> The reality is non of these people use the software from 30 years ago because it's missing functionality, Not exactly. The reason I had to ditch my Galaxy No

> The reality is non of these people use the software from 30 years ago because it's missing functionality, Not exactly. The reason I had to ditch my Galaxy Note 2 with Cyanogenmod 4.4 is because apps stopped running on that Android version, not because newer is better Battery life was fine because I had bought a new battery for a few tenners and could pop it right in. Nothing wrong with the hardware even today; the main improvements that have been made is faster GPS acquisition and a better camera but neither is essential for me (especially with Mozilla Location Service enabled) and I definitely prefer Cyanogenmod with XPrivacy and Xposed mods. Notifications worked better (no need to manage notification "channels" because you didn't need permanent "notifications" for a background service), buttons used less screen real estate, when walking outside and my screen being literally blank I could just swipe over the top of the screen to adjust brightness (instead of sliding over the status bar, now I need to estimate what height the brightness slider is at), the status bar icons were customisable (don't need to show a battery icon if I've already got the percentage! wtf modern androids), I'm missing a network usage indicator that you could mod onto your status bar back then, my current keyboard I'm typing this on is literally the same one as I used back then, I don't remember missing anything in terms of homescreen functionality either, the lockscreen had shortcuts and was customisable whereas today Fairphone ships with literally a bare android that has no functions there and Samsung graciously allows two buttons. More functionality my ass, it's the reverse if anything, at least on mobile. The only positive development on Android since 2013 (from a user perspective) has been "allow permission while using the app", and even that is a "two steps forwards, one step backwards" type of story as it has replaced "allow always"! Having OsmAnd do track recording is a pain, I remember not getting that working on LineageOS but then I ditched that phone for a Samsung with stock OS such that I can have a proper camera app, and there it seems to work after the OsmAnd dev team jumped through the necessary hoops. Within apps, as well as on desktop, I'm often excited for new software releases because of new features, but I disagree that this is the explanation for why we need a hundred times the hardware resources as a minimum to run things smoothly. If Moore's misheard law had broken down in the 90s, software would probably do similar things today (an asterisk here being neural networks) just with a lot fewer resources.