Vintage is Sometimes Better
In October 2004 I purchased a Palm Tungsten. Next month it'll be 21 years since then. I still have that device and it works well.
Palm does not exist anymore and any patents HP or LG got from Palm are probably expired already. "WebOS" isn't something you hear about anymore. PalmOS is still used, but more for nostalgic reasons, never mind if Linux was supposed to be the basis of what succeeded PalmOS (of course Microsoft had to step in and intervene against Cobalt, in effect killing Palm with its Treo ventures).
Palm is proprietary; the hardware is simple (slow chips), but simple means batteries can last longer. Many of the "apps" are just binaries and you cannot yourself compile the operating system from source (or reflash the whole shebang easily).
To many people, Palm is a remnant of simpler times; no social control media, no "like" buttons everywhere, no "infinite scrolling"...
To get a modern (so-called 'smart') phone to display the time to the user it probably needs to be charged every day if not several times a day. Talk about bad design.
Old watches could run OK for years without any change of batteries and some watches use kinetic energy to basically work without any batteries (or without having to charge/replace them). Consider my wife's wristwatch, which I bought her for her birthday. She last changed the battery two years ago (abroad). It lasted fine for about 24 months. The local shops wanted a lot of money to swap out the battery (one shop said 15 pounds, another said 29.99, which is ridiculous given the simplicity of the task; shops abroad get it done in a few minutes and change a few pounds).
Remember: that's once in 2 years.
Nowadays they make gadgets that are considered "old" and "need replacing" after 2 years. They don't cost a few pounds or 29.99 to "upgrade" (replace). This can cost hundreds of pounds, sometimes over a thousand (thank you, Tim Crook).
Why can't we get back to "simple" if (or where) "simple" means better? █