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Woe is me

Grumpy Old Lemons Like You
orchard101
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Woe is me

#238965

Postby orchard101 » July 24th, 2019, 3:33 pm

After resisting for so long I purchased a mobile smartphone. After struggling with it the whole weekend and printing a 31 page instruction manual which was certainly no 'guide for dummies' or an idiots guide, I have come to the sad conclusion that the 'smart' phone is definitely smarter than me. :oops:

BBLSP1
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Re: Woe is me

#238970

Postby BBLSP1 » July 24th, 2019, 3:47 pm

My sympathies! I recently came close to buying a smart phone myself, but in the end bought a new £20 Nokia dumb phone. With it I can talk, text, tell the time, check a calendar, listen to the radio, set an alarm clock, use a reasonable torch and with moderate usage I can go a week (or more) between charging.

For anything else, I can, as now, sit at my computer. I have no need or desire to know everything that is happening in the world in real time once out and about.

Laughton
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Re: Woe is me

#238978

Postby Laughton » July 24th, 2019, 4:39 pm

Don't you have any teenagers you can ask? Actually anyone over the age of about 9 will do.

I also succumbed about a year ago. I don't make use of most of its potential but it's good to be able to get my emails on holiday, use Google maps for satnav, take pretty good photos (I don't have a camera), connect via bluetooth to my car radio so I can receive hands free calls (that's also how I keep it fully charged).

Calendar? Radio? Alarm Clock? - Nah, I already have all of those covered with traditional alternatives.

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Re: Woe is me

#239123

Postby todthedog » July 25th, 2019, 10:13 am

Miss my dumbphone.
The wretched smartphone battery lasts a day, continually tells me to release space, is full of sh1t pre installed. As a consequence spends most of it's life on the bedside table only carried when on long journeys. My little nokia lasted a month.
I get constant calls asking me if I want to update, when I say any signal would be good (Kidwelly) there is usually a silence followed by a click.

Bah humbug :D

UncleEbenezer
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Re: Woe is me

#239149

Postby UncleEbenezer » July 25th, 2019, 10:59 am

todthedog wrote:Miss my dumbphone.
The wretched smartphone battery lasts a day, continually tells me to release space, is full of sh1t pre installed. As a consequence spends most of it's life on the bedside table only carried when on long journeys. My little nokia lasted a month.
I get constant calls asking me if I want to update, when I say any signal would be good (Kidwelly) there is usually a silence followed by a click.

Once upon a time I had a phone that was smart and actually useful (Nokia E71). Proper keyboard, proper battery life (up to a week when not in heavy use). But also the genuinely useful amongst mobile apps, such as maps+satnav, national rail timetables and live info, and the one I use most of all - FM radio. Much smaller screen than today's 'smartphones', but you can't have everything and the keyboard and battery life more than made up for that.

Then that phone drowned. I replaced it with what looked like a natural successor in the same range, but the successor was buggy as all hell, and essentially unusable. In retrospect, a symptom of Nokia's rapid decline that their ability to produce great phones had collapsed. By the time I gave up on it, Blackberry too was troubled and not making anything similar. The world was all MeToo-lookalikes to the bloody iphone. :evil:
Bah humbug :D

Hey, that's my line! Thank you for giving it an airing :twisted:

To the OP - forget the manual. Just start using it for whatever you do understand, and figure out new things as you go along. Much easier to learn something when you have a genuine motivation for that something than as an exercise.

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Re: Woe is me

#239340

Postby todthedog » July 25th, 2019, 8:06 pm

A phone should be a benefit not a burden.

It is possible to hold a conversation without needing to check on your online status every 10 minutes.

Leave the bloody thing at home or in your pocket, there is a whole real world out there. :D

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Re: Woe is me

#239366

Postby Urbandreamer » July 25th, 2019, 9:21 pm

I have to confess that I wouldn't be without my smartphone, and I couldn't see the point of mobile phones back when "dumb" phones were becoming popular (I did learn).

OK, let us recognise the one true issue/problem.

You do need to charge them every day/night. Personally I do so while I am asleep! I also use the automatic features to only allow it's built in alarm clock to wake me. No txt mesage bleeps or offers from Amazon while I sleep wake me.

Actually there is another simple issue, they are not as easy to use as people say that they are!

