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And all of those things you like were available, or could have existed, on phones 10 years ago. Except perhaps multiplayer games, depending upon how pretty you

by sbov 7y ago

And all of those things you like were available, or could have existed, on phones 10 years ago. Except perhaps multiplayer games, depending upon how pretty you require your games to be.

jdietrich 7y ago
Go on eBay and buy a Nokia E7 or a Blackberry 9700. It won't cost you much and it'll prove highly educational. Phones from 10 years ago were just terrible. Irredeemably, unremittingly terrible. If you believe otherwise, it's just the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia; five minutes with a working device will change your mind.
- snazz 7y ago
  We’re coming up very soon on the release of the iPhone 3GS, which will be almost exactly 10 years. It was slower, but I don’t think that the 3GS was “unremittingly terrible”.
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    The iPhone 3G is pretty much the archetype for all modern smartphones, but it's still not a pleasant experience by modern standards. Contra the "firmware bloat is deliberately making old devices useless" argument, a 3GS on the original firmware is miserably sluggish and laggy. With modern eyes, you become painfully aware of how Apple used animated UI transitions to disguise a fundamentally very slow device. The original iOS 3.0 firmware is also strikingly primitive - at launch, the exciting new feature was copy and paste. 3G connectivity is woefully, miserably slow when you're used to 4G. A 480x320 LCD is visibly pixelated, even when it's only 3.5". It feels like peering through a broken telescope. There's no front-facing camera, the main camera is terrible, the battery life is atrocious even with a new battery, the GPS receiver takes an eternity to get a location fix. Try one out for ten minutes, try out the cheapest of contemporary Chinese smartphones and I guarantee that you'd prefer to keep the no-name Android phone.
    - icedchai 7y ago
      Yes, this is all true... but at the time, it was still amazing! The comparison was not an Android phone, but a flip phone that could barely connect to the web... It was like night and day.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      I remember years ago running the original MacPaint, ultra-optimized for the 8MHz 68000, on a Macintosh SE/30, and thinking "this is why the 68030 was considered a mainframe on a chip when it came out" even though at the time the 68030 was generally considered old and slow. It all depends on exactly what software you're running on what hardware.
  - sosborn 7y ago
    It was a great phone when it came out. Using it now would be an exercise in frustration.

by sbov 7y ago

And all of those things you like were available, or could have existed, on phones 10 years ago. Except perhaps multiplayer games, depending upon how pretty you require your games to be.

jdietrich 7y ago

Go on eBay and buy a Nokia E7 or a Blackberry 9700. It won't cost you much and it'll prove highly educational. Phones from 10 years ago were just terrible. Irredeemably, unremittingly terrible. If you believe otherwise, it's just the rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia; five minutes with a working device will change your mind.

snazz 7y ago
We’re coming up very soon on the release of the iPhone 3GS, which will be almost exactly 10 years. It was slower, but I don’t think that the 3GS was “unremittingly terrible”.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  The iPhone 3G is pretty much the archetype for all modern smartphones, but it's still not a pleasant experience by modern standards. Contra the "firmware bloat is deliberately making old devices useless" argument, a 3GS on the original firmware is miserably sluggish and laggy. With modern eyes, you become painfully aware of how Apple used animated UI transitions to disguise a fundamentally very slow device. The original iOS 3.0 firmware is also strikingly primitive - at launch, the exciting new feature was copy and paste. 3G connectivity is woefully, miserably slow when you're used to 4G. A 480x320 LCD is visibly pixelated, even when it's only 3.5". It feels like peering through a broken telescope. There's no front-facing camera, the main camera is terrible, the battery life is atrocious even with a new battery, the GPS receiver takes an eternity to get a location fix. Try one out for ten minutes, try out the cheapest of contemporary Chinese smartphones and I guarantee that you'd prefer to keep the no-name Android phone.
  - icedchai 7y ago
    Yes, this is all true... but at the time, it was still amazing! The comparison was not an Android phone, but a flip phone that could barely connect to the web... It was like night and day.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    I remember years ago running the original MacPaint, ultra-optimized for the 8MHz 68000, on a Macintosh SE/30, and thinking "this is why the 68030 was considered a mainframe on a chip when it came out" even though at the time the 68030 was generally considered old and slow. It all depends on exactly what software you're running on what hardware.
- sosborn 7y ago
  It was a great phone when it came out. Using it now would be an exercise in frustration.