An Ode to My 5-Year-Old Samsung Galaxy S10e

Reading this on an s9! Also great phine6.

The S10e really does tick a few boxes. It is not only reasonable small, but as visible by the good price the author got for the battery replacement, it is rather repairable. Not perfect, but could be worse, moderate difficulty according to ifixit. It even has a headphone jack and an SD card slot. Arguably it was the last reasonable Samsung phone before they went off the deep end; made everything unrepairable crap, took away necessary features and locked the bootloader. Maybe with some exceptions, the Galaxy A52s for example also looks good on paper (but as an A series phone could be worse, even if two years newer)

Because yes, that adds to its charm: Though it only got Android 12 from Samsung, you can run that phone with Android 14 via LineageOS. Or Android 13 via /e/ and iode. And thanks to the OpenAndroidInstaller supporting it, changing the Android version should be easier than usual.

(I collect infos like that on a website dedicated to finding phones like this, https://www.sustaphones.com/#beyond0lte is the listing for the S10e)

I still have my Galaxy S1 laying around and it still works.

For anyone curious about size differences, Galaxy S1 next to S23 Ultra: https://imgur.com/a/CN9PxJk

My Samsung Galaxy A7 is venerable, but runs Zotero and Acrobat like a boss and has spared several forests by holding all of that academic research.

I make up for this by getting a new Samsung watch/phone combo every other year.

Good products and non-abuse of customers are the stuff of loyalty.