Changelog

Five requested devices, and the 8 GB iPhone 5c nobody in America saw

The request queue is clear again. The Huawei P10 starts the 2017 chapter of the P Series: Kirin 960, the second Leica dual camera, and the storage lottery that followed, where identical phones shipped with UFS 2.1, UFS 2.0 or much slower eMMC 5.1 depending on what Huawei could source that week. The Redmi 9 opens a Redmi line of its own with the Helio G80 and that 5020 mAh battery. The IBM ThinkPad R52 lands with all thirteen machine types and its three panel options, the last R-series before the Lenovo badge took over. The ThinkPad X280 joins as the model where the X-series gave up swappable RAM and the hot-swap battery, which is exactly why people argue about it. And the HP Envy 14 Beats Edition arrives in matte black with the red backlit keyboard and the Beats Solo headphones that came in the box. One correction too: the iPhone 5c page now lists the 8 GB model Apple quietly added in March 2014 for the UK, France, Germany, Australia and China, and never sold in the US.

Thanks @humming-dingo-879ba requested the Redmi 9, @turbo-raven-c433e requested the HP Envy 14 Beats Edition, @goncalowtv reported the missing 8 GB iPhone 5c capacity

Own two of something? Say so

Collections and gear lists now carry a quantity per device. Unfold any row in a list you own and a small qty control sits next to the remove button; push it past one and the row shows a ×2 (or ×7, no judgement) next to the device name for everyone. Two iMac G3s with different specs? Set the quantity to 2 and put what makes each unit special in the note underneath. Three of you asked for this, twice about iMacs specifically, which feels right.

Thanks bestCoder1877 first asked for multiples of the same item, Zolguroth8137 asked for quantities, with the two iMac G3s example

Sony Ericsson, the full sweep: 65 phones

One member asked for an extensive Sony Ericsson search, and the library now tells the whole story of the joint venture. The T68i era grows into the full T, Z and J series. The Walkman line runs from the W550 swivel to the W995, thirteen new W phones deep. The Cyber-shot side lands the K700 through K850 plus the C-series (the C905 and its 8.1 megapixels included), and the smartphone thread is complete: every UIQ flagship from the P900 to the P1, the M600, both G-series tablets-in-a-phone, then Windows Mobile on the Xperia X2 and the Android run from the X10 mini through the Arc S. The Satio, Aino, Yari, both Vivaz models and the GreenHeart eco trio round out the last years before the Sony buyout. Eleven new lines, every spec web-verified, and where 2000s-era chipsets were never documented the pages say so instead of guessing.

Notes on every device in your collections and gear

Open any device in a collection you own, or in your gear list, and there is now an "+ Add a note" link under it. Write why it is on the list, where your unit came from, what is wrong with it, whatever you like, up to 500 characters. Visitors see it as a pull quote when they unfold the row. Several of you asked for somewhere to keep what you know about each piece of your own tech, instead of just the fact that you have it. This is that.

Thanks Legatar2904 asked for per-device notes in collections

Eleven requested devices, two webOS guides, and a redder Berry

The request queue is clear again. Samsung gets five: the Galaxy Ace Plus (GT-S7500), the S5560 Marvel touchscreen feature phone from 2009, the dual-SIM Galaxy S Duos 2 and its single-SIM twin the Galaxy Trend Plus, and the Galaxy A14 with the 5G model folded in as a variant. The HTC Wildfire S joins the Wildfire line, the Palm Pre 2 (the last Pre sold under the Palm name) joins Pre, the HP Stream 8 starts a Stream line, the Kobo Clara Colour starts Clara, the 2012 Ivy Bridge Dell OptiPlex 7010 joins OptiPlex with all four chassis as variants, and the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W starts a Pico line for the microcontroller boards. Also live: two community guides on enabling developer mode and installing Preware on the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi. Two spec corrections from members landed too: the Game Boy Color Berry swatch is now the raspberry red it always was, and the Galaxy Tab A 9.7 (2015) lists its Smoky Blue colour.

