Back in April I posted this about how I had ordered a M1 Mac Mini and moved away from Windows. I’m happy to report that it was a good purchase!
It’s done exactly what I intended. It’s become my go-to PC for when I just need to get something non gaming related done. It boots up extremely quickly, sips electricity and most importantly “just works”.
The adjustment period to MacOS was a bit rough, not because of any gripes I have with it fundamentally but mainly just that I wasn’t used to it. Overall though it’s been refreshing. Program installation/uninstallation is a breeze, most of the time just extracting a DMG file and dragging the program to the apps folder. SSH is baked into the terminal by default so that was a plus. File management is quite easy, once I got used to it. The updates are un-intrusive and handled in a much better way than Windows.
Surprisingly I’ve not even had much trouble finding alternative versions of programs I use. The open source community developing for MacOS is much bigger than I thought and most programs that have a Windows variant also have a Mac one.
However, Windows is still not completely out of my personal life. Yes my “desktop” machines are MacOS and Ubuntu, but I still do have one Windows laptop. It very rarely gets used but on occasion I still do need to fire it up. But I’m OK with that balance. It gets powered on for a task, and then gets shut back down. It never even has chance to do an update, it’s data collection attempts will be futile as there’s basically nothing on there and if it does break nothing of value will be lost.
As a summary, even if you’re deeply ingrained into using a Windows PC it’s easier than you think to move away. And if you do, I think you’ll be surprised and wonder why you didn’t do it earlier.
This phone was an interim device that I owned alongside my iPhone 16e and ultimately replaced it.
For most people this would be an excellent phone, and for the price it can be had ~£150 it represents excellent value for money.
It has decent specs; Snapdragon 6 gen 3, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage with SD expansion, very good quality LCD screen.
Realistically I should’ve kept this phone, however at the time I was going through a phase of mobile emulation and this was struggling with some of the PS2 and Gamecube titles I was trying to throw at it. I purchased it 2nd hand, and sold it for exactly the same money I purchased it for.
This one stands out from the rest of the Motorola range in that they’ve actually given it a long support window for OS and security updates. They’ve removed the OS update promise from their site now but it was originally 5 years, and they’re still advertising 6 years of security updates.
Realistically I should’ve kept it, but I didn’t and now own the Oneplus 13 which I purchased solely for it’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. If we go back 3 devices we’ll see that I already had a device with this chipset in the S25…
I’m glad I document all of this, because it really does expose the problem I have with constant need for new and shiny, and the self justifications that go along with it. I’ve often suspected I have mild undiagnosed autism, which is backed up by the fact my mother, father and 2 brothers both have it. Both of my brothers also have ADHD, which I suspect I have too. I’d say my list of phones owned over the last 5 years probably confirms that.
Logging onto my site just now I read my own homepage blurb, “Welcome explorers of the once great internet”. It made me think, I wrote that over 6 months ago as it was obviously something I was feeling at the time. However fast forward 6 months and it’s got infinitely worse.
If I thought it was bad then, and now I’m looking back at how it was better (albeit still bad) than it is now are we just on a never ending downward spiral?
What will the internet look like in another 5-10 years. AI generated marketing masquerading as websites, places of human conversation legislated into extinction and our “consumption” being doomscrolling short form content that is most likely AI created too?
You can count me out.
I have enough games from the golden era before micro transactions and DLC to last me a lifetime, in both handheld and large screen form.
I have offline copies of Wikipedia for information.
I have a large collection of movies and series.
I already don’t rely on the cloud or have any subscriptions.
The point I’m making here is that if the internet does become a government controlled, whitewashed hell hole people will just step back from it. Yes you’ll have your people that are perfectly happy reading clickbait and doom scrolling and you know what? That’s perfectly fine, whatever gets them through their day. But for me I’d rather go back to not having it rather than putting up with that.
The “internet” is just a large network that we collectively agreed we’d connect and contribute to. There is nothing stopping people getting together and making their own, unregulated mesh networks. If we carry on down the route we’re going I wouldn’t be surprised if we see that start to happen, similar to what Cuban’s have done. I’d be all for it, a new wild west.
I’ve specifically mentioned shopping in my title because Amazon is nowhere near just a shopping platform. However that’s all I’m talking about today.
