Perhaps it is because Android phones can be seen in every corner. After watching them for a long time, it is indeed easy for people to feel the same and even feel a little bored.
Pick up the old flagship again
When I went to clean up the room over the weekend, I searched deep in the drawer and found the Nokia 920. This phone had not been charged for a long time. Its metal frame was still cold and solid to the touch. It symbolized Nokia's last glorious glory in the smartphone era, and its design has been used by many manufacturers to this day.
It's a one-piece polycarbonate body that was used as a reference in later Xiaomi phones. What's even more advanced is that in 2012, it was equipped with an optical image stabilization camera and a wireless charging function. These were very advanced features at the time, making it not completely outdated even today.
The tortuous process of upgrading the system
I made up my mind to upgrade it to a more novel system version to try it out. According to the tutorials found on the Internet, the upgrade process requires several steps. First, ensure that the device is in the support list, and then update the system to the specified version.
When you later download a developer tool from the App Store, you must include your account in the developer plan, and then use this tool to open the preview update channel. After these operations are completed, the new version will be detected in the system update. The whole process is not too complicated, but it does require a certain amount of patience.
Bad preview experience
The initial feeling after the device is turned on is that it is stuck, and there is a very obvious delay when operating. After all, this is a technology preview system in its early stages, and it is to be expected that various problems will arise. However, the actual bad results exceeded my previous expectations and had an impact on the most basic aspects of use.
Applications are slow to open, the interface frequently becomes unresponsive, and even the virtual navigation keys at the bottom occasionally malfunction. Such an unsmooth experience can easily make people irritated, making it difficult to play or test it in any depth.
Functional failure and system failure
There were serious problems with some core functions. I wanted to try the voice assistant, but it couldn't be started at all. I restarted the phone multiple times, but it didn't have any effect. I tried to use a key combination to take a screenshot, but the system prompted that the screenshot failed. This basic function couldn't be used.
The most disappointing thing is the camera application. After opening it, the viewfinder is completely black and there is no way to display the picture normally. This means that the camera function is basically paralyzed. For a mobile phone that regards photography as its highlight, this is undoubtedly a fatal flaw.
The Dilemma of Third-Party Apps
Putting aside the problems of the system itself, the weakness of the application ecosystem is an insurmountable problem that has been mentioned repeatedly for a long time and has become a common practice. I clearly remember a famous joke related to the Alipay application at that time, which vividly demonstrated the rather embarrassing situation of users using niche systems in a vivid way.
If you have a need for a certain life service or a certain popular application, sometimes the need cannot be found, and sometimes you can only use an old version with insufficient functions. Such a situation of being excluded from the mainstream ecology will cause great inconvenience in daily use, and this is also one of the key reasons why it is difficult for such systems to achieve popularization.
Thoughts on the future of mobile phones
Through this tossing, I fell into thinking, why do we miss those so-called "outdated" products from time to time? The reason for this may not just be in terms of design, but more importantly, it symbolizes an era with different choices and diverse possibilities. Looking around now, the market is highly homogeneous, which really makes people feel boring.
Regarding the mobile phone in my hand that has many problems, I also feel a little regretful about its fate. It was once a very influential brand and system, but it eventually declined due to various decisions and market reasons. The lessons learned here are worthy of careful consideration by the entire industry.
Have you ever been in a situation where you dug out an old mobile phone and tried to make it usable again, only to be disappointed or unexpectedly happy?