Thanks webOS Dude wrote the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi Preware guides, and requested the Palm Pre 2, Zolguroth8137 requested the HP Stream 8, Dell OptiPlex 7010 and Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, and reported the Tab A 9.7 Smoky Blue colour, SlayThat requested the Samsung S5560 Marvel and HTC Wildfire S, JoBot corrected the Game Boy Color Berry colour, Gonçalo requested the Kobo Clara Colour, Francesco requested the Galaxy Trend Plus

The Wii U page finally knows about its GamePad

One of you pointed out that the Wii U spec sheet covered the console and said nothing about the tablet controller that made it the Wii U. Fixed. The page now lists the GamePad screen (6.2 inch resistive touch, 854x480), its battery (1500 mAh, about 3 to 5 hours), and everything packed inside: the camera, the NFC reader for amiibo, the IR blaster that turns it into a TV remote, the 9-axis motion sensing, and the 5 GHz link that streams the game to your hands. Consoles across the library can now carry a controller line in their spec sheets, so more of these are coming.

Four requested devices, and a guide for flashing old Chromebooks

The request queue is empty again. The Moto G Play (2023), Motorola's $170 three-day-battery phone, joins the Moto G line. The Dell OptiPlex 3020M, the one-liter Haswell box that half the homelab world runs on, joins OptiPlex. The Samsung W2018, the $2,400 China-only flip phone that had a variable aperture camera before the Galaxy S9 made it famous, starts the new W Series line. And the Acer Aspire V5-473 rounds out the Aspires. Also live: a community guide on installing RW_LEGACY firmware on the Dell Chromebook 11, so an end-of-life Chromebook can boot other systems without losing ChromeOS.

Thanks JoBot requested the Dell OptiPlex 3020M, Hamza requested the Acer Aspire V5-473, anthpect01 wrote the Chromebook RW_LEGACY guide

Guide photos from your phone now just work

Uploading a photo into a guide could fail without saying a word: no image, no error, nothing. The cause was size. A photo straight off a modern phone is often bigger than the 4 MB limit, and the failure happened so early that the polite error never got a chance to run. Now the editor shrinks big photos in your browser before sending them, so phone photos sail through, and when an upload genuinely cannot work you get told, in words, above the editor.

Link your Skool membership with any email

The Legendary Tech Club badge no longer cares which email you joined Skool with. If your community email is not the one you sign in with here, the settings page now has a "Joined with a different email?" flow: enter your Skool email, we send a six digit code to it, and once you type it in your membership is linked. Each Skool email can only ever be claimed by one account, so badges cannot be passed around. The badge section also stopped describing the three tiers in words and simply shows them, and once you are linked your badge sits big and proud at the top of settings. Several of you asked for exactly this. Done.

Two requested devices: HP Compaq 6730b and the Steam Controller

Both came straight from the request queue. The HP Compaq 6730b, the 15.4 inch Centrino 2 workhorse from late 2008, joins the HP stable with the full QuickSpecs treatment. And the Steam Controller, Valve's dual-trackpad 2015 oddball that taught a generation what haptic trackpads could do before going out in the great $5 fire sale of 2019, lands in the Valve lineup with teardown-verified silicon in its spec sheet.

Thanks Andrew Shumake requested the HP Compaq 6730b, killian.schrombeck requested the Steam Controller

A club band on the home page, and small polish everywhere

The home page now closes with an invitation: a Join the Legendary Tech Club band with the three member badges on display, and a touch of gold, the one colour the club has always owned. The latest stories section grew to four in the side rail, and the recent guides rail can be dragged with the mouse like it always should have. Over on guides, an + Add guide button sits right in the filter bar, and the guide editor's menus finally dress like the rest of the site instead of like a stock component. Also: the Galaxy Rush spec sheet now records its official Android 4.1.2 update.

Thanks Google Fan corrected the Galaxy Rush OS support spec

Write your own guides, in a proper editor

Guides just grew a real writing surface. Head to /guides/new, pick the device, and you land in a proper markdown editor: slash commands, tables, image blocks, a raw markdown toggle for anyone who prefers to type it straight, and a repair-guide template to start from if you want one. Autosave means nothing is lost mid-thought. Drop in photos and they run through the same pipeline as community photos: resized, EXIF stripped, hosted properly. Every submission still goes through review, but now a rejection comes with a note you can actually read, in the editor and by email, and edits to a guide that is already live wait quietly for approval instead of changing what everyone sees on the spot.

