This week was the iPhone’s 10th birthday, but if I’m going to be completely honest, I was one of the holdouts who didn’t get one until two years ago.
For years after the iPhone was released in 2007, I was a hermit who believed that I didn’t need material, worldly possessions. When my dad asked multiple times if I wanted to upgrade my dated LG VX5200 flip phone, I said no. My reasoning was that since it had a camera in it, my phone was already pretty cool.
Somehow, I survived high school and almost made it into my first year of college without any smart devices before I gave into the peer pressure and a need to actually use the internet everywhere. So I got my first smartphone, my mom’s old Motorola Droid Razr XT912, which lived for a brief year in my hands before it slowed down to the point of being impossible to use. Apps on the phone would flicker and freeze, seemingly on a whim.
Finally, in 2015, I converted and got my first iPhone, making me behind the trend by more than eight years. But, I figured, “Better late than never!” My two years with the iPhone 6 so far have been sweet, even if my defective battery has half the lifespan of a mayfly, and even if no Apple Store will replace my phone after I spilled water on it.
My phone until 2015.
One of the defining aspects of my life is that my house is a mess and I never invite a single person to visit. Somewhere, mixed up in the mess of things, are a bunch of old flashlights, newspapers, and numerous other objects that the iPhone has killed. And I have absolutely no need to find them, because, as they say, there’s an app for that. (Do people still say that?) Not for finding all of my useless junk, but for replacing every single one of them. Now who needs any possessions?