Heads up, I haven't slept in a couple of days. The store by my place stopped selling my sleep edibles, so even though I actually had a good paycheck this pay period, I couldn't reasonably afford to get edibles this pay period. I fucked my edible tolerance being such an edible chef a few years back, I need at least 200mg of edible to knock me out. I'll have a solution for next pay period. But until then, I have Doxepin to force myself asleep tonight to stop the mania from spinning out of control as it typically does.

So the reason I'm considering the A16 is because it's actually the last one I had, and I liked it quite a bit. Looking over the specs for the two phones, I actually am quite split. The A16 has it beat on a few things I consider very important. It has a bigger battery (by 1000mAh) and a lower resolution and lower refresh rate screen. I actually loved the 90hz screen because it added to the experience of using the phone, but wouldn't consume as much power as the 120hz screen of the S21. One of the things I also think is most important is storage, and the A16 offers me more storage for cheaper. However, the high school tech nerd in me wants that 120hz screen. I also like that the S21 is fully waterproof and not just water resistant. Water resistance is good enough 95 percent of the time, my OnePlus survived in my pocket and played music for me working my first job ever in the dishpit. I also like the wireless charging. When I got my 6t nearly a decade ago at this point, I didn't think having wireless charging and NFC was a big deal. I regretted the lack of NFC when we entered the "post" pandemic world. Then when the charging port started to shit out, I learned how much I want wireless charging. I also like that the S21 is smaller. I was also surprised by this, but apparently the S21 is on a newer version of Android than the A16, wild stuff.

Yeah, I really believe that for what I do on phones, I can't go wrong as far as power goes nowadays if I just get something over $100 (brand new price, not being snobby but I've never seen a good smartphone go for under $100 new) and made in the last couple years, I'll be fine. Secondary features like high refresh rate screens or more battery are the things that will really sway me. I really haven't felt the need for more horsepower in my phone since I got my 6t in high school. I missed features like NFT and wireless charging more than raw power.

One of my last phones was a fairly new-ish Pixel. My old roommate gave it to me because even though the screen was cracked, they were annoyed by my OnePlus 6t always being dead between the charging port and not being able to get it to charge when I was off a gallon of vodka back then. If you went back and told high school Leyla that I'd eventually prefer Samsung's UI over the Pixel UI, I don't think she'd believe it. There are some minor things about the Samsung UI I'd change, but I like Samsung's newest UI quite a bit. I also think Pixels have really gone down hill this decade. I haven't followed this stuff as closely as I used to, but anytime I use a newer pixel, I fucking hate it. The phone ended up commiting suicide, I woke up one day and the screen had shit itself and slowly became more green until it stopped displaying anything. Guessing water got in one of the screen cracks

This is separate from anything important, but I'm so glad I got this phone. I feel like the 6t was really the Android community's last truly great modding platform. I had this converted into a Linux phone at one point! And there were so many times that if I had had any other phone, I would have bricked it flashing shit wrong. However the OnePlus 6t had truly amazing and mind bending recovery options from the Qualcomm processor. It was a processor that every flagship of that era had, but OnePlus was the only company to enable those recovery features. They wanted people to fuck with the 6t as much as they pleased and provided tools and software to do it.

It's the last phone they made with the nerds in mind. The 7 with the retractable camera was a cool concept but I really didn't love the idea of adding a mechanical point of failure to camera access on something I plan on keeping for a decade. I think it really speaks to how they shifted as a company after the 6t. Almost feels like it's the last one before a corporate buyout or something because OnePlus changed their business strategy really heavily afterwards. Idk I'm really happy that I have this phone. It's not really about the phone itself, honestly there were a lot of things about the hardware I wasn't even a fan of back when this was new. But people used the 6t as a modding platform for really cool shit.