I still use a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and I wanted to tell you why.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 was released in september of 2013. I was looking for a smartphone back then that would last a while and I wanted to spend a lot of money (for that time) on it. So I bought the 32GB version with 3GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 800 ARM v7 processor. It came with Android 4.3 and the year later got an upgrade to Android 5.0. This was also the last update that it ever received by Samsung along with a couple minor security updates. And I am still using this smartphone today. This is the story of why I am still using that phone and why I will continue using it until it is 10 years old. It goes something like this:

What do you use your phone for?

This is pretty easy to explain.

  • Calls
  • Texts
  • Hotspot for notebook
  • Music on the go
  • (Camera)

What you shouldn’t do on your phone

One of my biggest issues in the last few years was that I took my phone to bed and watched YouTube or was on Twitter all night. I countered that issue by just outright removing these apps from my phone. I stopped using them and it got better.

If you’ve got a problem with managing your content consumption at night, try that. Remove all the Apps that consume more than 20 minutes of your day without giving anything back. Your phone will become incredibly boring. And you will think more about when you consume content.

A lot of people straight up reach to their phone if they ever have more than 10 seconds of boredom in their daily life. Boredom is very important tho. And not wasting ever smal bit of boredom on consuming content will make your feel less restrained over time.

Content consumption

Content consumption is a very mindfull thing for me and I really think about if I really wanna watch that YouTube video or not.

From this behavouir I turned into a person who mostly watches content with friends. I watch a lot of anime but hardly any if I’m alone.

A thing that has become more common these days is watching smal streamers. A little bit of social interaction via chat is exactly what I need in lonely evenings. Most of the time I just lurk and do something else. Whenever I feel like joining the conversation I write something in chat. Maybe I have been watching a little too many hours of VTubers in recent months tho, but what else are ya gonna do these days.

There isn’t much that I gain fromw watching content alone. It’s another way of consuming content and works best if you need to watch something for uni for example. But I don’t prefer it for content that has the purpose of being entertaining.

Smartphones haven’t gotten better

Yeah. Honestly, I don’t get why anyone would need a smartphone that has no microSD slot and not headphone jack. And companies continue to remove these essential things from their devices so that I have even less options to choose from.

Sure, processors have gotten faster and cameras have gotten better. But if I really wanna do something productive, I choose a real computer anyways. A smartphone just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t have a physical keyboard and therefore interacting with it will always be slower and less productive than with a real computer. This fact will never change.

Environmental and ecologial concerns

Modern smartphones become e-waste pretty quickly. Most of them last two years and then they are due to a complete replacement. The part that usually dies first is the battery.

I don’t want to ever own a smartphone without a replacable battery. Sure, built in batteries are safer and yield more flexibility during production. But they are also very bad for the environment.

Also, if my charging port gets stuffed with junk again, there’s no way to replace that part for 3€ like I did on my current Note 3.

Conclusion

Keep your smartphones as long as possible and push removable batteries. Don’t make your smartphone a content consumption device if you are pronte to wasting time and pulling it out if you get bored. Real computers with real keyboards will always be surperior.