News Choosing To Skip The Upgrade And Care For The Gadget You've Got

Vincent Lai was working at a recycling facility in New York and sorting through a bin of used cellphones a few years ago when he dug up a Palm Treo, a smartphone that was discontinued last decade.

Mr. Lai, 49, tested the Treo and found it still worked. So he took the device home and made it his everyday mobile companion, much as one would adopt an abandoned animal on its way to being euthanized.

“That’s how I think about a lot of my tech stuff: candidates for 11th-hour pet rescue," said Mr. Lai, adding that he was fired from the recycling facility in 2010 after continuing to take home unwanted gadgets, against the wishes of his boss. Now he works for the Fixers Collective, a social club in New York that repairs aging devices to extend their lives.

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