Am I the last person who wants my cell phone simply to be a phone?

I was all set to answer “Hey, I’m with you, buddy!”
But I don’t really even want to call anyone, I just need to be available to others.

I wouldn’t mind having a device that does all that other stuff, and I guess it would be ok if it had VOIP too but I don’t think I would use that feature much.

In my opinion, the biggest advantage of cell phones over landlines is that the former has an off switch.

Yes. I hate calling people, I really just want the phone feature to be available should I need to make a doctor’s appointment or call 911. But I’d much rather do those via email or text. Occasionally, it’s nice to talk to my sister, I guess…

I do not need the web or games on my phone. I do like texting as well, but I think that has more to do with having 2 teenagers than actually liking texting. On second thought, I also like texting because then I do not have to have a 10 minute conversation just to relay one piece of information.

Nope. I don’t want to take pictures with it, play games, get directions, watch TV, or read e-mail. I just want to make and receive phone calls with it (and I don’t even like to do that; I hate to talk on the phone).

I like being able to store phone numbers, and texting is ok as an occasional convenience. But I don’t care for the trend toward one device that does everything from ordering lunch to folding your laundry any more than I want to buy snacks in the auto parts store and auto parts in the snack store.

I call it (drum roll).... “JUST-A-PHONE”… dun dun dunnnnnnnnn!!!

i only wished it existed

No, the Jitterbug is stupid looking. I want this one.

Sometimes I wish cell phones didn’t exist. They are so bothersome and I hate it when I have to make the effort to talk to someone.

@Jeruba : My sentiments exactly.

No, I’m with you on this. I use my phone as a phone only. No texting, no internet, no frills. And my bill is only $34.00 a month.

Not at all.
I don’t need the extras.
I really can’t stand tethers/phones anyway.

how bout dixie cups and sum string?

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies : I always thought it had to be tin cans and string. The tin had something to do with the transmission of sound.

I doubt you’re alone and I fear the day when smartphones replace laptops, but I do use my phone for internet, email, pictures, GPS, games, etc. It’s not a substitute for a computer, though.

I just recently got a phone to replace my just-a-phone, so while it’s really convenient and fun to have a smart phone, I miss my old flip phone sometimes. The extras are nice, but I’m almost certain that I’ll go back to my old flip phone once I’m up to switch phones in two years, just for the simplicity I’ll be more in need of then.

Hmmm. Let me see. Let me carry around a phone, a camera, a video recorder and a video player. A gps system. A calendar, a mail box, a music player a radio, a calculator, and yes, a computer that accesses the internet not just from my desk, but from anywhere on earth I can get a signal.

Ok, let’s see. If I had all that stuff in a separate machine, I’d be lugging around a hundred pounds worth of stuff. Plus it’s functionality would be pretty bad.

And all I need is the little Android machine and I can have all that? Oh, did I mention the tuner?

I now have the ability to access important information in real time, when I need it. I can locate the closest furniture store, buy kitchen chairs and not have to make a huge fuss searching for one near my home. This one was on the way home from where we were. And finding restaurants on the road or other services.

It’s amazing. It makes life soooo much easier. I’d hate to have to go back to the old way. I never had a gps or tuner or half of all that other stuff. And it only cost me $200. No. You can’t have it. It’s mine. Mine! All mine!!!

@hawaii_jake so that’s why I cants get any calls?

Mine doesn’t even text. I’m with you.

I love my Go-Go Gadget phone!

This is exactly why I purchased an Ericsson Flip Phone. It does not have all the fancy gadgets that run the battery down. Its a decent well-built phone that I really enjoy. The volume is loud and since I wear hearing aids, is a plus for me.

I say, keep it simple when it comes to cellphone.

If I want to play a game, I will use my pc at home.

I pay $25/month for the rare moments when I get a flat tire, run out of gas, or spin into the ditch during the winter. Half the time, I can’t get a signal even then.

Given the weather here and the miles of telephone wires that run through woods, I need a corded phone for the regular emergencies that occur in the house.