Years ago, maybe around 2006 I remember placing my first order on Amazon. It was for a PS3 game and I remember specifically having to register an email address, to then register an Amazon account, and then deposit some money into my bank account so I could pay with my card (back then I was paid cash). It was a bit of a shot in the dark, I wasn’t sure when my order would arrive if at all and it felt strange making a purchase over the internet. The game did arrive (nowhere near as quickly as it would with “prime delivery” today) and it cost me substantially less than if I’d purchased it at my local game store.
Over the years I’ve used Amazon quite a lot. As someone who finds a day out shopping, particularly around Christmas time unpleasant and downright stressful having the ability to choose gifts for my loved ones at my leisure and from the comfort of my own home has always appealed to me. It used to be a brilliant platform that collated good quality products from all the shops and brands you could imagine and offer you them at a slightly cheaper price. Until it became something else…
Those products from well known brands are still there, but you’ll be hard pressed to find them. Amazon opened their arms to drop shippers armed with rafts of unbranded Chinese goods. All of them have brands that are just random combinations of letters such as “Oakxco”, “Yatwin” or even “Tiixxa” (Those were the first 3 results from a search of “Phone case”). These random names are a result of Amazon requiring their sellers to have a brand that is a registered company, so Chinese sellers just throw a random combination of letters in to try and avoid clashing with another brand. If you search a generic term like I just have that is all you will see. If you want a specific brand, you have to be specific in your query. However even that isn’t bulletproof, sometimes unknown brands will still creep in.
So, why am I coining this the “Downfall of Amazon”? Well quite simply, Amazon clearly didn’t realise what their USP (Unique Selling Point) was. You could buy the products you wanted, all collated in an easy to find format, at a better price than a brick and mortar store and it all arrived next day. The tantalising allure of extreme profit margins, only possible from selling lower quality Chinese goods at an extreme margin was clearly too strong to resist. Not only are there unknown brands now, but there are also fakes amongst the genuine listings that are impossible to distinguish until you receive the product.
I don’t use Amazon at all anymore. If I want something from a well know brand, I’ll purchase it from Argos. I can collect it the same day, and I can be confident it will be genuine. If I want some Chinese tat I’ll go direct to the source. Aliexpress is my Chinese marketplace of choice, but others use Shein or Temu. The prices are generally less than half of what Amazon charges for the exact same product and I’ve even received genuine products from there when I didn’t expect to. For small electronic components, or things needed for a repair they’re unbeatable. Just this week I received my replacement Oneplus 13 screen with frame after ordering it only 5 days earlier. It was delivered to me for £130 and is a genuine product. Amazon don’t even sell this screen and sourcing the part directly from Oneplus would’ve cost me £280.
More and more I’m hearing people turning to buying direct from China. People that barely even know how to use a computer, not just the savvy. When someone can get a product for less than half price they could locally, with good customer service and within a week you can bet they’re going to jump at it.
Some people will say we should be buying local, supporting our own countries economy but honestly our government has made that impossible. We are in a cost of living crisis where every penny counts. Food is getting more and more expensive every week. Aside from that our brick and mortar shops have become so poor that I wouldn’t even be able to find the products I needed if I wanted to. Our town centres seem to be transforming into services rather than shopping. There is an abundance of bars, coffee shops, sandwich shops, butchers and bakeries. However if I wanted an electronics shop I’d have to travel 20 miles, and they don’t even have a store front I’d have to either order online or order at the counter from the catalogue. All we have in towns are vape shops, phone case shops and charity shops. I’m afraid the damage is done, and as much as I want to do the right thing I don’t have the energy to keep fighting.
If Amazon does fall I can’t say I’ll be sad to see it go. They’ve become too much of a monopoly, they’re prices aren’t that good anymore, the sales are appalling and “prime”‘s pricing has increased far too much over the last few years. They treat their staff poorly, and the Amazon delivery drivers desperate to meet unrealistic targets are a danger on the roads.
The UK has always been a nanny state. After all we’re a member of the “Five Eyes” (If this is the first you’ve heard of it, look it up and fall down a rabbit hole for a while). GCHQ have been charged previously of mishandling the data of their bulk intercepted communications so this is no conspiracy. However up until now a privacy concerned individual has been able to take steps to preserve their online privacy, at least to a certain degree.
The Online Safety Act 2023 is the first step in destroying that possibility entirely and making any movements on the internet entirely traceable.
Under the guise of protecting children (SPOILER ALERT: This Act has nothing to do with protecting children and everything about surveillance) as of 27/07/2025 anything deemed to be “Adult” content must be be locked behind age verification. So far this has been through either a “selfie” to estimate your age (and be able to link you digitally to your online passport photo), or directly uploading scans of your photo ID.
