I'm starting to get nostalgic for the early days of smartphones (2008-2014 or so), back then every year the phone you upgraded to was miles ahead of the previous generation device. I remember walking into the Apple store a few weeks after the iPhone 3GS came out and being blown away by the performance compared to my iPhone 3G.
Phones have gotten way better since then but they also became boring and commonplace. Back then all the power users either jailbroke if they were on iOS or installed CyanogenMod if they were on Android. My 3 fondest memories of that time were:
1. Getting BiteSMS on my iPhone 3G: BiteSMS was an alternative SMS app that offered quick replies, something the native messenger didn't offer until a year or so later. I felt so cool at school when my friends saw the pink logo on my dock instead of the green one.
2. Hacking Multitasking on the iPhone 3G: IIRC when iOS 4 came out alongside the 3GS, the 3GS has multitasking but they never backported the feature to the 3G. When I jailbroke iOS 4 on my device it gave me the option of enabling multitasking. Once I enabled it I realized why Apple didn't backport the feature, the 3G was so down on power compared to the 3GS that it completely crawled to a halt if you had more than 2 apps running.
3. Around 2011 I got a Samsung Galaxy S2 and after installing various ROM's and quite a bit of hacking I got Google Wallet to work on the device. I remember the first time I tapped my phone and paid for something it felt like magic. Now we all take it for granted with Apple Pay and Google Pay but back then there were barely any terminals to even tap your phone so getting to do that felt like black magic.
Phones have gotten way better since then but they also became boring and commonplace. Back then all the power users either jailbroke if they were on iOS or installed CyanogenMod if they were on Android. My 3 fondest memories of that time were:
1. Getting BiteSMS on my iPhone 3G: BiteSMS was an alternative SMS app that offered quick replies, something the native messenger didn't offer until a year or so later. I felt so cool at school when my friends saw the pink logo on my dock instead of the green one.
2. Hacking Multitasking on the iPhone 3G: IIRC when iOS 4 came out alongside the 3GS, the 3GS has multitasking but they never backported the feature to the 3G. When I jailbroke iOS 4 on my device it gave me the option of enabling multitasking. Once I enabled it I realized why Apple didn't backport the feature, the 3G was so down on power compared to the 3GS that it completely crawled to a halt if you had more than 2 apps running.
3. Around 2011 I got a Samsung Galaxy S2 and after installing various ROM's and quite a bit of hacking I got Google Wallet to work on the device. I remember the first time I tapped my phone and paid for something it felt like magic. Now we all take it for granted with Apple Pay and Google Pay but back then there were barely any terminals to even tap your phone so getting to do that felt like black magic.