These days, with the release of the latest Pixel series, Google got me genuinely interested in their flagship phone.

My “smart-device” career started around 2000, when I purchased my first “kind of smart” device Palm IIIc. It was insanely expensive, especially compared to my monthly pay, but I succeeded to somehow collect the money, although it netted ~10% of my yearly income.

The device was a miraculous thing. It had it all, and back then, it really had it all: a colorful display, a stylus to enter text, tons of customization opportunities, including the ability to install (any kind of) software. By “any kind of,” I meant the ability to get software from whatever shady source you could find since $50 for a license still was a lot of money in Bulgaria (yes, yes, I know the story; I had the money for the hardware, but not for the software, OK?).

The best thing about this device was that it expanded my software development horizons because, as a developer, I (so far) never did anything else but desktop software. So, having the Palm and the SDK was incredible. The UI/UX of the Palm Dev Tools was horrible, but nothing stops an enthusiastic programmer with tons of free time and no kids (yet). The only thing I regret back then was that I lacked enough perspective actually to start selling what I wrote – I used it only for my purposes. With my current mindset, I think I could have made a decent buck if I dared to publish it. Anyway…

After the Palm IIIc came Palm IV. There was no color (only shades of gray before that became a blockbuster), but it is way faster and much more powerful. Then… somehow… I succeeded in grabbing the Windows Mobile 5.0 device (I don’t remember the brand now; sorry, I think it was HP). Windows Mobile SDK was based (also on) MFC, and I was primarily a Windows C++ developer, so I felt like my mana doubled and my spells maxed out. Back then, it was also my first try to “publish” something: I worked with Dominik Reichl to create and maintain the (first) Windows Mobile version of KeePass. I called it KeePassPPC. It’s actually pretty amazing that its “site” is still live on SourceForge. I open-sourced it, but I also offered prebuilt binaries since building back then was not a piece of cake. I think it got to the whopping “tens of thousands of downloads,”…and then Microsoft killed the platform, and I refused to rewrite it on C#.

Fast-forward ten years, I was using (and developing) for Windows Phone, but I never succeeded in releasing any popular application. Since I was at Microsoft, doing iPhone or Android development was out of the question (and I was indoctrinated to believe that Windows Phone will kill’em-all). However, back then, in 2010, I also bought my first Android device, a Samsung Galaxy Tab 7. Of course, I started to do some personal projects on it. However, the Android Dev Tools back then were miserable, or at least felt that way, when I compared them to Microsoft Visual Studio. So I didn’t go too far.

Ever since, I have flattered myself to think that I know “this/that” for most mobile platforms. I have used Android and its SDK and tools for about seven years. Since 2018, I have “hard-switched” to the iPhone, primarily as a user, since I didn’t want to spare $100/year for a personal developer license. Over time, my Android devices went out of service. I ended up entirely in the Apple ecosystem: MacBook Pro work and personal machines, iPad (Mini 5, but still an iPad), and iPhone. The devices work so slick together, so it’s the perfect “golden cage”. I realize that, and I am trying deliberately to continue using Microsoft 365 services (mine and my family’s cloud was always at Microsoft). Staying out of the Apple Cloud ecosystem keeps me (believing that I’m) easy to migrate to another device, should I need that. However, our entire family is not inside Apple’s golden cage, so I would say it would not be easy, shall I decide one day to change that.

However, I got another SIM card approximately a year ago, which I had to put in a smart device. I used one of the (still working) Android devices at home: the Ulephone, which Martin used before getting an iPhone. The Android was the “good, old” Android I knew. I saw that I’m a bit clumsy with it, the device itself was struggling with the newest software, but so far it works without any significant limitations. Considering that it’s at least a 4-5-year-old Android device, I think it’s impressive that its battery life is still 2-3 days (on phone/OS standby, but still). And it got me… interested!

Back to my original train of thought: these days, I’m swarmed with articles about the newest iPhone. Since I’m with an iPhone 12 Pro Max, the newest 16 Pro Max would be a considerable hardware upgrade. However, since my current iPhone is still perfectly working, I caught myself in thoughts about “Isn’t it time to get back to multiple-phone setup, where I also have an Android device at hand?”. My love for Flutter and cross-(mobile-)platform development could use a modern device to deploy and test, but I do realize this is just a silly reason to get a second phone, which I will have to bring with me everywhere. Still, it is probably worth getting such a device, which would allow me to evaluate how deep in the Apple rabbit hole I went during these six years.

Getting the newest Pixel instead of upgrading my iPhone might be a better option. Or just skipping yet another year without an upgrade.

I’m still thinking…

Original title image (cc) ShoAndTech