The blocking pornography part of this is the part I’m least bothered by. Anyone with half a brain will have browsing their “adult entertainment” using a VPN for years now, and will have no problem continuing to do so. The part that really worries me for the future of the world is that this will be used to control access to information. Anything deemed “graphic” will be locked behind the ID verification, and the aim of this first stage will be to normalise sharing this information.
With the threat of “Digital ID” being thrown around as a “solution” to the migrant issue this will go hand in hand perfectly. Out of convenience, I’m sure if this ID system does come into effect you’ll be able to link it to your smartphone to automatically verify yourself anywhere it’s required. At that point your entire digital footprint will be directly linked to you as a person.
In theory you wouldn’t have an issue if you’re just shopping online, watching funny cat videos or looking up a recipe, but the problems may start to arise if your political views don’t align with the current government. Should you start looking for news sources different to the current preferred state propaganda your future might start looking less bright very quickly. In this digital dystopia you could be denied access to finance facilities, blacklisted for jobs, banned from places in person or online. We only need to look to China and the CCP to see just how authoritarian things can get if we let them.
What can you do then? Unfortunately not a lot. The time to act before the bill has passed, and the majority of people ignored any calls to action. The government played their games very cleverly with this one. Branding it as a bill to “protect the children” meant they could very easily demonize anyone who spoke out against it. All you can do now is at the next election vote for a party that promise to repeal the act.
Similar to the mass surveillance laws enacted post 9/11, watch out for Digital ID being pushed as the solution to illegal migrants. It won’t solve anything. Someone willing to hire someone who can’t legally work in the country won’t care if they have a digital ID or not. It’s just an excuse to push it through parliament. Do what you can to resist the authoritarian regimes and do not allow governments to encroach on your freedoms.
If we carry on the route we’re going, it won’t be long before I could be arrested for posting something like this.
“Enshittification, also known as crapification and platform decay, is a pattern in which two-sidedonline products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.” – Wikipedia
It’s refreshing to be able to swear online without being censored, that’s the beauty of owning the website I’m posting on.
Enshittification is a very real problem in 2025. I’m currently writing this post on my Windows 11 desktop, and for all intents and purposes it’s absolutely awful. I have to run an additional manual firewall just to block the absolute stream of my private data trying to leave my machine. The UI is disjointed, half in the trusty control panel and half in the awful settings “app”. Without additional configuration the taskbar and start menu are riddled with advertisements, the system regularly installs applications I don’t want or need and troubleshooting and repairing the system has been reduced to either a full reset or a completely useful blue screen with a sad face emoji. How did things go so wrong?
Let’s backtrack a little, just today I was at work and had a fault on one of our legacy servers. When I say legacy I mean it could legally drink alcohol anywhere in the world. Don’t worry it’s not web facing and it’s all backed up, but it’s a Dell Poweredge 2950 and it’s running a 32 bit installation of Server 2003. This server has been running in my business for 20 years and is still going strong. It gets replacement HDD’s when it needs them and gets an annual dusting, we also periodically run a defrag and disk cleanup but aside from that it runs without a hitch. The fault was software based and finding the source of it was a breeze. With minimal background processes and an actually useful event viewer I got to the bottom of the issue in about 5 minutes. Interestingly enough the problem was caused by a Windows 11 machine on the local network interacting with it. On a side note, I took the opportunity to clean up it’s boot options. All I had to do was edit the boot.ini file that was hidden on the root of the C: drive. Nowadays I’d have to mess with UEFI settings, worry about wrecking the EFI partition and pray to the IT gods that the system would boot again. Not with an old system, just edit the file, save and reboot.
This doesn’t just apply to PC’s and servers though. Smartphones, games consoles, food, restaurants, cars, services, everything that has a shareholder behind it eventually falls victim to it. We are in what I like to call late stage capitalism now. Companies have done nearly everything they can to increase their customer bases, increase profits, reduce costs and increase efficiencies. However, shareholders don’t care. They demand constant growth. The companies, desperate to appease them turn to their only other options which are making their products worse and/or giving you less for your money.
Now more than ever I think it’s time that we begin voting with our wallets that we won’t stand for enshittification. Move away from products that are getting worse, if it’s a digital product look to an open source alternative, if it’s an online store (Amazon and eBay are getting notably worse) close your account and look for a smaller alternative, or go back to shopping at a brick and mortar store. If it’s a tech product actively delay your replacement and hold out for as long as you can.
