obsolescence and old equipment
I have several older smartphones which work quite well, but they would
need new batteries. However, with the recent bugs in some wifi chipsets
resulting in [1]severe risk for iOS and Android devices, coupled with
bad or missing update possibilities, they are now mostly unusable
unless I'm in a safe spot (home, office), if I want to use them online.
And a smartphone without internet connection quickly becomes about as
useful as a dumbphone, but with even less battery capacity. Therefore I
have decided I will not replace the batteries of my Samsung Galaxy S3
and of my iPhone5 (which will not receive iOS11 any more).
On the other hand, I will probably try to get a replacement battery for
my even older ASUS AspireONE notebook PC. It's from 2008 and currently
running a very old Linux, therefore it's not a very safe thing neither.
But I can use it much better for creating (writing and coding) than the
"consuming appliances" the smartphones are, even if I use it offline
and only sync later when at a safe spot. There are nice editors (ed,
vi) and git available, and with ssh and rsync in addition I have
everything I really need.
An ancient laptop with a decent keyboard and a reasonable (and
"tinkerable"!) operating system in the long run is worth more than
smartphones 5 years old. And according to my first online searches, a
battery for the Aspire costs about 1/2 of the one for the Galaxy, and
1/4 of the one for the iPhone (which I would have to give to a
technician, thanks to the sleek and stupid design -- yes, I'm no
fanboy, but I got the used iPhone for free from a relative). So it's
even cheaper!
References
1.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/27/ios_11_plugs_wifi_vulnerability/