A living home page, right at /

The front door changed. / is now a living home page: an ASCII-art rendering of the Legendary Tech mark reacts to your cursor behind the search bar, with a device of the day, what just landed, a scrollable rail of recent guides, the latest stories, and the community's newest collections underneath. The counts in the hero animate up on load. The old device browser kept its spot too, just moved to /browse, and the nav grew an Explore tab plus a mobile tab row that scrolls instead of squeezing six tabs onto one line. The browser tab finally carries our mark too, in place of the placeholder squiggle.

Condition tags on your gear

Every device in your gear can now carry a condition: like new, working, needs repair, or bricked. Pick it when you add the device (the chooser asks right alongside the variant), change it any time from the same button. Your gear registry shows the condition where the score used to sit, and it appears as a little tag on your public profile, so the fixers among us can spot a machine that needs a hand.

Thanks Polar Bear suggested condition tags so specialists can offer help

Community photo uploads actually work now

A hidden 1 MB ceiling was quietly rejecting most photo submissions: the upload would sit on Uploading, then dump you on an error page. Fixed. Photos up to 4 MB now sail through, anything bigger gets told politely instead of crashing the page, and the size limit is printed next to the button.

Thanks Polar Bear reported the stuck upload

Stories: news and history, on the site and in your inbox

Legendary Tech has a newsroom now. Stories lives at /stories: a feed rail on the left, the open story on the right, arrow keys to walk the archive, filters by manufacturer and device, and an RSS feed for the feed readers among us. Every story cross-links the devices it covers, and device pages link back with a Stories strip. Want it delivered? Subscribe anywhere you see the signup and Legendary Stories lands in your inbox weekly, with an unsubscribe that never touches your account emails.

Guides get a real home: the index and reader at /guides

Guides moved out of the device tabs and into their own space. /guides is a dense, newest-first board of every published guide with manufacturer and device filters, and every guide now has its own permalink page with a rail on the left and the reading pane on the right, the same grammar as collections. Guide titles are searchable straight from the command palette too, and picking one takes you to the guide itself, not just the device it belongs to.

Three community badges: Member, Legend, VIP Legend

Skool community badges now come in three levels. Free members carry the Member chip, premium members go gold as Legends, and the top supporter tier earns the full gold VIP Legend. Link your membership in settings and the badge follows you across profiles, notes, and collections.

Welcome aboard, request a device, and the fine print

New members now land on a welcome page with the three moves that matter: start a collection, add your gear, rate what you have owned. Missing a machine? The new + Add device button on browse files a request straight to the site team. And the site grew a privacy policy and terms of use, linked in every footer.

Rate devices: the legendary score is live

Members can rate any device 1 to 10 under its Community tab, one rating each, tap yours again to clear it. Once a device has three ratings its legendary score appears quietly in the header, damped so a single fan cannot mint a legend. Collections also count views now, so the feed sorts by most and least viewed for real.

A signature, and quieter chrome

Legendary Tech has a mark now: a cursive L in the browser tab and on share cards, with a bigger rainbow glow behind the wordmark. Around it, less noise: the open and closed arrows are gone from the browse and collections panels, footers settle into one quiet size, long breadcrumbs truncate instead of stacking, and My collections moved to its own page with the new-collection flow.

Collections, reimagined as a registry

The collections page is a whole new product: a feed of collections on the left, and a registry view on the right with an era timeline, maker breakdown, upgrade stats, combined launch price, and a dense table where every device unfolds in place. Curators show their @username and Skool badge, the feed sorts newest or oldest, and the rail collapses just like the browse columns.

Arrow keys everywhere

Browse is now fully keyboard-walkable: up and down move through the current column, right dives deeper, left backs out, and filters are respected. On collections, up and down flick between collections in the feed.

One-button gear flow and sharing

Adding a device to your gear is now a single button, and every device page has a share button. Suggest-a-correction is relabelled Revisions.

Randomise on browse

A randomise button on the browse index jumps you to a random device. For when you want the shelf to surprise you.

Trending search and members-only community content

Search now surfaces trending devices, community content can be marked members-only, and collections gained a filter modal.

Variants everywhere: 854 to 2,899

A research wave more than tripled the variant catalogue, and you can pick your exact variant (colour, storage, size) when adding gear.

Skool badges: Verified and VIP Legend

Link your Skool membership in settings and your profile shows a Verified Legend badge, gold VIP Legend for premium members.

One epic search

Identify is folded into the search palette: paste a model number or an Apple serial and it resolves to the device, with an AI fallback for the weird ones. Contributor reputation also went live, Local Guides style.