How Bad Did I Let My Old Phone Get?
In front of me now is my new OnePlus 8 smartphone. My much beloved Moto Z2, by Motorola, shall soon serve as something between a paperweight, an emergency phone, and a memento of young adulthood.
I've highlighted before the products that have meant something to me, and my Motorola is maybe the most important member of this group. With my Motorola I saw the true potential of a handset. With this phone I have learned multiple languages through my well-documented Duolingo fixation, I have sustained successful meditation and intermittent fasting practices, I have traveled the country, and I have done a lot of writing. Though gauche, or silly, or overly dramatic to admit when considering something as commonplace as an old phone, I feel like my Motorola was an indispensable partner in my self-development, and that I would not be the person I am today without it. It empowered me in a real way. It will be missed.
This sense of partnership and empowerment, as well as my aversion to e-waste and my general cheapness, made me resist replacing this phone until its bitter end. It is, at this point, burnt out beyond recovery.
Here's how brutal the years have been to my wonderful Motorola.
- The current trade-in value for this phone is 10 dollars. Thus hanging onto her isn't merely a product of sentimentality: there's nowhere this phone could go but to a landfill.
- My phone would crash at least once a day.
- My phone couldn't run Google Maps and other programs at the same time.
- My Motorola would, on occasion, simply not recognize my SIM card. Though a simple reboot would resolve this, a phone without a SIM card is just a hunk of silicon, and when during my recent travels it required multiple reboots to restore the SIM, I knew that I needed a new phone STAT.
- My phone is on Android 8. Google released Android 11 earlier this year. Not only is the OS a few years out of date, but Motorola stopped providing the Z2 Force with security updates in August of 2020. Thus, its well-worn hardware wasn't its only liability. Its software itself imperiled.
- I missed out on October 2020's cultural phenomenon Genshin Impact because my phone would physically overheat when trying to download it. Don't worry, it is downloading onto my OnePlus 8 as we speak.
One could call it noble that I resisted replacing my phone for so long. And it is noble: e-waste is a real problem. But as shown above this was nobility to the point of recklessness, nobility almost quixotic.
May my new phone last me another three years! It is, at least, scheduled for security updates for that long, making such longevity a little less quixotic.