If these giants need to fall so that better alternatives can rise from their ashes, so be it.
Is it strange, or a sign of the current market that the first phone to draw my attention is one that draws heavy inspiration, to the point you could call it a homage, to a phone that was released 11 years ago?
It doesn’t take much guessing to realise this looks very similar to the Blackberry Passport. The Blackberry didn’t capture my attention at the time (It’s launch price of £529, and lack of carriers stocking it might have had something to do with that), but a revival of it at less than half that price certainly did.
I currently have a Oneplus 13 that I use as my only phone, and for the most part I’m very happy with it. It has phenomenal cameras, it has random quirks that I love such as the alert slider and IR blaster, it has the most powerful mobile chipset currently on the market, it charges at over 100w and has a 6000mah silicone carbide battery. What would I possibly be interested in a phone with budget/midrange specs and a 1:1 aspect ratio screen? Two words; physical keyboard.
I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated by virtual keyboards, for a time they seemed like they were doing great. Two notable phones I remember were my iPhone 6s and my Samsung Note 9. Both had excellent typing accuracy and haptic feedback, the experience was good enough that I didn’t notice it. Since then it’s been downhill. The iPhone 16e I had made me an awful typist, I’m not sure of the technical term, but the “hit boxes” for each letter seemed to change frequently, meaning any developed muscle memory was rendered useless. The autocorrect was also comically bad. The Oneplus 13 is a similar scenario. It uses GBoard and I’m having an awful experience using it. It makes me feel like I can’t spell. I do have large thumbs, but this is a large screen and I’ve managed to type accurately on smaller screens than this in the past. I’m not sure what’s going on, whether it’s “improvements” to the apps or some sort of machine learning going on but it’s borderline infuriating. To the point I actively avoid having to type anything on my phone. If it can possibly wait until I have the chance to type on a physical keyboard I will delay it. Even trying to accurately type URL’s is a nightmare, as autocorrect starts changing words and adding punctuation where it shouldn’t be. Typing on a flat piece of glass is fundamentally flawed. In my opinion it is inferior in every way to even the worst physical keyboard.
This frustration has grown to the point that when I saw this device announced on kickstarter I knew I had to try it. I’m willing to ignore the 60hz refresh rate, the chunky dimensions, the questionable manufacturer (Unihertz are Chinese based and have a poor history of not updating their launched devices), the big Unihertz metal logo on the front and the gimmick of the second screen on the back, purely because no-one else is making devices like this. The other options in 2025 are the “minimalist phone” which has a e-ink screen and plenty of other drawbacks, a small group of Chinese hobbyists retrofitting a new motherboard into a Blackberry classic or getting a “Clicks” keyboard and one of their supported devices. This really is slim pickings.
A glimmer of hope for physical keyboard lovers is that this kickstarter campaign has generated quite a buzz. The campaign received 7019 backers, and ended with a total of $16,358,594 pledged (HK$ convert to £1,569,525.30). The goal was just $785,000 or £75,316.82. There has also been a lot of chatter about this online.
I’m hoping that this device becomes such a resounding success that other manufacturers see they’re missing out on a market segment and start to offer alternatives. If nothing else, a market flooded with near identical slabs of glass is just dull and needs some variety.
We’re currently being told we’ll begin receiving our devices at some point in October, I’m excited to get my hands on it.
Doesn’t sound too far fetched in 2025 does it? Just yesterday my Android phone installed an update and notified me of improvements to “Gemini”. Namely that it could now do deep research on a prompt, and convert those generated results into a podcast style summary. Curious, I gave it a go. The topic I’d been debating online (who knows if I was talking to a bot) was whether or not we need to use cases and screen protectors on modern smartphones anymore. So that was what I asked.
About a minute later I’d been given a huge wall of text on the topic, and a click of a button and another 1 minute later a 10 minute “podcast” was ready to listen to. I popped in my earbuds and pressed play. I was deeply disturbed at the results. There were two voices in this audio, a male and a female conversing on the topic. This didn’t sound like text to speech at all, there were breaths taken, pauses in the right places, consistent accents and what sounded like organic conversation taking place.
If LLM generated audio can sound so convincing, there is little to no chance we’d be able to discern between true human written text and the “AI” content. I’ve seen videos exposing the uncanny “AI” generated videos, that unless told we would have no idea weren’t real.
