Why I Switched to a Flip (Dumb) Phone (For Now)

Posted by rbroberg 6 years, 5 months ago to Technology
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Word on the street is flip phones are making a comeback.

I realized I wanted to activate my Samsung Convoy 4 after I realized (1) real time stock prices are best suited to professionals who work in stockbrokerages, (2) 90 percent of the time Twitter and Facebook are battlefields and pissing contests, (3) entertainment updates are not what the bossman wants me to think about in the office, (4) the weather prediction changes and it never really rains in California regardless, and (5) they all say the same shit anyway.

Advantages: Economical texts, more voice calls, fewer distractions
Disadvantages: Listening to people who have smart phones for information about weather, sports, politics.

I want to evaluate whether the following change: relationships, communication, attention span.

This experiment will last two weeks.


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  • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
    A few months ago me dino was pushing a cart through Walmart where two salespersons~cough! cough! patooie! yuck!~salesladies wore Direct TV sales uniforms.
    The Caucasion one asked the expected question and I advised that I got Direct TV on the very spot where she stood about four years ago.
    The other, a short and adorable looking Asian Indian (maybe Pakistani), approached all wide-eyed and pointed at the bulge in my shirt pocket.
    "Oh, is that a flip phone?" she said with intoned wonderment while brightly smiling. "You still have ONE OF THOSE?!"
    I took it out and showed it to her.
    "Oh, how ADORABLE!"
    I even let her hold it. She said, "I haven't seen one of these for a while."
    "I'm old-fashioned," I explained.
    She gave it back, I wished both ladies a nice a day and I pushed the cart on toward the catfood aisle. Monsieur Moocher must be fed.
    Yesterday was different. Besides there being no Direct TV salespersons (this time I'll say it because sometimes they are male), just before I reached the catfood, my eyes caught sight of a Janis Joplin CD, which I immediaely added to my cart.
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    • Posted by Dobrien 6 years, 5 months ago
      Did you play this tune for Monsieur Moocher?
      https://youtu.be/ju9yFA1S7K8
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      • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
        For the first few months Moocher would not let me touch it. Then one day while I picked blueberries it kept flopping belly-up at my feet.
        I was saying, "Who taught you that?" while I scratched its tummy without it even grabbing at my hand.
        When I walked back to the house, Moocher kept running aahead and flopping, running ahead and flopping even when I began to ignore those antics.
        The petting mystery cleared up when it turned cold. A lost kitten turned up at the back door.
        When I pointed the kitten out to a neighbor, I was told the crazy cat lady up the street had another littler of kittens.
        I took the kitten to the cat lady's house but no one was home. My son took a stab at it a few hours later and scored a success.
        Cat lady took the kitten to a special room with a heater that her cats could get in and out of. My son saw Moocher there and told the lady, who said, "That figures" due to its prolonged absences.
        So Moocher is a first rate Monsieur Moocher as well as a daddy. The kitten had more than likely followed Moocher to my home but Moocher was a tomcat too knuckle-headed to know what to do about it.
        At least Moocher knows all about "getting it while you can."
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    • Posted by IndianaGary 6 years, 5 months ago
      [Off topic alert] Hmmm. What kind of cat? I rescued three in 2015 and have never regretted it even when one of them decides that the only way to wake me in the morning is to bite my hand.
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      • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
        Far as I know, I have a run of the mill shorthair tomcat perfect for Halloween being entirely black with green eyes. It was a stray I fed a can of Starcist tuna to roughly two years ago. When it decided to stick around to mooch, I started to buy it cat food. Moocher really loves the Temptation brand treats, but I always start its day with regular cat food.
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        • Posted by IndianaGary 6 years, 5 months ago
          Mine all like the Temptations as well. I love black cats, although I currently have a 14 year old silver Weegie, an 11 year old brown tabby, and a 6 year old Snowshoe (Siamese/shorthair mix). I love the name.

