Will I Outlive My New iPhone?

CONTEMPLATING LONGTERM PAYMENT PLANS CAN BE GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH. BECAUSE WE NEED TO HAVE THESE LITTLE VICTORIES

This (above) is a selfie with my new iPhone 16e. I was going for an Edvard Munch ‘The Scream’ effect, which is how I feel about the thing.

I was actually very happy with my elderly iPhone 11, but oh, the horror of having a device that’s several models out of date. Plus, like all else in the Age of Technology it was created to reach obsolescence, one way or another, in short order. My 11’s battery died and went to heaven. No resurrection for iPhone batteries, just go buy a new phone.

I picked the 16e as opposed to the 16-with-no-letter mainly because it was $200 cheaper, even if it didn’t have a wide-angle camera (everybody needs a wide-angle camera?) or some Mag stuff — I am WAYYyy too old to get into Mag stuff.

As I prepared to pay, the nice, green-jacketed Apple person said, “Oh, you needn’t pay it all now! There’s no interest if you space out the payments.” No Apple employee is old enough to remember outright paying for stuff, though most are old enough to have heard a grandparent preach against credit card interest. Life before credit cards? — nobody remembers that.

But here is the revenge of the geezer class: Maybe I will expire before my payment plan does! Ever looking for a bargain, I scheduled the iPhone 16e payments for the maximum length of time and we have both now begun the race toward expiration. Where does Apple think it’ll find me if I exit the planet owing $200 on one of their devices?

It reminded me of the time, not long ago, when I picked up some new light bulbs. In not-so-small print they advertised themselves as Guaranteed to Last for Twenty Years.

“I’m going to have to put these things in my will?” I asked the check-out clerk. He just went on ringing me up.

But speaking of dead iPhone batteries, which I was a few paragraphs ago. Lately I’ve been joining the locals in friendly gatherings at the Tesla showroom, protesting against their unfriendly, chainsaw-wielding founder. Tesla is big on advertising its long-life batteries. I have some empathy for those batteries. “It’s important to understand,” writes one expert on the subject, “that very few EV batteries suddenly stop working.” (In other words, some of them do.” 

To continue that report: “Instead, they degrade slowly over time, gradually storing less and less energy . . .” I know exactly how they feel. But unlike a Tesla battery, which will probably degrade the planet for a few eons despite everything they tell us about elaborate recycling, my ashes will at least be dessert for some marine creature in the Chesapeake Bay, so take that, Elon. 

These are the sorts of reflections one has upon reaching a certain marker along life’s journey. Should I trade these comfy old sneakers for a new pair of Hokas designed to travel hundreds of miles? Is buying this large, economy size container of lemon pepper an overly optimistic strategy? These sorts of decisions eat up a lot of brain space.

Which brings me back to the iPhone. However much the Apple people get out of me, it’s a $600 thing. I use it as a communication device — and OK, picture-taking is fun and phones that don’t take pictures are so last century. Still, the transaction included a one-hour class just to discover how it can track your exertions related to sneaker use and your dietary relation to lemon pepper. I took the class, and since nobody else did I turned out to get a one-hour personal tutorial.

I learned all about the health app and the action button and the plant identifier and the text translation capability, but the instructor seemed a little baffled when I asked if there were an On/Off button. (No, there’s not.)

There are more bewildering things about my nifty little device than it is possible to learn within my anticipated lifetime.

But at least we’re both on the same pay-as-you-age plan.