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eBay bargains - what's your latest conquest?

Here's an 16GB (actually it's 32GB!) iPhone 6 that I purchased from eBay UK for £16 GBP. The seller listed it in the spares/repairs category and described it as "not charging." After recently repairing my mum's iPhone 4S with the exact same issue, I strongly suspected that it just needed a replacement battery - my suspicions were correct because once that was taken care of, it returned to life. 🙂

The iFixit guide made this task look far more complex than it actually is. Admittedly, excising the old battery was the hardest part - due to the sheer amount of adhesive used and I had to be extremely careful because the rear casing appears to be rather fragile but once that phase was completed, it was plain sailing. Even with the cost of a new battery, a paltry £7 GBP, this is an absolute steal because on eBay UK the average price for this model in good condition is around £80 to £90 GBP.

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TheShortTimer said:
@Amethyst1 - thanks! This will be my first foray into the iPhone/iOS world. 🙂
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Just be careful with it. The 6 was the worst iPhone to date. Apple, in its wisdom removed a stiffening shim from the logic board because: thinner, which meant any flexing of the case transferred to the logic board and hey, presto - Touchgate. I got used to hearing my friend effing and blinding as he struggled to complete typing a whole sentence on it before having to reboot his phone.

The shim went back into the 6s...
 
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Amethyst1 said:
@TheShortTimer - Congrats on your new toy. Been thinking about picking up an original SE myself as I love small phones and haven't played with iOS for ages.
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The iOS 14 beta is excellent, this is the first iOS I’ve been really excited about for a long time.

Picture in Picture is now universally available in Safari. Apple finally stuck it to Google and their YouTube artificial mobile=no background playback limitation is no more. You can play the video in the background without messsing with anything, or have it play over top of any other part of the UI.

This, and last year’s iOS 13 Safari enabling downloading all file types have made iOS much better in recent years.
 
@Amethyst1

Just to offer some advice... you should consider using the High Sierra patcher to install that. Though the 09 mini's were not officially supported by HS, they share about 98% of the hardware of the late 09 MacBook, which is officially supported. The only real hardware difference is the wifi module. Same CPU, GPU, board components as the 2.26GHz mini. Which makes you wonder why they weren't supported.

It runs buttery smooth on these mini's with an SSD, and updates only ever seem to break wifi, which I don't use anyway, but simply adding the proper kext again fixes that.
 
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@timidpimpin - I'll eventually go for Mojave as I'm really digging the Dark Mode but will also have several other versions of OS X installed for experiments. Thanks for the input.
 
Amethyst1 said:
@timidpimpin - I'll eventually go for Mojave as I'm really digging the Dark Mode but will also have several other versions of OS X installed for experiments. Thanks for the input.
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Fair enough, but keep in mind that Mojave will run about 20% slower in my experience. I went from Mojave to HS on mine, and liked it better. It all comes down to preference, but many (myself included) find dark mode too hard on the eyes. And the window corners in Mojave and Catalina in light mode look horrible if you're under 4K.

I loved the idea of dark mode on Mac, until I used it. But for some reason on Windows 10 and Android the dark mode doesn't hurt my eyes at all. Only macOS.

IMO High Sierra is the last proper light mode, because Mojave screwed the pooch on it.
 
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timidpimpin said:
Fair enough, but keep in mind that Mojave will run about 20% slower in my experience
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I'll have to compare both, thanks again. 🙂 On the other hand, if speed is paramount, El Capitan runs faster than HS, right?
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timidpimpin said:
And the window corners in Mojave and Catalina in light mode look horrible if you're under 4K.
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Is this a matter of resolution or pixel density? The Packed Pixels has 264 ppi, ie more than Retina Macs.
 
Amethyst1 said:
I'll have to compare both, thanks again. 🙂 On the other hand, if speed is paramount, El Capitan runs faster than HS, right?
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I would honestly say that HS is a tad faster. It's sort of the Snow Leopard of the modern macOS. And 10.13.6 is rock solid stable on my late 09 mini. Never a single issue with anything.
 
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@timidpimpin - How would you say HS compares to Mountain Lion or Mavericks in terms of speed? I hate the UI in Yosemite and later versions, and Dark Mode makes it just about bearable for me. So it's either Mojave or ML/Mav I'm afraid.
 
Amethyst1 said:
@timidpimpin - How would you say HS compares to Mountain Lion or Mavericks in terms of speed? I hate the UI in Yosemite and later versions, and Dark Mode makes it just about bearable for me. So it's either Mojave or ML/Mav I'm afraid.
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Never ran either on this mini. Only Snow Leopard, El Capitan, High Sierra and Mojave. I dual dual SL and HS.
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Amethyst1 said:
And on which machines of yours does it look horrible?
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The late 09 mini, which is my fastest real Mac. The display is the Dell U2415 like you mentioned you have also.
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Let's put it this way... if you can stand to use El Cap, then HS looks virtually identical, and has current support still, so better security. There was a security update last week.
 
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timidpimpin said:
The late 09 mini, which is my fastest real Mac. The display is the Dell U2415 like you mentioned you have also.
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The U2415 has a pixel density of just 94 ppi - the 5K iMac has 218. So, it could be due to the low resolution or the low pixel density. Which is why I asked.

In any case, the display I'll be using with the mini is 264 ppi so Retina-quality.

I dumped the U2415 ages ago as I couldn't stand the low pixel density.
 
Amethyst1 said:
The U2415 has a pixel density of just 94 ppi - the 5K iMac has 218. So, it could be due to the low resolution or the low pixel density. Which is why I asked.

In any case, the display I'll be using with the mini is 264 ppi so Retina-quality.

I dumped the U2415 ages ago as I couldn't stand the low pixel density.
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I guess I'm low spec, because only my phones are ever above 100. My current Moto is 403 ppi I believe.
 
Mavericks is the obvious choice for you, which shows how subjective it all is. IMO the 10.7 to 10.9 look is the worst in history. You also still have Firefox support on 10.9, so that's pretty good. I beleive Chrome requires 10.10 now.
 
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