Planned obsolescence showcase. The best smartphone I have had so far was the Samsung S7. It worked flawlessly for years, so I kept using it for way too long even after there were no updates for it. Simply because it worked. All the electronics kept going flawlessly. Before the S7 I had an S3, which worked almost as well, except for it's wifi. In its last days, the S3's wifi and bluetooth stopped working reliably, and became very problematic. Jumped to the S7, and on that one display, camera, lamp/flash, wifi, gps, bluetooth, speakers, connector, all worked flawlessly for years and years. Even the battery worked flawlessly, barely losing duration for me after years. At some point, what did completely stop working on the S7 was the regularity of software updates from Samsung. Just no more updates for it, period. So after quite long still, even with no updates, kept using it for a couple of years. Eventually replaced it with a Pixel 6a. Everything was still working perfectly fine on the S7, but it was just too much of a security risk to keep using it, or I would have had to restrict its usage to fewer and fewer use cases. Choosing that Pixel was a decision I quickly regretted. That display broke in a matter of weeks, not at all as sturdy and resistant as the one on the S7 which I was so used to for so long. Replaced that A6 with another A6 giving the model a benefit of the doubt, and I was much more careful now, but the display still failed quite quickly: not breaking this time, but losing all touch sensitivity in a rather large area near the bottom. In forums I then learned, these Pixels have quite the high failure rate about touch-sensitivity. Gee, had I known that earlier. They are simply not very well made. The cellphone could still be used fully with bluetooth mouse and keyboard, but when standing alone on the go, the touchscreen problem was a huge limitation and annoyance. Its display is one big minefield covered with single points of failure, and many had failed all too quickly already. Now trying a Samsung A56, so far so good. This has a display in principle as tough as the S7. We'll see. In any case, I kept (correction) both the S3 and S7 stored in a drawer, never gave them away for electronics recycling. Recently did some cleanup of those drawers. Here is how I found the S3 with its last transparent and flexible protecting cover, or rather, what became of it. This has just been some number of years untouched inside a plastic bag inside a drawer, no light hitting it. The stuff was at perfect rest within reasonably stable temperature and humidity conditions, and yet that protective sleeve still mutated, hardened, and deteriorated itself into this: just some totally useless version of the original material. Whatever it was, I bet this was not silicone, but some synthetic contorsion. Wondering if it in fact includes ingredients to make it deteriorate like this after some time. Talk about planned obsolescence, both software and hardware-wise: