My smartphone Journey

Ever since Apple launched its Apple iPhone product, the entire smartphone market, or even the technology world changed, though I was not privileged to experience the first few generations of iPhones until the iPhone 4s(I still remember the kid who brought his iPhone 3gs to high school and watched videos from it while I was listening to MP3 songs that I received from friend’s phone as Bluetooth file with my don’t-remember-which and not-so-smart-LG-phone). Well, here is my smartphone journey.

My first smartphone was an iPhone 4s that my parents bought me as a new year’s gift.  I was so thrilled for that first month or so.  I was playing with it, downloading everything that I can play with, going through all the settings, texting friends which resulted in a not-so-beautiful AT&T bill for the first couple of months because, at that time, it was pay-per-use.  So friends, please use these features and do the social distancing the right way during this COVID-19 pandemic.  

After a couple of years of using the iPhone 4s, it started to get boring compared to other phones.  So I started doing some research, like watching a lot of youtube videos and that’s when I watched MKBHD’s review of the OnePlus One which convinced me to buy that phone.  Buying that phone wasn’t easy because of OnePlus’s invite system though that couldn’t stop me.  After digging through Facebook pages, online forums, I finally was able to find an invite on google+(rip) and I immediately placed an order for the 64GB sandstone variant of the OnePlus One.  For the first time, I was experiencing something that I never experienced before: Online shopping and the anxiety of waiting for the package to arrive.  A few days later, the package finally arrived and I couldn’t wait to open it.  The unboxing experience is still the best even after so many years, so many phones I have unboxed (used to work in a cell phone retailer store).

As mentioned above, I was working at a multi-carrier cell phone store, and I was privileged to have access to many new smartphones.  At that time, I started using the HTC ONE M9(rip HTC) which was given by my boss.  It was a flagship offering by the manufacturer and I think it was a stand-out amongst other phones at that time.  However, I wasn’t really impressed with the phone mainly because it wasn’t an upgrade to OnePlus One, to me at least.  

6 months after the release of HTC ONE M9, something else grabbed my attention–google nexus, specifically the nexus 5X. I think at that point I was so deep into the smartphone journey of no return. I was initially debating whether to buy a nexus 5 or OnePlus One, so the Google Vanilla had “rooted” in me.  So I went ahead and bought a nexus 5X and I couldn’t be happier about it.  It’s clean, easy to use, first to receive updates, fantastic rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, plastic back which I actually prefer.  However, after almost a year of usage, the battery life became a problem.  It was barely able to get through a day of usage, I often found myself having to charge it because I was afraid it would die on my way back home.  

Luckily for me, the very next year,  I was again given a new HTC phone–the HTC 10.  This time, I was more excited compared to HTC one m9.  It’s got fantastic build quality and futuristic design.  After months of holding the plastic shell of nexus 5x, being able to touch the metal of the HTC 10 really makes a huge difference.  I sold my nexus 5x on eBay at a dirt-cheap price but I know deep inside, I miss it, had it not having a terrible battery life and I knew one day I will go back to google-flavored phones.  

In August 2016, Samsung released the galaxy note 7 which turned out to be a disaster.  It was so bad even an initial recall didn’t fix the problem of its batteries catching fire, Samsung had to recall all units after second waves of explosions began to show up.  In order to rebuild its reputation, Samsung began running some aggressive deals on its Galaxy S series–the Samsung galaxy s8.  I was able to get a buy one get one deal which only required the activation of one of the phones on the T-Mobile network.  Well, coincidentally, I was working in a multi-brand cellphone store!  So I activated one phone and gave the 2nd one to my brother.  Re-ordered another 2 phones, activated one phone, and sold both of them after getting both credits back into my account.  Now let’s get back to the phone.  It’s one of my favorite phones thus far.  It had the industry-leading design, perfect size for one-hand use, fantastic cameras, best display of all phones.  I thought I was going to use it for a long time, until something else showed up on my smartphone journey, right?