Yes. I was the next to last person who just wanted my phone to be just a phone. I was just about ready to get one of those “senior” cell phones, with the big keys and nothing but the phone, thank you, I was so tired of it all being all about everything but the phone. But then I got my iPhone and that was the end of that. Actually the iPhone is the best phone I’ve had, in terms of the sound quality, since my first one, my Nokia analog phone 10 years ago. But I had an iPod Touch for a couple of years prior and I think of my iPhone as a basically a better iPod Touch, it’s an iPod Touch with a phone and an HD camera! Cool! For many years I just used my cell for emergencies and for those times you used to need to find a pay phone but you can’t argue with free long distance calls.

I use my work phone only (save money by not having a personal cell) and I don’t take photos with it, don’t text with it (and I thought I was the last person in the world who did not text), don’t go on internet or read email with it (I know myself and I know I would be obsessively checking emails all day if I could). When I am not at a computer, it’s nice to be free from checking pm’s and emails obsessively.

@hawaii_jake @Jeruba Me too! All I want is a simple phone. Sure, the calender and alarm features are nice but I really don’t need the bells and whistles the expense of a fancy phone. And having phone number storage is a double edged sword, because its nice to have, I can’t remember my own phone number much less anyone else’s.
Of course, @jerv’s take on it is quite different than mine… he collects shiny things (sigh)

You’re not alone. I got this flip phone that everybody laughs at. All the time. But it does what I want it to, that is, act like a phone. I got enough video games over here, and I have a computer, I don’t need my phone to do what those do. I honestly do not comprehend the appeal of all them super hightech phones that cost a shitload and do all this vast array of stuff. I might get one, if it cooked my food, did my laundry and got me jobs. But most of what all o dem alien cellphones do, I find no practical use for.

But maybe that’s just me, I never actually purchased a DS and a PSP to play them on the go. I just want to play the games they have for them. Just like I have a phone so I can call, or get called. Not much else. Taking pics with your phone I do think is pretty cool though, but mine has bad display quality.
Anyways as I say, I’m still wondering why the fuck the walkman doesn’t exist anymore, meh. At least those didn’t skip, haha. Wait, people don’t use portable CD players anymore, either? Damnit.

Not at all. I ask very little from my phone. I want it to ring when somebody is calling in, I want to be able to have a functional voice conversation, and when I punch the little buttons I want the phone corresponding to those numbers to ring.

Yes, I admit to having mild iPhone envy from time to time when I see a really cool app. Then I remind myself that I pay less than $8 a month for my pre-paid phone and it does exactly what I need it to do, which is be a phone.

I love being able to do it all on my phone. I wasn’t really ever good at having 3k post-it notes around the house with various shopping lists, reminders to pay bills, to-do lists, notes about which brand of a food I like best, etc. Being able to have that all on my phone, or quickly Google what the label of a wine I heard about looks like, or compare prices of potting soil while I’m standing in Costco debating if I should get the one they have – I really don’t think I could be even the moderately successful adult I am today without it.

As you can see, you are not the last one since my wife is of the same opinion. This has caused a bit of friction over the years as she is a gal who likes to keep things simple while, as she implies, I am a bit of a techno-magpie.

She likes to wake up in time for work and occasionally call me to see where I am while I like to play games, play MP3s through my car stereo while getting traffic updates on my GPS, read PDF format e-books during lunch, and more all with one single $200 pocket-sized gadget like my Droid X instead of needing to haul my laptop and 8MP Samsung camera around, Magellan GPS, and get yet-another gaming handheld.

However, @Raven_Rising can get by without a fancy phone anyways since she can always poke me in the ribs and tell me to do what she wants but cannot do on her Samsung Trance. (She doesn’t, but she can) That, and (unlike me) she has an attention span and doesn’t bore easily… unless I start talking about how cool my latest toy is instead of just thanking her for getting it for me and shutting up.

I’m with you buddy, @hawaii_jake

@wundayatta, I have as many of those as I think I need at home. I don’t have any inclination to carry them around in any form. It would take something much more (a) extraordinary, (b) catastrophic, or (c) interesting than anything that’s ever happened to me before for me to suppose I need to own a video camera or player in any form. I have a handy paper map in my car—and a radio, by God!—and I haven’t been gone from civilization long enough to require a calendar or a mailbox, never mind one that relies on a power supply.