These tech companies have scraped through all of humanity’s history on the internet, our books, our movies, our music, our conversations and even our photos. In a very simplified explanation they’ve boiled all this content together and given it to very powerful computers that can now recite all of this knowledge and do it in a manner than appears very human. It can create images from a prompt, videos from an image and new music from artists that have long since passed.
This is undoubtedly an achievement like no other, even 5 years ago I would never have believed any of this would be possible this half of the century let alone the same decade. But at what cost?
It’s rapidly destroyed our online communities that closed the gaps between continents, allowed for collaboration in ways never seen before and more importantly gave people that struggled to fit in places they felt at home. Government regulation has closed down all but the biggest of these communities, and most now rely on their own little spaces within the major social networks. Namely Facebook and Reddit.
Facebook is never something I’ve been comfortable. My online identity and my “IRL” identity have always been kept separate. A platform trying to force me to combine these identities was never going to sit well with me. For that reason (amongst others!) Facebook is a no go for me, and I’ll never have a profile on there.
Reddit used to be what felt like the final outpost of humanity on the internet, but now I’m not so sure. Regulation has been weighing it down for some time, as the owners have been deemed ultimately responsible for any content posted on there censorship has increased dramatically. Recently the “Online Safety Act” has come into play which has made things much, much worse. To even be aware of the existence of what Reddit deem to be “adult content” on Reddit, you now need to be logged in and have your age verified with either a selfie or your national ID. Aside from being absolutely dystopian this now puts it in the same boat as Facebook. Your online identity and your real life identity become one.
Anonymity online is essentially dead anywhere it actually mattered now. No longer can you enjoy discourse around your hobbies online without it being linked back to you. No longer can you vocalise political views without risking a knock at your door.
As an old school internet user I vehemently oppose regulation of the internet, I promote open source collaboration and promote free speech whether I agree with the opinion or not.
Unfortunately the internet as we knew it is dead. The only certainty in browsing it in the way we used to is that you will be spoon fed marketing and propaganda. We can no longer guarantee that anything we read on there is real, especially when it’s claimed to have been posted by an individual.
Does that mean our communities and collaboration are dead? Absolutely not. The communities will just migrate to places that have less regulation. Encrypted chat channels, tor networks and private online communities to name a few. The downsides of this is it’ll be much harder for newcomers to find their way, and that actually nefarious communities such as black hat hacking groups and people that have interests or beliefs that are actually a risk to the public will be harder to find. However the latter is not our problem, and is a direct result of the lawmakers actions. Surely these people would learn from history, just one look at the results of alcohol prohibition and the criminalisation of drugs would tell them that! Overnight the population of the UK’s knowledge of VPN’s increased dramatically, a very bad result for what can only be described as a nanny state if you ask me.
Anyway, I digress. What, if any value can be extracted from the internet in it’s new form then? In traditional use, very little. Unfortunately, the only way to interface efficiently now is to use the new tools. Use “AI”. While “AI” is still in its early phase the tech companies are still very keen on improving their algorithms. That means they want people to converse with it, en masse. As a result, there a very little ads being served and very little if any cost passed on to the consumer. Use “ChatGPT”, “Gemini”, “Deepseek” or whatever you fancy to trawl the web for you. But use it as a starting point only, it generally gives you its sources of information so use those links to your advantage. Don’t blindly take its output as gospel, it’s often inaccurate, or slightly but importantly incorrect and misleading.
Will I follow this advice myself? I’m not sure I can bring myself to feed its language models, nor do I want to help them build up an even clearer profile of me. There’s also a part of me that feels like it’s completely destroying peoples ability to think critically. For some though, especially those that really learn how to extract value from it, it’ll be an opportunity to get ahead of their peers. For me, maybe I’m just happy to be left behind.
Some of my most memorable gaming memories come from handheld gaming consoles. My earliest being my beloved Game Boy Color (same as the one above). My first games were Pokemon Red, Harry Potter – Philosophers Stone and Turok. Pokemon Red, Pokemon silver and Pokemon Pinball were where the majority of time with this console was spent. I have extremely fond memories of trading Pokemon in the school playground using a link cable, or sat in the back of the car on long road trips, trying to use the illumination of passing street lights to see my screen.
My childhood Gameboy Color is still alive and well, putting in a couple of AA batteries and a game cartridge brings it back to life and I have no doubt it will continue to function indefinitely, things were built to last in the 90’s!
