Today I am retiring a phone that I have been using for over 7 years.
I’ve never subscribed to the view that a phone needs to be replaced every couple of year or even, as one UK company is currently advertising, every year. Phones get replaced when they reach an end-of-life event.
What you can’t see in the picture above is that the iPhone 5s, robust as it is, is falling apart. The screen is steadily coming away from the rest of the case. Once I noticed that this was happening, I was expecting the phone to die completely soon after, but it’s been like that for over a year.
Some years ago my employer decided that they would no longer provide its employees with handsets, so my work phone has been the venerable iPhone 5s for a while now. During that time, my personal phone was an iPhone 6s, I can’t remember why I upgraded from the 5s to the 6s, but I think it was for the same reason I’ve just up graded my 6s for a 12 – battery life. The device that needs the better battery life is definitely my personal phone.
It’s time for 5s to go to sleep. I liked the 5s very much.
You may wonder why I carry two phones? Put simply, to separate my work and personal life. The value of leaving work behind on a deck is much greater, to me, compared to the pain of carrying two devices some of the time.
Graham Chastney 
How will you retire it? Any plans to recycle? Or will it “sleep” in a cosy drawer at home?
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At present the plan is for it to sleep in a drawer, or maybe even as a display item on a bookcase in the study next to the Nokia 3310.
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My fiancé just bought another phone, but he still uses the old one for a game he loves to play, so he has 2 phones always charging.
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