A quick web search for “how often do people change their phones” suggests the answer is every 3.5 to 5 years. I’m willing to bet a sizable portion of those discarded phones ends up as e-waste simply because they’ve become old and unsupported. Developers are the lifeline of these smart devices. No developers means no apps, and no apps means no users. It’s one reason I think Microsoft’s Windows Phone died — there simply weren’t enough people building apps for it.

There have been initiatives in the open-source community to provide extended support for these forgotten devices. The cause was commendable, but the sheer number of different devices meant only a handful ever received proper ports.

Now, with AI as an enabler, anyone can start building software. I have an aged Samsung tablet that has been sitting on a shelf for years. It was still perfectly capable — pristine screen, battery that could last for days — yet it sat unused. It was running an Android version that had already reached end-of-life status, which meant it no longer received updates and more and more apps were dropping support for it. I was forced to retire it. I’ve always wanted to port LineageOS to it, but the time and effort required was debilitating. AI completely breaks down that barrier.

Now my tablet has been reinstated on my work desk as a multimedia device, just as it once was.