In November 2017, Apple released the new iPhone X.  Until that time, I thought I would never use an iPhone again especially after years of enjoying android’s customizability.  Well, I couldn’t resist the temptation.  In fact, I went to the apple store the first day it’s available and picked up an iPhone X 64GB for $1000 with all smiles on my face.  I was ready to go back to IOS!  I enjoyed using the new iPhone X so much that I had to ask my friend in New Hampshire to buy a 256GB variant of the iPhone X in order to save some money on taxes and returned the 64GB variant.  Two weeks went by, I still enjoyed it.  A little more than a month went by, the enjoyment began to fade away as my thumb constantly felt sore after a day of usage; the inconvenience of using Face ID while in bed also grew on me; not being able to customize the home screen frustrated me and installing google apps, such as google photos, google docs, google drive and google keep just made the whole thing ironic.  

Months of struggling with using the iPhone X made me miss more about Google-made phones.  At the time when Apple released the iPhone X, Google had also released its new google phone–google pixel 2 and google pixel 2xl. So I went ahead and bought a 64GB Pixel 2 in “just black”(Google really knows how to name the colors of their phones) and traded in the Galaxy S8.  I was expecting the phone to arrive at the cellphone store and, till the last minute, a FedEx guy showed up with my package.  I was ready to enjoy a Google-flavored phone again and the phone didn’t disappoint me at all.  It’s got perfect size, OK battery life, great display, easy-to-use fingerprint scanner, and the best camera in class.  I was so satisfied. 

In September 2020, I went to Navy Bootcamp and I had to send the Pixel 2 back.  After 2 months of Boot Camp life, when my girlfriend gave me the pixel phone and when I held it, it felt so strange as if I have never held a phone before, but the big surprise came when my girlfriend pulled out a new OnePlus 6T from her luggage(I was writing letters with my her and more than one occasion, I asked about OnePlus 6T, lol), I was more than thrilled!  And of course, the biggest surprise was to see my girlfriend but that’s not the topic here!  The OnePlus 6T had one feature that no phones in America had–the under-display fingerprint scanner, that is also why I had so much expectation about this phone.  I was showing it off to my shipmates in Navy “A” school, California and a lot of them were impressed.  I was also very satisfied with that phone.  Its speed had no comparison just like all OnePlus phones, it’s got a tear-drop notch that’s easy to ignore(unlike the notches that are found on iPhones), fantastic build quality.  However, the downsides of that phone were its camera and its size(i prefer small phones).  I could live with the phone being big, but the camera quality just isn’t good and the shutter lag was so bad.  Maybe this would explain it better: I used to just snap a picture of the Zone Number of the parking meter(ParkNYC) and pay on the go, but I couldn’t do the same with OnePlus 6T because I had to continually point the camera towards the subject as it processed otherwise the picture would turn out to be total something else.  That really frustrated me so much and I knew it was time to reach the next level of my smartphone journey.

April 2019, Google released a budget phone–the pixel 3a starting at $399 and I think that might be a hint for me to go back using a google phone(or that’s just me telling myself to switch to a new phone), which I did.  I traded in my 6T for the pixel 3a soon after it became available at the T-Mobile store (the store representative asked if I knew what I was doing, great).  I was really impressed with its camera, battery life, build quality.  As for the performance, it was great until I lost my job and started driving for Uber and Lyft.  The phone just wasn’t powerful enough and didn’t have enough RAM to handle a lot of tasks at one time.  I had had my phone randomly restarted multiple times during trips with passengers in the back seat.  From then on, I knew the smartphone journey had to move forward.

In October 2019, I switched to Sprint(rip) and leased a Samsung S10 and sold that Pixel 3a on Swappa.  Thanks to the lease of Galaxy S10, I have now officially suspended my smartphone-switching habit, temporarily, and I will be back!

The smartphone journey is to be continued..