Unintended Consequences
(media.greatawakening.win)
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The vast majority of them are simply used to browse the internet, where they do nothing more than read text, view images, and watch videos.
And yet, somehow, they have to buy a new one every 5 years to continue this habit, even though nothing they're doing with their thousand dollar device changes, but the thing magically grows unusably slow and annoying.
Moreso with phones, but applies to PCs as well. At least with PCs, if you are tech savvy, you can install a different OS and continue to use it for some things. So non-tech savvy people buy a new one every year still, but even tech savvy people have to buy new phones regularly. Whereas phone hardware is all so different and drivers so proprietary and closed source that you rarely can actually do something with it once it loses manufacturer support.
My very first laptop from like 2005 is still completely usable since I loaded Linux onto it. It works and can do all sorts of useful shit. Browsing the internet, as most people do exclusively, is not a problem at all.
But my first smart phone, from less than 10 years ago, is essentially a paperweight now. It is long out of support by the manufacturer, which means it is stuck on an old version of Android. You cannot load a newer version yourself because, even if you get past all of the locks, the hardware requires proprietary drivers which are closed source, so you'd have to do a ton of reverse engineering and coding to even have a chance of it working. Not something anyone is going to do, and definitely not for every model out there.
And since mobile websites are intentionally shitty, you pretty much have to use apps to do so much stuff that is traditionally just done on a browser. Which means each app developer has to maintain support for older android versions, which they do not do. With many apps, they will outright stop working until you upgrade. My current phone I bought less than 7 years ago brand new I can no longer use any banking apps or travel apps (marriott, hilton, etc.). They've all kicked me off and insisted I download an update which I cannot because I do not have a new enough version of Android because the manufacturer no longer updates Android because they have no incentive to, and I can't do it myself because the drivers are proprietary.