HOWEVER:

The simple alarm clock can be used to remind me to leave for a dentists apointment. No need for the complexity of the calendar reminders.

Has anyone found themsleves double booked because they didn't ensure that their paper diary matched their partners or a family calander? Not an issue if you share your calander on your smartphones! I get entries from the wife and children, simply because they put them on the phone calander.

Got home and forgot to buy something on the shopping list, well obviously you should have taken it with you! Then again, set off to work with the shopping list and nobody can add to it. Guess what, items can turn up on the shopping list you are using, WHILE you shop, if you use a phone app.

On holiday and need a supermarket, turn on location (allow google/apple to know where you are) and simple ask where the nearest supermarket is. No need to follow a man's directions saying turn at the Dun Cow (long closed) or by the green bridge (painted brown) the phone will guide you.

Need a pocket calculator (in truth if the phone has one it's rubish) simply use the propper calculater app that you downloaded to your phone.

Need a magnifying glass, an inspection mirror/ periscope, use a phone. Seriously if your can't read a meter take a photo

The truth is that we should not view a "smart" phone as a phone at all. It's something else, that happens to be able to recieve and transmit digital radio packets, sorry act as a two way radio channel for voice, sorry as a phone!

BTW, given that TLM grew out of TMF's boards, would it surprise anyone if I admit to chencking on my portfolio on my smartphone?

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Re: Woe is me

#239413

Postby BBLSP1 » July 26th, 2019, 6:44 am

UD,

It’s horses for courses.

The main use of my ‘dumb’ phone is…well…as a phone. I find it really useful for that; a great ‘invention’. Smart phones, on the other hand - they seem to be subtly trying to control you, monitor you, point you in a certain direction, with no added benefit to me that I can see.

As mentioned earlier, I go online sat at a desk with a computer. This is more secure than using wi-fi whilst out and about and less prone to impulse purchases etc.

I could raise an objection/ alternative to the list of your uses for a smart phone. Certainly none of the examples which you cite could not have been dealt with in a different 'smartphoneless' way by me.

Each to their own and all that.

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Re: Woe is me

#239461

Postby bungeejumper » July 26th, 2019, 11:58 am

I use my mobile so rarely that I sometimes wonder why I bother with the subscription? But it's good for maps, text messages, weather and catching up with the news. It has another useful app which can tell me where the nearest public toilets are. Otherwise, errr, no. I don't use it for emails because I get about 400 a day, and what would be the point?

Biggest problem is that my phone is really hard to answer when it rings. I have zombie fingers (thick dry skin on fingertips, very common among musicians etc), and persuading the little green phone icon to swipe can take four or five attempts, by which time my caller has sometimes already hung up.

As for carrying it around with me all the time, I really can't be @rsed. Which annoys my colleagues, who tell me that there's a reason why it's called a mobile phone. :| I take the view that smartphones are an insidious form of 24-hour slavery, and that the world would be a better place if we all left them at home a bit more often.

BJ

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Re: Woe is me

#239467

Postby todthedog » July 26th, 2019, 12:10 pm

Hurrah Bungeejumper ,BBLSP1 and others really happy to find that there are fellow fools who do not enjoy the 'benefits' of the mobile.

As a golf hacker, we have a 'coffin dodgers 'rule that any phone that makes any noise during play results in immediate loss of hole. :lol:

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Re: Woe is me

#239768

Postby orchard101 » July 27th, 2019, 4:21 pm

Very interesting responses to my initial post :D
I am getting to grips with it, slowly, but as it is a very basic PAYG phone, I have now found that I cannot download any apps without increasing my SD card. Not an insurmountable problem as I can access web sites, however the main reason I wanted one was to fill in if my computer went 'belly up'and I needed to access my bank and shopping site.
I intent to rectify my SD problem and then have fun playing with my new toy. :P

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Re: Woe is me

#239781

Postby todthedog » July 27th, 2019, 4:57 pm

SD cards as additional memory :lol:
You may be lucky, my phone would not let me move any preinstalled apps, very few apps will happily install onto an sd card. This despite telling the phone that card and original memory were all one thing as per instructions.
You cannot uninstall bloatware without rooting your phone. (Sounds vaguely sexual).
Motorola may your name be cursed through the ages.
Life is too short.


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