Why am I Using This Shitty iPhone 4?
I love iPhones. I love iPhone 6 Pluses and iPhone 6s and iPhone 5s’s and iPhone 5cs. I also love iPhone 4s. I’m sure if I had been savvy enough to own one, I would’ve loved the original iPhone.
I am a 34 year old, affluent nerd and I’m sticking with my old-ass iPhone 4. Why? Because I don’t want my new phone to bend? Because I want a phone my whole thumb can reach? Because Steve Jobs said phones should be phone-sized? Because I’m a luddite with a long-term memory problem?
Naaaah.
It’s because this phone is fucking awesome.
I know…it doesn’t have optical image stabilization or…a front facing camera (since I dropped it in 2013). But it lets me check Twitter and read my emails and scroll through my Tumblr dash and talk to my mom and lasts the whole day on one battery charge (unless it gets below 60 degrees F which, bizarrely, causes it to turn off instantly…but if I put it against my skin and warm it like a cold, glass baby it turns right back on.)
On second thought, maybe I’m keeping this shitty phone because I’ve bonded with it through skin-on-skin contact…
But I prefer to think that I’m keeping my shitty phone because this three year-old device is the culmination of 10,000 years of human technological advancement. Five years ago, it would have been the most sophisticated device ever created outside of a laboratory. Ten years ago it would have been THE LITERAL MOST SOPHISTICATED DEVICE EVER.
If my phone went back in time 15 years (to a time when the world was getting its first taste of both the Euro and The Sopranos) the person who received it could likely make him or herself the richest person in the world just by taking it apart properly (no easy feat, btw).
Now, I’m not saying I don’t want an iPhone 6…of course I do. It’s SO PRETTY. But I recognize that is an irrational want, like the way I want a Buzz Rickson MA-1 Bomber Jacket. I think it looks really cool, but I haven’t fooled myself into believing that a jacket is going to make me a happier person.
So I’m not sticking with my 4 because it’s better in some bizarre way…I’m sticking with it precisely because it no longer matters. This upgrade cycle is a big deal the way the release of the new Honda Civic is a big deal. It’s a new design…it’s got cool stuff and new features…but I’m not gonna get the new Honda Civic if my old Honda Civic is working just fine. It’s a car…it gets my ass where it needs to go, and I don’t really care if it has…whatever 2014 cars have that 2008 cars don’t. I can’t even come up with an example.
There will come a time (and this is a while off) when phones are exactly that boring…when the tech is so advanced, the next step forward doesn’t really matter. 400 dpi is enough. 240 fps is enough. A day of battery life is enough. 10 megapixels is enough.
For me, that was three years ago. For you, it might be three years from now…but it’s coming, and frankly I welcome it, because caring about Apple keynotes is getting exhausting.
