A phone case for an old phone

We went to the mall during the weekend, and if there’s one thing that malls have, is phone case kiosks. Small shops selling peripherals and cases for popular Apple and Samsung devices,and not much else—at least that’s what I always assumed.

When heading elsewhere, my mom suddently had the desire to get a new case for her phone, a Redmi Note 11 by the way—a pretty okay midrange device. I have to admit I had zero hopes they would find anything at all, I tried to tell her getting something online going to be much cheaper and that we could find something she actually likes.

No point arguing with mom, she wanted to at least ask, and so we did.

After standing in front of the seller for way too long—I didn’t remember the device name and clumsily searched in the settings for longer than I’d like to admit—I was surprised they didn’t immediately said no. The guy got searching in a few drawers full of cases, under the stand, higher up, checking some sort of index every once in a while.

A few even more agonizing minutes passed where he kept searching but, eventually, he had to give up, tough luck this time around—and then my dad spoke.

My father saw a few cases in a shelf up above that started with “RN”, they were at the bottom of the pile, so only the spines of the boxes could be seen—I have no idea how my father even found them from where we were standing—the guy immediately checked closer and pulled out a couple cases for my mom to choose from.

She picked a golden colored one, and I was absolutely impressed. They did have something in the end, so they earned my respect.

I wasn’t too happy about paying like 10 extra bucks than what the case would cost online, but I digress, I took my losses and got my mom what she wanted.

I’m rather amazed by little moments like this, it really lets me know that even a tech enthusiast such as myself often ends up in a bubble when compared to other people who just use technology without being deeply interested on the latest and greatest.

The Redmi Note devices are fairly popular in some countries—I used to have one myself—and some folks who don’t follow tech as closely as I do, aren’t really tempted or in need of upgrading devices every one or two years, which means that even a device as old as the Note 11 has plenty of accesories and cases made for it, due to the marketshare these phones have among the less techy people.

The same is true for a lot of other things. Most people have not bought a Nintendo Switch 2 yet, most people won’t even realize that a Steam Machine is, plenty of regular folks don’t care their phone is 4 years out of date, and that is absolutely fine. I don’t know why I keep forgetting stuff like this…

My mom has showed signs of wanting a new phone, and I have felt like I should get something new to her, but at the same time, I think all she really needs is a nice factory reset to get her device snappy and fluid as new. I haven’t been the best example when it comes to sticking to a device for a long time, I know, buying like three phones since this blog got started… but alas.

For now, I spent more money than I wanted on a case, my dad has better eyesight than me, I should look at myself in the mirror when it comes to my assumptions, and in any case, my mom is happy.