          BTW, please keep Moocher safely indoors for the last several days of October. There are some truly evil people out there that deliberately mistreat black cats around the Halloween holiday.
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          • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
            Never heard of that about black cats or at least not in my area..
            I have heard of sadistic cat-haters but their sick activites are not restricted to Halloweem.
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            • Posted by IndianaGary 6 years, 5 months ago
              You might be surprised how many black cats live out their lives in shelters. Some (stupid) people are superstitious and won't adopt a black cat. It's silly, I know; many of the black cats I've met were some of the most loving and affectionate cats around.
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            • Posted by $ Suzanne43 6 years, 5 months ago
              Unfortunately it's true. We had a black cat named Sally for years. She did not like Halloween mainly because my husband and I were both employed in the only elementary school in town, and all the kids would come to the house to get their Snicker candy bars. Sally used to hide under the bed or some other place that would be far away from the door. I would have kept her inside on that night anyway...there are evil people out there. On that particular night, I was always happy that Sally was a fraidy cat. :)
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              • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
                Moocher is a fraidy too and still has some feral in it. It does not allow strangers anywhere near it.
                Yestertady I was walking across the kitcen when I snagged a foot on the grab handle of a plastic bag with groceries still in it.
                You should have seen how Moocher hunkered down all wide-eyed obviuoisly thinking some creature had attacked my foot.
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                • Posted by IndianaGary 6 years, 5 months ago
                  Cats know that they are small predators surrounded by big scary predators so they tend to be appropriately paranoid. If humans weren't such pushovers they'd stay away from us as well. Life is hard in the middle of the food chain.
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                  • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
                    My son once saw a fox in the front yard (I live at a dead end of an avenue almost surrounded by lots of woods) and then saw a most unhappy Moocher staring at the fox too.
                    Moocher disappeared for an entire week. I'm pretty certain it preferred the company of other cats at the crazy cat lady's house for a while.
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                    • Posted by IndianaGary 6 years, 5 months ago
                      Yes, foxes and coyotes are the bane of cats and other small predators.
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                      • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
                        Alabama has coyotes too. I just have not seen or heard coyotes at my address where I've lived for about a decade.
                        I've seen and heard them elsewhere in my county, though, since the 80s.
                        Armadillols apparently beat coyotes across the barrier of the Mississippi River. Saw my first one in Florida during the 70s.
                        That's when I learned one can jump five feet high when attacked by a dog. They sure don't wear turtle armor.
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                        • Posted by IndianaGary 6 years, 5 months ago
                          A cat can do an "armadillo jump" too when startled and it's hilarious to watch. Maybe not as high, but straight up from all four paws.

                          If you are interested in learning more about cats and their care and feeding, try Think Like A Cat, by Pam Johnson-Bennett. It's a great book and has a really cute cover.
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                          • Posted by $ allosaur 6 years, 5 months ago
                            Yesterday my son mowed the lawn and said he saw Moocher on the roof of a neighbor's sizable shed and wondered how the cat got up there.
                            I told my son Moocher can jump the same neighbor's chain link fence and for the shed he just needed one or two extra jumping places.
                            Today I studied the shed from my house. I noticed a barrel with a lid beside a downward extension of the shed's roof over an open area.
                            Just about then my son came into the kitchen. I told him I think I figured out how Moocher got on that roof.
                            "The barrel?" he said.
                            Yup.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 6 years, 5 months ago
    Cool.

    I have friends who ask me about my disappearance from Facebook and LinkedIn. "What's it like?...." It's great. I do use my smart phone to manage my investments and video my kids. That's it.
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  • Posted by Donald-Brian-Lehoux 6 years, 5 months ago
    I want a phone that is just a phone, NO TEXTING!!! With HUGE buttons and numbers to make it easier to read. I would settle for a video camera to record the police as the second option.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 5 months ago
    Cut the cord, er, wifi, er, cell data.
    I look forward to your objective analysis.
    (My addiction is to my laptop, phone data has been too pricey to be addicted so far. The Gulch is definitely a distraction.)
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  • Posted by GaryL 6 years, 5 months ago
    What good is a "SMART PHONE" in dumb hands?
    My wife and me both have had I phone 5 and now have I Phone 6 and neither of us use them for anything other than texting through WIFI and I message which is exclusive to I phones only and actually pretty unreliable at best. We have a big fat Zero for cell signal at home and for at least 3 miles until we top the mountain. She has full signal when at work but we cannot make voice calls to each other. From home I must have satellite TV and Internet plus I must have land line phone services and we have the cell phones for emergency purposes as well as texting through WIFI. AT the top of the mountain they have hard wired cable TV and internet with no data caps and real HS plus they have near full cell signal and don't need a land line phone. YUK!
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  • Posted by term2 6 years, 5 months ago
    cell phones and sports on TV are ways to avoid actually communicating and interacting with other human beings.

    Hopefully, this kneeling thing will break the hold of TV sports on peoples' time. We have been manipulated into making the NFL and those ghetto players rich while wasting our lives.

    If you like sports, play them yourself, or at worst go to see the games in person. Watching TV is just a waste of time.

