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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I remember buying a OnePlus 7 Pro with 12 GB (!) of RAM like 7 years ago. The processor was also bleeding edge and that sucker ripped. It combined with stuff like termux was so capable that I used it to run all kinds of stuff that makes little sense on a normal phone. The day that phone retired (from drop damage) was heartbreaking*.

* It actually ran even longer after that as various utilities but not a daily driver, but when I didn't have it with me all the time the convenience slowly waned and it got forgotten

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That's the phone I was using too. Gave it to my wife a couple years ago and she used it until just a couple months ago when it too suffered a fatal drop. Very sad.

Good phone. I was worried about that pop up camera failing at some point, but it never did

Indeed, that pop up camera worried me too but was never an issue. It survived lots of pocket lint, and even beach sand and was always reliable. I'd easily trade the current "notch" approach on most phones for a pop up camera (assuming similar quality).

Same. Oneplus showed that the pop up camera was a perfectly workable approach for the front camera instead of using a notch.

Boy, do I miss the amount of diversity and innovation we used to have in cell phones. I remember having this phone [1] which put the camera on a little rotating thing so you could use the same one for front or back facing - obviously this either saves money or means they have twice the budget for the cameras as if they had two.

Obviously these cameras themselves were potato cameras compared to modern ones, but this design was still a great innovation and unique. We rarely get many design ideas that are that different today, as everyone mainly just wants to look like an iPhone, and Apple for its part only sits around obsessing on how they can make the iPhone's form more and more featureless and pure.

https://www.mobilecollectors.net/phone/6666/lg-vx-7000

I still daily drive a Oneplus 7T; for ~$350 in 2020, it's served me incredibly well, barely any performance drop over the years.

The battery has weakened ofc, the 2 day battery life has dropped to a measly 9 hours, but that's more than enough.

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