April 27, 2019 Log No. 864

When did upgrading your phone become so complicated?

Why am I getting a new phone in the first place? Honestly, my current phone (Galaxy S6, which I got back in Jan 2016) still works fine for the most part. BUT since Samsung has decided to stop pushing/supporting updates for it, my work apps (I know, SO SPOOKY, having work have access to my personal phone!) all got wiped due to my device being “out of compliance”. It’s a little hard to say I’m “on-call” when I can’t respond unless I’m near my laptop.

Of course, I could just get a work phone, but then I’d have to carry two phones around.

And gone are the days of signing a 2 year contract with your carrier, picking a new phone, and just paying it all off up-front. Now if you go the carrier route, you HAVE to lease a phone, which is just ridiculous. I’d never really had to consider buying an unlocked phone before, but I think now’s the time.

But for new phones now, you can’t even be assured they have a headphone jack?! I thought everyone agreed that Apple’s move to remove the 3.5mm jack was universally a bad one!?

Real talk though, what I’m most upset about is the lack of physical keyboard smartphone options. The last one to be made (that’s not a Blackberry because I never could get used to their keyboards) was like 5 years ago. In fact, the trend seems to be towards ZERO buttons, and instead provide “haptic feedback.” That’s no replacement for the real thing!

And aside from headphone jacks and support for different telecom protocols, the biggest differentiator is camera these days. Well what if I don’t care about taking pictures with my phone?

I know, I know, I sound like a dinosaur in this Instagram/Snapchat/whatever age. Clearly I should just go for a budget phone then. It’s just so hard to pick one when they all seem so similar. I have no opinion on Motorola vs Huawei vs LG vs OnePlusOne or whatever it’s called. Thinking it’s down to Motorola vs Nokia. (Lol talk about blast to the past…what year is this?!)

Maybe I should just not get a new phone, work apps be damned.

Update: I ended up getting a Pixel 3a.