Disposable Electronics

I killed my cell phone. It has been in not so nice shape since last July when the anchor screw in the back disappeared and dropping that metal clamp on it a few months ago just made it worse. I finally dropped it and appear to have severed its ability to communicate with its top half meaning the buttons light up but it appears to do nothing to the screen. But I can still turn it on and off, so possibly just the display portion of the connection is dead. It brings to mind my annoyance with he disposable electronics industry. My phone was originally my sister's but it "broke" on her and she had to upgrade. It sat around for a while until I finally got a cell phone. It has worked reliably well since then even with being in a condition of maybe 1 out of 10 cosmetically. All of the rubber bumpers have worn off and the screen has imprints of all the buttons. The metallic finish on the battery is almost all worn off, and most of the side buttons only work when they want to. yet it still worked fine for texting and phone calls. I rather like the build quality. It was new in 2004. All my relatives have gone though phones, like having them for two years is impossible, they just keep breaking. As it is now undeniably dead I'm going to need to get a new one. I've been thinking of just buying another one of my current phone on eBay and irritating the Verizon people who will activate it. All the new free phones I've seen are tiny pieces of junk. My mothers new phone, only a few weeks old drops calls all the time due to an idiotic placement of the antenna exactly where anyone using it will have to put fingers. My painfully old phone didn't do that. It also put up with a lot of punishment. I'll be seeing if anything can be retrieved from my phone, but I'm not holding out much hope. edit: The phone is dead, guess I have to ask people to call or text me when I get the next one so I have all their numbers again.