The reason is simple: Back in the "golden era" of mobile phones (2005-2009), feature phones were churned out by handset manufacturers in their droves.
Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG were the main rivals, with many others coming and going over the years.
Feature phones were successful not because each one was only a minor upgrade of the last flagship model (Apple and Android - I mean you), but the fact that each model was different and customers were left with choice.
Mobile phones back then ranged from about £20-£500, and you could pick a phone to suit your budget, own it for a year before selling it on and buying another great (yet different) model.
Around this time of year some of the greatest feature phones had been announced at Mobile World Congress in February and had only just reached the shelves in the UK in Summer. A couple of months later, and the prices dropped. Add to this the handsets released around this time of year in time for Christmas, and there was a lot of choice available - and the prices were great, too!
After several years of mobile phone contracts, I decided that mobile phones were cheap enough to buy outright, and it was cheaper to go down the PAYG route to phone ownership and usage.
So, onto the retro mobile trip down memory lane...
2009: Nokia XpressMusic 5230 - My First Touchscreen Phone
This great phone was my first touchscreen device. (The Samsung Tocco Lite was the must-have touchscreen phone for many at the lower price point.) Ok, the screen was resistive, but the stylus that slid securely into the phone's housing was fast and accurate.
It had Nokia/Ovi Maps onboard, which was great, but I had to buy a separate Bluetooth GPS receiver to make use of this feature.
I loved this phone, and the camera was really great for it's time. The various themes that could be downloaded meant that I could change the appearance of the screen regularly.
2010: Samsung Galaxy Europa i5500 - My First Android Phone
What a shocker this thing was! I desperately wanted a phone which would sync my contacts and calendar, and GPS was something that I had to have, so this first foray into Google's new OS seemed like the perfect, affordable candidate. I did get this on a 12 month Talkmobile contract, but I'd been using Nokia's Series 60 smartphones for years and was used to their meagre data usage and week long battery life. This Samsung sapped data so quickly that I was alarmed that my 500MB allowance would be gone before the month's end. It's battery life barely made it through the day and I hated the tiny, sensitive capacitive touchscreen, so it went back to Carphone Warehouse a few days later to be exchanged for a Nokia XpressMusic 5530, which wiped the floor with this pile of poo.
2010: Nokia 5530 XpressMusic - Back to Symbian
Now that I was tied in to a Talkmobile contract, I may as well have made use of my 500MB data allowance, so rather than my previous Nokia 5230 which was WiFi only, this new model had 3G, which finally had a use in 2010.
This was a good phone, with built in GPS and great maps, but I was unable to sync my treasured contacts and calendar events, so ultimately I returned to Android in early 2011 with the Samsung Galaxy Apollo GT-5800.
2011: Samsung Galaxy Fit 5670 - A New Version of Android
This curvy little phone was great. My Samsung Galaxy Apollo suffered terribly when trying to get a GPS fix, the camera was really poor compared to my Nokia phones of two years previous, and to top things off the operating system was Android 2.2 (Froyo), whereas Gingerbread (2.3) was the new flavour that worked with most of the new apps. Little did I realise that I was being sucked into Android's OS upgrade cycle.
I was happy with this phone, especially the camera, but internal storage became a problem when it became filled with text messages.
2014: Moto G - Happy with Android Once More...
My final (for now) foray into Android came to a sticky end: Read my thoughts about this phone and Android in 2015 in my recent blog post HERE.
If this issues that I have with Android Lollipop aren't bad enough, the further fragmentation of Android almost makes me want to give iOS a go!
- And one last problem with the original Moto G: It might have an up to date version of Android, but it's an impossible phone to live with due to the lack of internal storage. Even with just the core apps installed (and these are non-removable!), the phone needs to be tinkered with and have its cache cleared each time an app needs updating. I'm sick of it.
Given that I was happy with this budget blower last year over my Samsung Galaxy S3, this clearly indicates to me that Android is constantly progressing and requiring ever more expensive hardware to run on.