In short, while I don’t begrudge you the convenience you see in any of those items, I too am free from having to carry them around, and doing without them costs me nothing.

@Jeruba I don’t want to talk you into anything. We all have our own preferences for how we want to live. I love the convenience. That’s not of interest to you.

When my first child was born… or right before, we bought our first video camera to document the subsequent events. That was a big huge clunky thing. That, together with my SLR camera (which used film) and associated lenses, took up one whole knapsack on our vacations. We did not do a lot of hiking burdened down with all that.

We upgraded our cameras to a smaller, digital video which also took stills. Not high resolution, but we didn’t care in those days. Recently I bought a new point and shoot which does pretty well, judging my the rest of my family’s preference for that camera over the underwater video camera, for example.

Anyway, I’ve been schlepping all kinds of stuff for decades. My phone works. It does everything. I no longer have to try to read maps while driving (and they thought cell phones while driving were bad—and what about people who read while driving)? Me happy. Me life so much more convenient. Me no have to spend so much time dealing with twenty different gadgets and trying to figure out which ones I need. My phone is a digital swiss army knife. In fact, it has one of those swiss army knife plastic tooth picks built in.

Just kidding. But hey, short of a kitchen sink, a toothpick is pretty decent, don’t you think?

@Jeruba Does your map have a “You are here” that moves so that you can look at it at a glance, or do you have to stop and pull over to use it? Please tell me you don’t unfold it in the car while driving!
Does your radio pick up stations from all over the world or are you limited to those within a few miles of you, and are they clear or full of static?
Does your mailman come to you every time there is mail, or merely drop the mail at your house once a day whether you are there or not?
If your S.O. had an emergency while you were on the road, would you have to wait until you got home to find out and waste an hour, or would you automatically reroute to be by their side ASAP?

Different strokes for different folks and all, but I think it safe to say that your life and needs are considerably different from many people, myself included.

@wundayatta, @jerv, I have no quarrel with anyone’s use of such things, and I fully concede that they can be useful, entertaining, convenient, desirable, and habit-forming. Where we differ sharply is in defining them as needs. To me it seems self-evident to say that we don’t “need” something that came into existence only recently and that we did very nicely without until then.

@Jeruba I couldn’t have said it better myself.

As for @jerv, I would mention that although GPS is perhaps more convenient than a paper map, there are many times when it thinks its the wrong time of day or it gets our location wrong. There are many times that the internet radio blanks out on us, although admittedly that hasn’t been the case with the internet. And of course, should the battery on your phone die due to overuse or lack of charging, we wouldn’t have access to a map, music, internet or phone whereas @Jeruba would still have a paper map, radio and whatever books she carries for entertainment purposes. I’m also fairly certain that the cost of upgrading a paper map is much cheaper than the upgrade for your Droid (and/or whatever you’ll inevitably talk me into replacing your Droid with)

I’m just the opposite.

I love all the bells and whistles, I hate the “phone” part of the phone.

I’m seriously considering getting an iPad and communicating solely through eMail and text.

Did I mention I hate the phone?

Thanks, @Raven_Rising. I’ve also been known to express (with a passion bordering on mania) a paranoid fear of becoming dependent on things that plug in. I still like knowing that I can do just about anything I need to do—including reading a book or a map or writing a message—by daylight or candlelight, without any other power supply or energy source. All the wonders of the Internet rely on the continuing steady availability of cheap power. I can picture a scenario in which we look back in awe on this stage of our technological career: “Remember when everybody had reliable power all the time? and nobody had to give up their Internet connections in order to afford the rent and groceries?” Stranger things than this may happen before the world makes sense again.

One thing that @Raven_Rising forgets to mention is that I like technology but I don’t trust it. Yes, it makes life convenient by allowing me to avoid traffic jams or allowing me to read PDF copies of my vast dead-tree library. However, it doesn’t know that Aurora Ave is a bad idea, so I often know better than it does. And if I need to, I will haul 20+ pounds of books with me to stave off boredom, though I would rather not if a 4 ounce gadget can hold them all.

