obsolescence and old equipment

   I have several older smartphones which work quite well, but they would
   need new batteries. However, with the recent bugs in some wifi chipsets
   resulting in [1]severe risk for iOS and Android devices, coupled with
   bad or missing update possibilities, they are now mostly unusable
   unless I'm in a safe spot (home, office), if I want to use them online.
   And a smartphone without internet connection quickly becomes about as
   useful as a dumbphone, but with even less battery capacity. Therefore I
   have decided I will not replace the batteries of my Samsung Galaxy S3
   and of my iPhone5 (which will not receive iOS11 any more).

   On the other hand, I will probably try to get a replacement battery for
   my even older ASUS AspireONE notebook PC. It's from 2008 and currently
   running a very old Linux, therefore it's not a very safe thing neither.
   But I can use it much better for creating (writing and coding) than the
   "consuming appliances" the smartphones are, even if I use it offline
   and only sync later when at a safe spot. There are nice editors (ed,
   vi) and git available, and with ssh and rsync in addition I have
   everything I really need.

   An ancient laptop with a decent keyboard and a reasonable (and
   "tinkerable"!) operating system in the long run is worth more than
   smartphones 5 years old. And according to my first online searches, a
   battery for the Aspire costs about 1/2 of the one for the Galaxy, and
   1/4 of the one for the iPhone (which I would have to give to a
   technician, thanks to the sleek and stupid design -- yes, I'm no
   fanboy, but I got the used iPhone for free from a relative). So it's
   even cheaper!

References

   1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/27/ios_11_plugs_wifi_vulnerability/