41 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
41 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: "The Worst Phone I Own"
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date: 2020-08-25
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description: ""
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---
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I own far too many phones because I'm a nostalgic nitwit and I never manage to
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get rid of the old ones. Some were broken and replaced, and some were lost to
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carrier-switching. Two phones I purchased just for fun. One was a Galaxy SII,
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for toying with PostmarketOS. The other is the worst smartphone I've ever
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owned: the Alcatel OneTouch Pixi Pulsar.
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The Pulsar is small, slow, has a locked bootloader, is stuck on Android 4.4.2
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(3 years old when I bought it) and is locked to Tracfone. Why did I buy this
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piece of junk? Because it cost $4.83, after taxes, shipped overnight. I know
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carriers discount devices so you'll buy their service, and it's a piece of
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junk, but still.
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I tried a few of my main apps. Tusky is incompatible, but Fedilab runs okay.
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Slide for Reddit works alright but has some bizarre behavior when switching
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between activities (or fragments or whatever they are). The only camera is
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obviously hideous and rear-facing. During an unrelated nostalgia kick I read
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the entirety of two Goosebumps books using Librera Pro, which worked well.
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Anyway, it's pretty terrible. I had some fun experimenting with it, as a
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what's-the-worst-hardware-I-can-live-with test, but it's pretty rough. If it
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had a little more space and the software was a smidge newer, I might be able to
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get by.
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That said, consider giving this experiment a try. I wouldn't recommend going
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and buying something you don't need — it feels wasteful, now — but if you've
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got an old phone in a drawer somewhere, pull it out. Boot it up and see how it
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compares to your current device.
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And then, if you're anything like me, sell the damn thing.
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Yeesh.
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_Originally posted on write.as_
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