As for the power, there was a period of time where, thanks to a natural disaster, the only phone @Raven_Rising and I had was a cellphone and the only power we had came from the lighter in her car (we had already sold mine in preparation for a cross-country move) so I am less than convinced by that argument. And if power goes out all over the world the way it did across New England in December 2008, there are other problems that render internet moot, like the fact that it is 32.8F in your kitchen and all the roads are blocked by fallen trees. What a shitty week that was! And if I don’t have 12VDC going to the lighter in my car, odds are that I don’t have it going to the ignition coil either and need to call for a tow.

Technology is convenient and fun, but it is not a panacea. It is no substitute for actual skills (I know how to use a paper map and how to avoid driving into the Puget Sound) but by the same token, eating a variety of great food beats eating lentils and rice three meals a day every day. It all boils down to what sort of life you want. I can do (and have done) both, but I prefer to have a life full of toys if possible, and at this point in my life I can so I do.

nor is it pancetta. My iPhone tastes terrible when sauteed.

I’ve only gradually come around to wanting more out of my phone. I find the calendar and alarm features incredibly useful, and regularly text now (never thought I would). I do take pictures with it, but they’re pretty crappy. Still, without it, I wouldn’t take pictures at all since I always forget to bring my camera. The phone I have is a regular old dumb one, but I’ve come to realize that a smart phone would be very handy for working on Fluther while away from home. Now, if only I could afford one…

I only use my phone for three things:
As a phone
For texting (very rarely)
Play Tetris on the Metro (everyday!)

I’d just love for us to get on to the next innovation and make an omnicomprehensive device that actually is a laptop and a phone and everything else (something like this) without compromising on the actual power of the device. Right now i go around with at least my iPod and my cell phone (nothng fancy, an actual phone with a crappy camera) and, occasioanlly, with my PSP and/or NDS. I’d love to just put on my bracelet/tie/ring/jockstrap/whatever and just have everything incorporated in it…

To clarify, i don’t want the cellphone to be more than a cellphone, i want something whose primary function is different, like, say, a pocket pc, to also be a cellphone so i don’t have to carry it around anymore. Not something like the iphone, though, because i want it to be an actual pc, as in “i can install third party code and a different OS on my PC if i want to”.

I’m in broad agreement with you @hawaii_jake…..yes you! ;¬}
It’s the same with watches, ooh look it tells the time in 56 different countries & it lets you know when a storm is imminent in Outer Mongolia!! Yeah right, about as useful as tits on a snail XD

Ooh, and I could seriously use a GPS. I have no sense of direction whatsoever.

@ucme : I have a friend with an iPhone that tells him when there is an earthquake anywhere in the world. When I asked him why, he just stared at me blankly. I stared back, and he blinked first.

@hawaii_jake I felt him “tremor” from this far away.

Also: i’m with @jerv on this, using something that is convenient doesn’t automatically mean being dependent on it. I can do without cellphones, i can do without phones, even, i can do without a laptop and, to an extent, i can even do without a calculator (as long as we stay within the realm of the first exam of mathematical analysis). I don’t have to in order to be able to.

It’s not even like a smoker saying “i can quiti whenever i want, i just don’t want to”, i have done without every one of my gadgets, i’ve done without the internet, i’ve done without TV. It’s only entertainment, what form it takes is completely irrelevant. I happen to be an avid gamer but i don’t need games to amuse myself. I’m currently waiting for a guy to come into work so i can start my day job and i’m doing crosswords on paper. I’d rather be playing something, because there’s no single player pen and paper game that can be as engaging as a videogame, but it’s not necessary for me to enjoy myself.

The only reasons why i don’t already have an iphone or a similar smartphone is that i don’t like my electronic gadgets to be locked by the manufacturer. I know enough about technology to decide for myself what i want on my devices, that’s why i build my pcs myself and always crack every console as much as possible.

Not because i want to pirate games (which is a perk when you’re broke, but i’m not going to defend it because i know full well it’s wrong, especially for someone who wants to work in the gaming industry) but because i know most consoles aren’t used to their full potential and i’d much rather be able to decide for myself what to do and not do with them.

