Dollar Tree.
It used to have been an unreal experience witnessing the existence of these stores when they came out. Everything for a $1. No joke. The quality of some things have had corners cut and the quantity might’ve been laughable, but there was a good solid purpose for these stores.
And then I started seeing the signs after a few good solid years of shopping there. The first sign was how they stopped selling eggs. This was before the Bird Flu. They stopped selling eggs because they simply couldn’t afford to buy stock and then the price hike to $1.25 happened.
And now they’ve hiked the prices again to $1.50 for some products in a handful of stores. Additionally, they’ve incorporated items going from $2 ~ $15 so they have long lost the role and title of being the most affordable places to shop.
Gone were the days.
For most of the 2010s I was optimistic about how cool cell phones were going to be. Instead they’re almost all basically the same phone/camera/web browser and I can’t find anything that even has the same features as my 2016 model let alone new ones. There’s foldables I guess but from what I’ve seen that’s not particularly useful.
Foldables easily fit in all your pockets. Whether it’s worth paying twice the price is not immediately obvious to me.
Getting the previous generation foldable or a refurbished one can make sense.
Is this enshittification or the convergence of objects into the same design due to regulation/demand/function/etc. (I’m sure there’s a name for this but I can’t recall it)?
Cell phones are certainly enshittified with planned obsolescence or incompatible text messaging protocols or ‘walled gardens’, but what else should a cell phone be besides a cellular networked pocket computer with a camera?
What features (besides a dedicated headphone jack) is missing from a modern cell phone that your old one had?
There’s plenty of stuff dropped, a lot of it is dubious tbh.
My older phones had: IR blaster for controlling TVs FM radio tuner Replaceable battery’s Headphone jack (as you noted) Expandable microsd storage Physical Keyboards (no real loss imo)
Probably some others I’ve forgotten. Honestly, I slightly miss the IR blaster on occasion. I haven’t listened to FM radio in ages, but could see it being useful. Replaceable battery’s would be nice from a longevity perspective, but I prefer battery packs to device specific batteries for longer life in general and battery life is more than a day for me anyway unless I’m going nuts. The lack of SD storage is the one that bothers me the most.
Keep in mind phones have gained at least a few things in that time. Simple reliable waterproof is a huge one.