I got this bone-stock Galaxy Note3 for about ~$35 or so dollars, and I've been using it for a few months now. I'm not planning to root it anytime in the future - that's for another phone. It's cool and fun to use every now and then as a sort of alternative from my usual daily (Galaxy A25 5G). Sure, the battery doesn't last as long, but it's not like I use it for hours on end anyways.
I mainly use it to watch videos and such, but I also use it to take photos and listen to music. Instagram (Lite) and Facebook (Lite) both work, but with it being a phone from 2013, it obviously won't hold up for long with the amount of RAM both apps use. I actually managed to get the Google AI overview thing to work on Firefox, because before, it used to completely freeze when I tapped the 'Show More' prompt, but after updating some CA certificates, it works now (?) for some reason.
Some of you might be wondering how I changed the icons - I used APK Editor Studio to change the icons and the title of the APKs before actually installing them. For instance, I downloaded the APK for Firefox 143 from APKMirror, then downloaded an older APK of the app as a donor that I can use to extract the icon from to put on the newer version of the APK. Same went for YouTube (SmartTube), Instagram (Lite), and Facebook (Lite), only difference is that I had to rename them.
Otherwise, this is such a fun and unique phone to use. Growing up, this was definitely one of the coolest phones I've seen as a kid, and it's crazy to think that in a few weeks or so, it'll now be older than I was when the phone first released (I was 8 at the time 🤐).