Landline with an answering machine. I still haven’t found a reason to get more advanced than that.
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Nokia Mural.
http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_mural-2925.php
I don’t really get contemporary cell phone design. The screens are usually useless in an outdoor setting and they all seem ergonomically crude. I always feel like an ass using them in public. The rise of the smartphone surprised me as the idea of holding a touch screen to your face always seemed ridiculous to me. They seem clunky, oversized, and overcomplicated. But the most puzzling thing to me is the persistence of the phone company as a concept when telephony should have, by now, become an application of a broader data network rather than the core of it. Why the hell are we still talking about phone companies in 2015?
When I was a kid we anticipated a very different future for the wireless phone. It was supposed to evolve into something rather like this or this. Slim, elegant, jewelry-like, pocketable, resilient, globally linked, intuitively controlled largely by voice command, and specialized to the job of telephony. All those other functions of a smartphone where supposed to be the province of a pocket computer or pocket PAD. A mobile data node. Do you have any idea how long the battery in a phone would last if you just did away with the power-hungry screen and used an audio user interface instead? How is it that Siri and Cortana haven’t obsolesced screens yet?
Today I don’t often use a cell phone. As I jokingly say, there’s no one I need to talk to that badly. But I routinely use an iPod Touch. It does everything an iPhone does save the increasingly pointless telephone part and costs a fraction as much.
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Because they aren’t as good of listeners as a toddler mid-tantrum.
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So…a pocket computer that looks much like our smartphones, which we’d use as we do now, plus one of these?
(hey, @beschizza, why didn’t you get one of these?)
The phone part of my phone is largely superfluous. Hardly ever gets used. It is a pocket computer. What would the improvement be if i had an iPod Touch instead and a dumb phone? (and do they have data connections, anyway?)
And I don’t want Siri/Cortana etc at all. I have no desire to talk to my computer in the slightest.
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The AT&T go phone–even the lowest priced model ($15, I think) is more than adequate as a basic, reliable phone service.–a $25 phone card giving service for three months or x number of minutes; that priced card was more than adequate for my needs. For me though, a smart phone is too much of a good thing to pass up. Just too convenient to let go.
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Space-cadet…
I can actually thank my first smartphone for my current career - at the time I had to be able to accept documents for translation, so I needed to be able to scan a pdf or word file briefly and write a quick email. The company I was working with was based on the other side of the world, so I got emails in the middle of the night - that only changed when they were happy enough with my work to wait a few hours and ask me individually. I couldn’t have done that with a dumbphone and it would have been difficult to have my computer with me all the time. Nowadays I keep more reasonable office hours, but sometimes I do short projects on my phone if I’m out of the house. Like you, I practically never use my phone for calls.
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Well … it’s in process and slow — stalled even.
I mostly use email, texting and browse some news, support and related sites.
Voice is something I could let go of esp. if there was an IP “phone number” to receive calls and a suitable app to convert those to text or email.
My kids and younger colleagues pretty much ignore voice and prefer text.
The challenge is gathering the skills to legally root and uncouple the Galaxy Note 3 from Verizon and migrate the OS to Ubuntu or another OS.
Once that was done, the internet plans at work and home would be adequate.
Another need is a cooperatively operated email server or other Google alternative/backup for calendars, document sharing, email, etc.
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It’s weird when I get a call. The phone UI is shitty and unreliable and slow, and I always feel like mashing the thing against my head is going to accidentally put them on hold or disconnect the call. Touchscreen (with important controls) against face is a fucking stupid idea. Bluetooth headsets are a life saver.
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$100 and you have to provide your own sim card.
Any idea what the drop tests are like? If it’s durable i wouldn’t mind the premium.
Why does it have to be legally? If a method works it works, and it is not like there are sniffer dogs that could detect unlocked electronics.
Sigh. You’re right. … Even it’s just for “academic” purposes, I generally settle for learning with any methods my brain and experience can process in the limited time I have.
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It can’t handle MMS messages because that content is transferred via a data connection. In the old days this was obvious – you would click on your MMS message and wait through the screens showing “connecting to internet…”.
I’m still rocking a Palm Treo 755p, the very best of 2007 technology. I have a stock of spare parts to keep it going. It has a good UI and a hard keyboard, goes a couple of days on a charge, and runs a few useful apps (note taking, English and Spanish dictionaries, and the venerable HP-42 calculator). But Sprint shut down its MMS portal, so if somebody sends me an MMS text, I never know about it.
Kudos yo. I too went from smart to dumb around this time last year. My reason was from needing relief from having to fix, yet again another broken screen. I dug out my oldest’s kids phone from 6 yrs ago out of my youngest kid’s toy bin. Hilarious, especially since becoming instantly cool among the hipsters 
Benefits in health and sanity were immediate even though I was still connected by multiple devices and networks when needed. And if you can believe it, I even survived flying across the states without a smartphone!
Biggest cost has been an absence of photos of my loved ones. While going dumb, one recommendation is to keep a dumb camera along with.
Really looking forward to my new Robin from Kickstarter arriving in Feb
Caio!
I use my cell phone (yes, it’s still a cell phone) to call and rarely receive calls, and take the occasional crappy picture. It’s an old Verizon flip phone, and lasts a week on a charge. For how I use it, it’s perfect. And I can play Tetris on it if I’m really bored.
So wait–is this the start of the 6 month period? Are you going to be checking back in to let us know how it’s going? This seemed to focus more on choosing a phone than what it’s been like to have one for 6 months. (Just curious!)
I tried to get a feature phone at T-mobile today.
The person helping me laughed at my face and then said, “you mean a flip phone?” I then walked the fuck out.
I have no phone at all for the moment except my last phone (feature phone) with no service (except 911).
Quaintest. Xmas. Evar.
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I’ve actually been using it for 6 months
There’s just not a lot to say about it, really. I don’t think the experience quite adds up to a medium-style Walden-esque thinkpiece about being slightly less attached to the internet! But it is nice.
I missed having a pocket camera and bought a Sony RX100 mk 4 so I had the best pocket camera, but even that is actually quite a beast compared to a cellphone.
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fistbump emoji.
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