireless phones and equipment in any condition from any service provider. Used phones are then either refurbished or recycled. With the funds raised from the sale of the refurbished phones, Verizon Wireless donates wireless phones and airtime to victims, and provides funding and other contributions to nonprofit domestic violence shelters and prevention programs across the country.
Donate phones to soldiers. (Seems to me like most would have their own, but the program exists so I guess not.) Cell Phones For Soldiers has provided more than 300 million Minutes That Matter to our troops serving around the world, and it continues Helping Heroes Home via emergency funds that so far has assisted more than 3,100 veterans and their families.
@moondrake The 300 million minutes of free talk time can only be used in one chain of Internet cafes or for the US part of an international call from a defense department phone.
Skype charges nothing for calls from Internet cafes. So that part of the charity for veterans appears to provide nothing of value. I suggest more research on the phone donation part before giving them a phone. (I didn’t find the part of the website where soldiers apply for phones, so I didn’t see the terms and conditions.)
I also didn’t look in to the other charity.
I gave it a star, as donating a phone is probably better than throwing it away.
@moondrake Good call! I donate my phones to an organization that gets them to abused battered victims. They have emergency contacts programmed into the speed dial in the event that they are threatened with more abuse. Man, there are a bunch of “A holes” out there! Luckily they are offset by good people.
@accelerator @hamjudo The first link was for donation for victims of domestic abuse. That’s the national one, partnered with Verizon. Most local shelters also welcome the donation of working cell phones with chargers to be given directly both to people who have escaped their abuser but are afraid of reprisal, and those who’ve sought help but have not left or who’ve returned to the domestically violent setting. In those cases people at risk are able to stash the phone someplace to use in case of emergency. Even a phone with no carrier can be used to dial 911.
@accelerator “Luckily they are offset by good people” like Mehtizens
Job changed phone policies, so I had to hand it in and get my own phone under my own account.
/giphy boring
Google (Fi) replaced it because I was honest about how I killed it (ran it in the rain, powered, on my motorcycle).
My flip phone? It’s still around here somewhere.
Last October I finally got a smartphone.
Two days ago, I finally learned how to answer it.
Yay! me!
I kept them all and they are like my little phone museum.
Nokia 3588i
96x65 Color LCD
Analog and Digital CDMA
Sanyo MM-8300
176x220 Color LCD
VGA Camera with LED Flash
LG “Voyager Titanium” VX10000S
400x240 Internal and External LCD
Resistive Touch Screen
2MP Camera
128MB Ram
OS: Feature Phone
Samsung Galaxy S1 “Epic” SPH-D700
4" 480x800 OLED Capacitive Touch Screen
5MP Rear Camera and VGA Front Camera
Hummingbird 1Ghz CPU
512MB of Ram
512MB Internal Storage
Android 2.3
Samsung Galaxy S3
4.8" 1280x720 OLED Capacitive Touch Screen
8MP Rear Camera 2MP Front Camera
Snapdragon Dual Core 1.5Ghz
2GB or Ram
16GB of Internal Storage
Android 4.1.1
Samsung DUOS GT-E1182L E1182
Dual Sim Quad Band Feature Phone
LED Light and FM Radio
"The Africa Phone"
Blu Win HD W510u
5.0" 1280x720 LCD Capacitive Touch Screen
8MP Rear Camera 2MP Front Camera
Snapdragon 200 1.2Ghz Quad Core
1GB of Ram
8Gb of Internal Storage
Windows 8.1
Dual Sim
Nokia Lumia 1520
6.0" 1920x1080 LCD Capacitive Touch Screen
20MP Rear Camera 1.2MP Front Camera
Snapdragon 800 2.2Ghz Quad Core
2GB of Ram
16GB of Internal Storage
Windows 8.1-10
Microsoft Lumia 950
5.2" 1440x2560 OLED Capacitive Touch Screen
20MP Rear Camera 5MP Front Facing Camera
Snapdragon 808 Six Core (4x 1.4Ghz and 2x 1.8Ghz)
3GB of Ram
32GB of Internal Storage
@darkzrobe I have many of my old phones (that weren’t worth selling) as well. Going back to some huge “tracfones”.
@medz I have a hoarding tendency and want to keep all my old tech. Since keeping desktops and servers would take too much space I have settled on phones. I really do like my old Nokias. I would sacrifice someones child to get week long battery life again.
@darkzrobe https://www.nokia.com/en_int/phones/nokia-3310
@darkzrobe What… no StarTac?