@hawaii_jake “because i can” or “why not?” are my usual answers to those questions. “Why did you install a word processor on your PSP if it doesn’t have a keyboard or a touch screen?” “Because i could”. “Why did you install a feedreader on your laptop when you almost never connect to a wireless and you don’t have one at home?” “Why not?”

I’m really enjoying the discussion this question has brought out. I had no idea it would elicit such interesting responses.

I enjoy technology, but I dislike meeting friends at the coffee shop where I sit and attempt conversation while they are all staring at their phones. There’s something wrong when a person is unable to give his/her attention to the people present instead of to a device. It’s very easy to say they may be having a meaningful conversation with another person, and my response would be “what am I? chopped liver?”

I love the Internet. I love what it has done for us, how it has transformed the world, and the ways that it connects people. Fluther is a great example of the best of the Internet. (Why Internet has to be capitalized I’ll never know, but grammatically speaking, it’s supposed to be.) I have made a couple of really meaningful relationships with people on this site, and those have expanded to relationships off this site. I’ve gained real knowledge here that has impacted the way I see the world.

I think my biggest hang up with smart phones is the way they are used. As I view it, they divide us in the real world from one another instead of bridging the gaps that exist between us. (I can also see all kinds of logical holes in that statement, too.) When I make a coffee date with a friend, I want to meet him/her. I don’t want him/her to bring a virtual world along that will continually interrupt us.

@hawaii_jake but I dislike meeting friends at the coffee shop where I sit and attempt conversation while they are all staring at their phones. There’s something wrong when a person is unable to give his/her attention to the people present instead of to a device.
Absolutely. That’s a dickish behaviour to say the least, but it could well be done with a newspaper. It’s not much about the device, it’s about the fact that this person is acting like a prick.

It’s very easy to say they may be having a meaningful conversation with another person, and my response would be “what am I? chopped liver?”
You never know, you could be. Personally i’d refrain from making another coffee date with that person on principle.

When I make a coffee date with a friend, I want to meet him/her. I don’t want him/her to bring a virtual world along that will continually interrupt us.
It does only if either of you allows it to. I always have soemthing electronic i could pay attention to rather than the people i’m with, but I don’t. Because that’s rude and i only meet people i want to see, so i pay attention to them when i see them.

If i get a text or a call, i’ll see who it is from and evaluate, if it’s probably important i pick up/read, if it can wait it will wait. I don’t use social networksing sites like facebook unless i really need to and i surely wuldn’t make the updates automatic. Social networking sites are there to pass the time, they’re not important and should never be used as substitutes of actual means of communication like a phone. If you need to contact me you can call/text/email me, do you need more?

It’s not a matter of electronics, it’s a matter of common decency and not being an arsehole, really.

I love @Jeruba‘s answer. I think people are missing life and the things that are happening around them by being on their phones, texting, emailing, etc. while they are with others they could/should be talking to and enjoying.

@chyna That same argument could be made for every form of entertainment ever.

I’m in @Jeruba‘s and @hawaii_jake‘s camp on this. There is something to be said for a certain amount of convenience as described by others related to internet maps and stuff, but I still like a phone that’s a phone. I suffer from “old-fart-itis”. And, like @hawaii_jake , I hate when people I’ve arranged to meet are more interested in their phones than in me.

@Jeruba So I’m curious about this “no recent” technology stand. How many years after the PC came out did you get one? Or a calculator? Were you doing math by hand a decade after the calculator came out? What about the electric typewriter? (I jumped over that—straight from manual to computer). Oh, let’s see. The transistor radio? Stereo phonograph?

You see what I’m after here? Do you treat all new technology the same way as you treat smart phones—i.e., are you always a late adopter, or is there something different about smart phones that creates a greater antipathy in you than, say, transistor radios did? And if you are more opposed to personally using smart phones than you were to electric typewriters, can you explain the difference? If you are merely a late adopter, any idea why?

How about a really good tetris game, with a clear and easy keyboard for texting – and an excellent mic and speaker cell.

Oh, make it thin and strong, water and sandproof.

@wundayatta As much as I love my HP48g calculator (and the HP48 app on my phone), even I often do math with pen and paper.