Following the GBC I got a Gameboy Advance SP which with it’s breakthrough feature of a back light, the ability to play Game Boy Color games and a rechargeable battery largely made it’s predecessor obsolete. I really only played a few Pokemon and Zelda titles on this console, and didn’t explore the huge GBA library beyond that.
A few years later I got a PSP, this was really the first handheld that gave the ability to play console level games on the go. I had GTA Liberty City Stories, a Need for Speed title and Loco Roco. Unfortunately my PSP collected dust for the most part though, the UMD based games and proprietary memory card meant that for a young lad relying solely on pocket money, Christmas and Birthdays that expanding my collection for this console was prohibitively expensive.
My timeline is a little hazy, but somewhere along the line I got a DS Lite. I have very fond memories of the DS Lite, thinking about it now I’d actually love to own one again. The console was simple and reliable, but the 2 screens allowed developers to do completely new things. I had the usual brain training games, and Mario but there were games like Zelda which used the touch screen for movement and Plants VS Zombies used the touch screen the same way a PC game would allowing for accurate input. The console also brought about an excellent, often overlooked feature which was sleep mode. When folded away the DS would go into a low power state, and when opened it would resume a game from where you left off. This made fitting gaming sessions into very small windows of free time possible. I used my DS Lite extensively when I was travelling to and from my Apprenticeship around 2012. Waiting at bus stops, train stations or while on the transport it was now possible for me to play something without having to spend time turning the console on and off or loading saves.
The DS Lite was also where I first dipped my toes into the world of homebrew and emulation. I got a M3 flash cartridge and could extend my library beyond what my past cash strapped self could’ve afforded (Obviously I don’t advocate piracy, but downloading and playing a game that would’ve never been purchased anyway is not a lost sale to the publishers).
Following this I didn’t do much mobile gaming at all, I completely avoided the PS Vita for the same reason the PSP didn’t get much play time. I did get a used 3DS but this got very little use, and didn’t seem to get the same big library the DS did. The Wii U set the stage for the Nintendo Switch, but was largely a flop and I had no interest in that either.
When the Switch came out it instantly grabbed my attention. It had all the handheld features I appreciated from my DS, but with the added bonus of outputting to a big screen for more traditional gaming. I bought a launch edition switch (which I still have to this day, working perfectly) and amassed a huge collection of games. I still hold that Mario Odyssey is my favourite platformer to date. Pokemon Sword and Shield, while quirky and somewhat empty feeling revolutionized the franchise and I really enjoyed the Pearl remake. Where the switch really stood out was that it was bringing full Triple A quality console titles and giving you the option to play them on the go. Legend of Zelda breath of the wild is one of my all time favourite games, and it’s accessibility of being able to play it either on the go or sat on the sofa probably helped it achieve that rating in my head. I can safely say I played it about 50% handheld and 50% docked, with my playthrough lasting around 100 hours. Would I have put that much time into it being limited to only a big screen? Who knows. We also sunk countless hours into Mario Kart and Mario Party, between gatherings, evenings on the sofa and even sat on the plane. Having two controllers for certain games at all times attached to the console opened up loads of opportunities for social gaming.
Later on in my ownership of the Switch, especially as I stopped gaming online I did install CFW on, again mainly to expand the games I had access to and to try games I’d never otherwise purchase. I also began emulating other consoles on the Switch, which is surprisingly good at, especially since Nintendo re-released their old titles in the virtual consoles.
The Switch revitalized the handheld market which was previously slowing down, it showcased that the quality of a game didn’t need to be compromised just because of the consoles form factor. We now have behemoth handhelds such as the Steam Deck or ROG Ally which run Linux or Windows operating system and are capable of playing Desktop PC games. While these consoles are no doubt a technical marvel, and which are beloved by their fanbases I’d argue they’re simply too big to have that convenience factor the older generations of handhelds had. If it can’t fit in your pocket, the chances are you won’t have it with you when it’s convenient to play. Also with the sheer computational power of these new generation of consoles the battery life has taken a major hit. I noticed this even with my original Switch, I didn’t often have it with me like I did my DS. That lead me to purchase a Switch Lite, which while it lost it’s ability to be docked it had a much smaller form factor and longer battery life. It’s clear that I played this console much more than the full sized switch due to the fact that one of the analog sticks now has drift. I’ll get round to fixing that… One day!