@crow Considering that Nokia had a color screen and I got it in Middle School… I don’t think I was old enough or business savvy enough for any previous gen of phone
The original Samsung flip-phone was donated to charity (apparently they still wanted and used them overseas).
IPhone 3G 8GB and IPhone 4s 32GB are both wiped, cleaned, and stored in their original boxes (because, why not?). Despite 3 and 4 years respectively of daily carry and use they are nearly pristine condition. It annoys my wife whose somewhat more beat up (same model) phone’s eventual breakage has been the driver for us updating every few years.
The secret is Magpul phone cases. And not spilling coffee on the phone…
Huh. No entry for:“It was a Galaxy Note and it exploded.” in your poll. Not that it happened to me. Mine tend to die rather uninteresting deaths and get replaced with unexciting new models. I prefer boring phones without exploding batteries.
I fell on my last one (which was also my first). Had it my hand and fell on some rocks, and caught myself with the hand that was still holding it. It survived with only some small scratches, but I was already planning on replacing it, so it wasn’t my primary phone for much longer anyway.
@Al_Coholic yes but where is it now?
@alphapeaches I finally managed to stop bringing it to work with me so now it’s by my bed being used as a backup alarm in case I miss my usual one or accidentally turn it off or hit snooze too many times.
@Al_Coholic I used my old Moto x as an alarm, plus to make internet queries, for the first six months I had my Pixel. The damned Pixel was initially as responsive to voice commands as a rock; randomly turned off its volume so I missed calls, texts and alarms; and required 4 or 5 tries to make a phone call. After several updates and getting into a beta program for voice commands the Pixel is pretty reliable now. I keep the moto plugged in the bedroom just in case I ever need to dial 911 and the Pixel isn’t cooperating.
Need a poll answer like: “Went kayaking on the Mountain Fork river, forgot the phone was in my pocket, got tossed from my kayak, and discovered the phone in said pocket after 3 hours on the river”, or something to that effect.
I was gifted the first iPhone way back when it was first released. That was an awesome and expensive gift from my ex. I was very skeptical but, I figured since she took all the cash, stocks, and high end stuff from the house when she left she could afford it and it helped her with her guilt issues from totally screwing me. I still have it and it still works great. (I only use it now for the awesome Texas hold’em poker game on it.)
I had a original one plus one that was going semi strong still till about two months ago and a drop on the ground killed the touchscreen. I’m on straight talk so no way to get a free upgrade. Waited for the one plus 5 announcement and ended up laughing g at the $500 price tag.
Got a ZTE majesty pro straight talk burner as a replacement right now. Barely has enough memory for ten apps.
Need a new one but I’m not paying the outrageous price for a unsubsidized phone and considering going back to a post paid plan if I can get cheaper tv and internet bundled with it.
Where’s the ‘gave it to the gf because she trashes her phones’ option? I treat mine like royalty and usually trade them in after two years in pristine condition. Gave her my iPhone 6+ last year when I bought the 7+. She never appreciates anything, I should’ve just traded it in for the $250 it was still worth.
used to keep my smartphones boxed up, and collecting dust. now, the only old phone i still have is my OG Droid.
most of them have been passed down to family/friends when replaced.
my first flip phone was passed down to my BFAM Ryan when i got my Razr.(got stolen out of his car before he could activate it)
the Razr went to my brother in law, who used it for another 5 years or so.
that was replaced with an LG Dare. (within the 2 years went through about 4 of them, thank you insurance!)
after 2 years that was replaced with my OG Droid.
after 2 years that was replaced with an LG Lucid(amazon wireless deal for $.01)
some where in here the dare went to my friend kim, as she had the same model as a hand-me-down from someone else, and hers died.
after 2 years that was replaced with a first gen MotoX (customized through Motomaker)
after 2 years, replaced with a MotoX Pure Edition (current phone, again customized through motomaker)
Last November, just in time for his 15th birthday, i gave my Nephew Landon the First Gen MotoX.
The battery swelled up to the point where I was holding the bottom of the screen on with duct tape. I bought a new one before attempting the battery replacement myself (which was incredibly simple). Was a backup phone for a while, then I gave it to my father.
Actually…now that I think about it. I sold my Nexus 5 to some chump on here. Heh.
I generally buy a 2-year-old iPhone on eBay and sell the previous phone. But this cycle has been disrupted by Apple’s failure to release a plastic phone after the iPhone 5c (which i really like.) I’ll probably buy a pink iPhone SE in the next year or so.
it’s sitting on its base, charging.
it’s a cordless phone.
OnePlus 3T, just got it this year and already they have released the OnePlus 5.
I’ve just given away the last one. I still use the other one as back up