    People become glued to their smartphones all day, and dont actually interact with other people any more. Its all about tweets, following where people go all day, and other nonsense.
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  • Posted by 6 years, 5 months ago
    Experiment aborted after approximately 36 hours. Failure resulted from time to text, which severely limited real time text conversations. This lead to anxiety in text recipients, who are accustomed to faster response times. Of second importance was the lack of emoticon visibility, which do in fact enable word connotations to be communicated more clearly. Conclusion and recommendation: keep your smart phone, but limit usage of apps that draw significant time without enhancing communication or awareness.
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    • Posted by freedomforall 6 years, 5 months ago
      Or use the phone as a phone - communication is easier and clearer speaking than spending a long time typing on a "keyboard" that entirely too small for efficiency. Why should I waste my time texting because someone else wants me to?

      However, I can still use the smart phone for lots of other things- calculator, alarm clock, kitchen timer, music player, camera, scanner, gps, exercise monitor, etc. None of those require use of lots of expensive data- most don't even need a phone connection, and they are in a very compact useful form.
      I have had a smart-er phone (not just a dumb mobile phone) since I decided to go overseas for an extended period (about 2005. I didn't have a cell phone before that at all.) The extra functions on it are great for travelers.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 6 years, 5 months ago
    I am being forced into a decision of whether or not to get a dumb phone or keep my flip phone. I hardly ever use the phone but the only way I can get/transfer funds, (profit) from a site I put a lot of effort into, is to verify my account thru a dumb phone, they won't do it thru my laptop nor my flip phone.
    The only possible option I have is the site/company has affiliated with paypal, I only have to have some funds in that account. I won't know if all this is going to work out for another month.
    PS, if I can glean a steady paycheck with this system, I will share it with all. I won't know if it actually works until I get to that point. (I'm from Missouri)
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 6 years, 5 months ago
    Interesting. Thanks. It is something to consider.

    When I think about it, aside from the telephone, my smartphone is the level, compass, and clock that I use with my telescope for backyard astronomy. But I could make fixes to the telescope, which I have done for other reasons.

    My smartphone is also my Map. We have two older GPSs for the cars, but we never use them anymore. We could.

    The calculator. Again, I have another one, an older scientific/programmer's, that I carry in my briefcase as a backup.

    The camera.

    Notepad. (Most of the entries are the TV series that we have on disk so I know which ones to look for when I stop at Half Price Books.)

    I do my own weather. It is 60% likely to be 60% like yesterday's. Red sky at night, sailor's delight... and all that...

    Dunno... Maybe I'll go back to a flip phone, too. Contract's up in a few months... Hmmm...

    BTW we do not watch much broadcast TV. We do not own a digital set. Occasionally once or twice a year, I will plug the wires in for network TV. Mostly, we watch DVDs, no Netflix or Hulu, or Chinese People's Liberation Army in the living room.

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    • Posted by IndianaGary 6 years, 5 months ago
      I remember a Half Price Books in Bellevue Washington when I lived in Issaquah. Great store! Sold all my old LPs and a bunch of books to them when I moved to Vegas. I retired from Microsoft in 2012; it got too lefty-progressive for my taste. I got addicted to SmartPhones when I got a free one from work. Now have a Samsung, last year's model.
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  • Posted by LibertyBelle 6 years, 5 months ago
    Since the phone I had conked out, I am just trying to
    find a phone (either landline or cell) not made in a
    totalitarian state. (The other I got from being in a medical experiment, and I was told it was Korean. But that was some years ago, and it has worn out).
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  • Posted by starznbarz 6 years, 5 months ago
    I buy Tracfone flip phones at Dollar General for $5 each, look for the box that says it doubles the minutes for the life of the phone - I buy 5 phones at a time. I have traveled all over the U.S. with them, they always work and have never been charged a "roaming" fee. If I lose it, break it, or it falls in a bucket of paint, just call Tracfone, transfer the number & minutes to the next phone and go about my business. A $20 card, available everywhere, gets me 120 minutes that never expire.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 6 years, 5 months ago
    I have reverted to a little Samsung flip phone. I just don't need all that crap on a phone. It still has more features than I need plus a red button that can locate me and get help if I need it. It is small, and does everything I need. I am tempted to get a smart phone, but it's pretty much like most electronic gadgets, loaded with features I'll never use. Some young up and coming executive types keep their entire office in their pockets.I'd go nuts. No escape. I thank myself almost daily that I managed to work for myself most of my life.
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