@wundayatta, yes, I am a chronic late adopter. But it’s not a “no recent technology” stand. It’s not really a stand at all, just a reflection of my attitudes, preferences, and prejudices. I don’t like to learn to use new things once I have a good, capable grasp of the old ones, and I have a native (New-England-rooted?) suspicion of anything that is seductive, anything that seems too easy, and anything that replaces and hence drives into oblivion what seems to me to be a valuable skill (such as addition and subtraction) or resource (such as a printing press).

My husband still teases me about preferring buggy whips and high-button shoes. I’d never have cared to suffer so much inconvenience for fashion, so forget the shoes, but having a ride that loves you and comes when you whistle and can be refueled anywhere there’s grass does not sound so bad to me.

Even while working in high-tech for decades, I resisted new tools, new applications, new versions, everything. I was nearly always the last person in my department to be dragged through upgrades by long-suffering IT guys.

My husband is a gadget freak. He purchased a brand new (large and bulky) hand-held HP calculator back in the seventies while they were still warm from the assembly line and thought he’d received a gift from heaven. He brought minicomputers into the house. I’m not completely sure I’d have one even now if it weren’t for him. I signed on only when I had to compile and largely write a manual for editors and found that it was wonderful to be able to make a correction and get a clean page without retyping the whole thing. That was in 1982, and by his standards I was a late adopter and a hard sell.

That was about when I retired my electric typewriter. The electric typewriter was a gift. There was nothing wrong with my old Smith-Corona manual portable, which I still have and which will work even when the power goes out, provided that there’s a ribbon to be had on the planet.

I do use my desktop computer constantly, and I have a laptop for travel. I have become dependent on them, and my dependency troubles me. But I didn’t reach a state of genuine dependency until about five years ago. Before that I truly could have (as I said often) taken them to the curb and drop-kicked them into the gutter and not missed them for long.

I have a solar-powered calculator that I bought four or five years ago to help me keep household financial records, which until last year I did by hand in ruled green accounting books. Now my husband fills in an Excel spreadsheet.

Stereo? Yes. I went to college in the sixties, after all.

And I do have an electric pencil sharpener on my desk. Because I still use a lot of pencils. But there is a rotary-crank manual model affixed to the wall above my husband’s desk.

I wash dishes by hand.

I chop a lot of vegetables, but I basically use the food processor only to make turkey stuffing twice a year. I don’t use the blender at all.

I think we were among the last people in the United States to acquire a microwave oven. And I do use it. But I don’t like it. However, I am a great fan of refrigeration—one comfort I would not want to live without. (I’d be ok with an icebox and a block of ice, though.)

And I have a 42” plasma-screen TV, and I do love my Netflix. But as for the TV itself, I turn it on to a broadcast channel only for the Olympics and the presidential debates every four years, and then I have to ask my son how. No cable, needless to say.

Again, I’m not opposed to smartphones. You are welcome to yours. I just don’t want one myself, much less “need” one.

I guess, in a word, I’m just pig-headed.

——-

Also: i’m with @jerv on this, using something that is convenient doesn’t automatically mean being dependent on it.
@Thammuz, I agree with your point, but I’m not the one who used the word “need” for those things. I say no one needs them.

@Jeruba ”...I have a native (New-England-rooted?) suspicion…”
Trust me, it isn’t because you are from New England. I am too. I suspect that, just like @Raven_Rising and I, there is only so much technophilia to go around the house and the husband has it all.
And as much of a gadget geek as I am, I don’t trust the first version of anything, so I am with you in your resistance to upgrades, at least to a point. I feel that early adopters are rather foolish.

@jerv, I don’t think it’s a sex-based thing. The most eager adopters in my work groups were two of the women. They just loved being first with every new technology or tool and couldn’t wait to boast about the advantages it gave them over the old.

If it’s not the old Puritanical aversion to the up-to-date, then it’s just me, though not my age, because I had much the same attitude before I was twenty.

@Jeruba I know many female technophiles too. Some households (like my boss) have a tech-geek wife and an old-fashioned husband. All I am saying is that your husband is enough of a gadget geek for the both of you, just as I have enough love for shiny things that my wife almost has to be a Luddite to balance things out.

I’m also a New Englander, fwiw.