There are alternatives to these behemoths though. Lots of companies popped up, seemingly overnight offering what are often referred to as “handheld emulators”. These consoles, from companies such as Ambernic and Powkiddy don’t offer any titles developed for them specifically but come with the ability to play games from other, older consoles. I purchased an Ambernic RG351P a few years ago, and while it would be considered archaic now it’s ability to play some games from the past hasn’t dwindled. I can play PS1, GBA, SNES, NES, Megadrive and pretty much anything earlier. The battery lasts hours and it has a very similar form factor to the original GBA. If I’d had access to this when I was a child my mind would’ve been blown, and the fact that these consoles can be bought so cheaply is astounding. Because the titles are emulated save states are available, meaning you don’t need to rely on the games own save/load system unless you choose too, which brings with it convenience and accessibility to have these shorter gaming sessions which handheld gaming lends itself so well to. The market for these consoles is absolutely saturated at the moment, so you can choose one in pretty much any form factor you can think of. As long as expectations are reasonably set (most won’t play PS2, GC and later well if at all) then you can’t really go wrong.
However, there is yet another option. You may even be reading this article on it. Android Smartphones. The majority of Android smartphones are majorly overpowered for their application if it’s a midrange or flagship device and emulators can take full advantage of this power. PS2, Gamecube, Wii and in some case even Switch titles will play better than on original hardware on these phones. Throw in a controller that grips onto the phone and you have an absolute power house of a handheld gaming device that you keep on you at all times! I’ve recently began delving deeper into Android emulation, and I feel like this deserves it’s own post so I’ll leave this topic here for now.
Overall though I’m glad to see handheld gaming still flourishing, even in a different format. In all honesty I can’t see the Switch 2 doing as well as the original Switch, I feel Nintendo have gotten far too greedy. With the Cartridges no longer containing the games, the price of games and the pushing of their online services they’ve ruined the recipe for success they once had. Unfortunately for Sony, and Nintendo the future of gaming is something they’ll struggle to capitalise on. It lies in playing games that were originally intended for other systems. Steam have done really well by making PC gaming more accessible, and it’s yet to be seen if Microsoft will try to bring a handheld that has access to their game pass library to market. If Microsoft do choose to do that, I’d hazard a guess that it’d do well. Aside from the big companies, handheld gaming sits firmly in the murky territory of playing digital copies of older games. Personally I like this, no developers are being hurt by this as the games are no longer for sale and it’s breathing new life into titles that were confined to obsolete gaming consoles, that struggle to even display on modern TV’s.
In a world that’s currently going mad I came across a post a couple of days ago that got me thinking. It was a group of Apple users actually panicking about these US import tariffs and what it could potentially do to the next generation of iPhone pricing. There was one user in particular that was outraged at the prospect that he might have to keep his iPhone 16 Pro Max for longer than a year. He had obviously become so accustomed to upgrading his phone ever 12 months that the mere idea that he would have to keep it for longer than this enraged him.
Smartphones are a relatively mature tech segment nowadays, I’ve written about it at length but innovation has ground to a halt and upgrades are very small and incremental year on year. Back in 2012 we were seeing differences between yearly models that would be comparable to 5 years worth of revisions today. Stagnant would be an appropriate description but I’d argue it’s not a bad thing, for the end user of the products at least.
You DO NOT need to upgrade your phone every year. In fact, I’d go as far as saying don’t need to upgrade your phone unless it’s broken. I’m saying this as much to myself as I am you readers, and I’m aware that the average person not interested in the tech space is not guilty of this. As tech enthusiasts we need to realise that the days of rapid developments and innovating features are gone from the smartphone segment. The excitement is dead.
A better way of thinking of smartphones would be the same way the majority of us think of laptops. You use a laptop for as long as it works, if possible you replace the battery when it needs it and would only consider replacing the device when it no longer functions as you need it to. Unless you’re in a very small minority that still gets excited over new models of laptops, they are just tools. We need to shift our way of thinking about smartphones to this same philosophy.
If all you’ve clicked on this article for was to find out my hot take you can stop reading now. TLDR: If you’re smartphone was made on or after 2020 and was a reasonable spec at the time, you don’t need a new one. Keep using it, stop looking at the new releases and save your money!
