Have tablets jumped the shark?

I use hand-me-down or hand-me-up devices: laptop and phone.

In 2009, we bought a new HP laptop for my wife's daughter as she graduated high school. A year or so later, my stepdaughter purchased a new laptop, so I took the the HP that we bought her to replace my old Gateway laptop that I bought in October 2002. My Gateway started with Windows, but later, I installed Ubuntu Linux.

I still use the 2009 hand-me-up laptop, and it still runs Windows XP. I do all my programming on remote Linux servers. But this year, I would like to replace this HP laptop with a new thinner, smaller laptop that runs Linux.

For several years now, the cell phones that I've used were phones that my wife or stepdaughter formerly used. And for a couple of those years, I used a Tracfone.

For about a year now, I've been using a dumbphone that's an LG flip phone. It's small but bulky. I like using it to test my web apps, which all run fine on this phone after installing the Opera Mini browser last summer (2013).

I've held off upgrading my phone because I couldn't decide whether to buy an iPhone or an Android phone. My wife uses the iPhone. My stepdaughter used to use the iPhone, but in the spring of 2013, she changed to the Samsung S4. In 2013, my wife exchanged her work phone, which was an old-style Blackberry, for a Samsung S4.

In November of 2013, I tried to buy an iPhone 5C, but I was not eligible for an upgrade yet.

I bought my first cell phone in 1997. I bought my second cell phone in 2001 or 2002, and after this two-year plan expired, I did not renew it, and I've never purchased a new phone since.

So it's a bit funny that I was not "eligible" for a cell phone upgrade in November 2013. That's our Verizon plan. I think this spring, I can upgrade my phone.

I'd like to get a smartphone, but I would still like to own a dumbphone or a low-end feature phone that has web access for testing web apps.

In August 2011 when HP decided to exit the tablet market, HP unloaded their 16-gig and 32-gig 10-inch tablets in a firesale. I managed to buy a 32-gig HP tablet for $150. This tablet runs WebOS. I received the tablet in October 2011, and I've used it nearly every day.

I like reading websites on my tablet. I despise typing on the tablet's screen keyboard. I have used my tablet with a bluetooth wireless keyboard, and this makes for a nice, portable writing machine.

But for heavy writing, searching, cutting-and-pasting, linking, etc., I find the laptop superior to a tablet.

I have found that I no longer like the larger 9.7 inch or "10-inch" tablets. It's too bulky for holding. I like my Mom's iPad Mini and my one brother's 7-inch Kindle HD Fire.

If I bought a new tablet, it would be the 7-inch or 8-inch size.

But I would like limit myself to two devices. The laptop is a requirement for programming, photo management, and writing.

The other device would obviously be a phone, but I wish a larger iPhone already existed. I think the Apple 5C and 5S are larger than my wife's iPhone, but the Apple products are still smaller than the Samsung S4.

Apple may release a larger iPhone in late 2014. That's too late for me. I like the idea of a $99 iPhone 5C because it would be my first Apple product, and I could get more familiar with iOS, and the apps that run this device from the perspective of being curious about design. Some mobile apps are unavailable for Android. I think that I could learn more about web design by using apps on the iPhone. I would install writing, notetaking, social media, and news apps.

With a $99 iPhone, I could switch to something larger from Apple or switch to an Android phone in a year or so without losing a ton of money.

I suppose that if I buy an iPhone, I would still use my HP tablet for reading at times. As websites incorporate more sophisticated CSS3, HTML5, and JavaScript features, those sites either function less or don't function at all on my HP tablet. But I've used heavily for nearly 2.5 years, and at a $150, it has definitely been a worthwhile purchase.