A large part of what spurred me to write this post was my recent experience with an iPhone 11 Pro. I acquired the device after my terrible experience with the Samsung S25 to find out if iOS suited my current requirements better, as I’d tried a lot of recent Android devices and wasn’t happy. In short it did. But the unexpected discovery I made was that a device released in 2019; 6 years old was fast, did everything we would reasonably expect from a 2025 smartphone and with a replacement battery lasted me a couple of days between charges.
It has a great set of cameras, has NFC for contactless payments, it’s design holds up well, the screen is very clear and has great colours and it runs the latest version of iOS therefor there would be no apps that are incompatible with this device. For 99% of iPhone users this phone has everything they need. Nobody needs the car crash that is Apple “Intelligence”, and you could live without a 120hz refresh rate. Aside from those two, which are arguably not even features there have been no meaningful additions to iPhones in the past 6 years.
Comparing an older Android to now is a bit more difficult. Up until very recently Android phone manufacturers were not updating their phones past 3 years as a maximum. However a device that released in 2019 would’ve shipped with Android 10, and with 3 years of updates would’ve been updated to Android 13. Almost every app on the play store is still compatible with Android 13, so using a device from then would still be possible. The Pixel 4, Galaxy S10 and the Oneplus 7 were all released this year, and while none of them are officially supported by their manufacturers anymore they are still very usable today. Even Android version updates have become minimal to the point where I would struggle to tell the difference between Android 13 and Android 15 without delving into the device settings. Using the Galaxy S10 as an example; you get a high resolution OLED screen, 3 cameras, WIFI 6, wireless charging and a CPU that still gives todays mid range devices a run for their money. With most major Android manufacturers now promising 7 years of updates there should be nothing stopping us using one for a decade.
With all the self justification in the world there is nothing stopping any one of us using a device until it is at least 5 years old. The battery will most likely want replacing at around the 3 year mark, but that’s not a hard job for the handy and an inexpensive repair for those that aren’t. I gather that a lot of people replace their devices when the battery no longer lasts as long as they need it to, and perhaps in 2027 when the EU mandate of user replaceable batteries comes in that will change.
I purchased my iPhone 16e with the intention of following my own advice. Yes I could’ve continued using the iPhone 11 Pro for a little longer, but realistically iOS 18 is the last update it will receive. I am sick of setting up new devices so I wanted a device that I could keep for a long time, and I intend to do just that. The iPhone 11 Pro was gifted to a family member who was still using an iPhone 10R. The iPhone XR got treated to a battery replacement and was then given to a colleague who’s iPhone X had succumb to water damage, so even at or beyond the end of their life cycle these devices are still serving people well.
The average replacement cycle of a phone globally is 2.5 years. At least in the UK, due to the ever increasing prices of the handsets the contracts are being stretched out to 3 years, so I imagine this will increase the average somewhat.
A lot of average users are hesitant to sell their old devices, due to not being able to back up their data or concerns about a bad actor getting hold of their data. So rather than getting a second life they just sit collecting dust until they’re too old to be useful and then discarded. Arguably this is a worst case scenario for a smartphone, and these people in particular are the ones that should be encouraged to keep their devices for longer.
I think what we’re seeing from phone manufacturers currently is desperation. They know they’re not innovating, and that the reason to buy a new smartphone regularly is diminishing. So they’re turning to marketing, relying on software features and gimmicks that could easily have been a software update on their existing models to sell phones. This won’t last forever though, I would hope that the average consumer will start to see through this veil and realise that there are not enough meaningful differences between a phone sold 5 years ago and now to justify the exorbitant cost that manufacturers are demanding.
We’re seeing a similar issue to what has happened to the car market. Buyers have got so used to buying their cars on finance that the actual selling cost is irrelevant to them, as long as they can afford the monthly bill they’re happy, regardless of the clauses or the duration of the contract. With this, people are now spending eye watering monthly sums of up to £1000 on cars they really can’t afford to put fuel in, let alone maintain, and while the cars are still selling the manufacturers will keep raising the prices.
For most it would be unthinkable to spend £1500 outright on a smartphone, but for around £40 a month for 3 years that suddenly seems a lot more palatable. Add in the SIM part of the contract and it’s not uncommon to see £100 a month phone bills. If customers can start breaking out of these contracts, and only have to pay for their data, minutes and texts for less than £10 a month I doubt many of them would want to go back to their big bills, especially in the economic climate we face today.
This is wishful thinking, but a major turn like this in customer spending might just force smartphone manufacturers to drop their prices, and potentially move away from annual or even biannual release cycles.
