On a scale of 1 to 10 how badly would you miss your phone if lost or broken?

@Hypocrisy_Central Same here. I could manage without the phone itself, it’s the data on it that I would miss the most. You’ve reminded me to back up my phone contacts elsewhere. Thankyou.

I hardly ever use a phone, sometimes twice a week, but usually not.

I hate having a cell. I ignore it sometimes for 2–3 days straight. I can’t figure out why that makes people mad though…I just don’t like to be bothered ;)

I would say about an 8 for the simple reason that my phone tends to be a bit of a life line when it comes to my relationship. We are long distnace and so talking on the phone is the easiest way of communication if we aren’t both at a computer.

I am not a big phone person. I would miss my computer over my phone,or the TV

The only thing I really need a phone for is when in need of assistance. Otherwise, it all done via e-mail or web-camming.

Since I have a list of all my phone numbers on my phone I would miss it at maybe a 3. I don’t use phones all that much.

My cell is a luxury I could easily live without. I have no real need to be tethered to the world that way. So I would give it a big 0 on the miss factor.

I would not miss it. I never liked the idea of being at anyone’s beck and call.

1

@lucillelucillelucille So you are saying would not miss your Ethyl Merman Ring Tone?

@Cruiser Alittle bit….Ethyl?Are you talking about a chemical or a person??XD

I don’t own a phone (mobile), my house has one on the wall, but its really just a side effect of having internet.

Both! Either will knock you out!! (or is it ether??) XD

It depends on the situation. Right now, while my husband is home, it’d be about a 3 or so. When he’s away, it would be a 10. The phone and the computer and the two main ways we talk while he is gone. I would be really upset if I missed the chance to talk to him because my phone broke.

I’d get along but only because I work so much and everyone knows where and how to find me if needed. I also have the internet at home which I use more than a celly so I’d be okay.

I am currently without a phone.

My son peed on mine – put it in his potty, and urinated upon it. It was out of commission for five days before I was able to use it again. Then he put it in the fishtank. Ah, toddlers.

Unfortunately, I have other things to spend money on than a new phone, so I’m doing without for a while. It’s no big deal. I can email texts to my husband to see when he’ll be home, and I don’t really talk to anyone else on the phone normally.

I don’t make or get many calls, and I do not text, but I’d probably be pissed off enough to rate about an 11. See, I hate when my stuff gets lost or broken just as a matter of general principle, especially when that lost/broken thing is a few hundred dollars (a Droid X isn’t cheap!) and I have been known to get a little bitchy… and by “bitchy”, I mean “violent”.

It’s not so much about the phone (though it is my only phone; no landline) but I would also lose my GPS, notes, games, music, pictures…. basically all of the stuff you’d lose if your computer got taken/broken and a bit more. And it seems that a lot of people, especially those in the older age brackets (45+), don’t seem to quite get that today’s phones are much more than just a portable version of the corded boxes with dials that hung on the walls a couple of decades ago.

Now, if it were solely about the phone aspect then I would drop my answer way down to around 1. There are only a couple of people I care to talk to that I don’t see face to face at least ¼ of my waking hours, so I can actually do quite well without that aspect of things.

@Cruiser I don’t quite get the whole “feeling tethered” thing. I’ve heard a lot of people say that, but it seems to be only from people who don’t know how to turn their phones off. Or is it just that I am fairly unique in that I have no issues ignoring people when I don’t want to deal with them (or just telling them to eat flaming horse-cocks) regardless of the means of communication?

@jerv I might be able to give you a better answer if I knew how to turn the darn thing on! It is just that if you have one people expect you to use it and and I get read the riot act when I don’t use it, leave it at home or let it go dead! WTH already!! I have a DROID and the only thing I like about it is the night sky app….now that is COOL!

@Cruiser Hold the power button for a few seconds and it’ll be an option. My Droid X has two slide bars on the “lock” screen. One unlocks the phone and the other turns the ringer on/off. Or you can just hold the “Volume down” button until it goes to silent. My old Samsung Trance would go into “vibrate only” mode if you held the # key for two seconds. You’d be amazed what you can find in the manuals!
As for getting read the riot act for not being a slave to my phone, I have a few reactions to that. Sometimes I tell them I was too busy banging their wife to answer my phone. Sometimes I “kindly” remind them that I actually have a life beyond sitting there waiting for them to call, sometimes followed by by some 3AM war-dialing to make sure they are not being hypocritical. And sometimes I am too tired to fight and settle for a simple, “Blow me!”, often with a little preparatory unzipping to show that I am not kidding. As you can guess, I never get the Riot Act from the same person twice.

@jerv I am going to pretend I never read your reply to preserve my state of blissful ignorance on my Droids operating potential and don’t you dare try to tell me how to charge it either!!

The first day or two, probably an 8. And then lesser as I figured out how to cope.

@Cruiser Just remember that the phone cannot make you it’s slave; you have to choose to become enslaved by it.

Sure, you have the option to respond to your friends’ Tweets three seconds after posting, and to jump every time the phone rings, but you also have the option to kick things to voicemail and let them sit there for a few days (or weeks… or months… or forever!) and tell anyone who complains about your inaccessibility that you are not their bitch.

Since you never struck me as the type of guy who likes being somebody’s bitch, I am surprised you and I aren’t of more similar views on this. C’est la vie.

@jerv I love being somebodies bitch but it is certainly not by cell phone!! ;)

my phone broke recently and i was phoneless for 3 WHOLE days. it was torture. plus, my family is far and i talk to them quite frequently, so i felt really disconnected. i’d say a 9.

I don’t have a cell phone and we don’t have a land line here. I get by without one. And for when I do need to make a call I use the phone call thing in gmail.

Cell phone =1. I would not be without my land line home phone.

I’d be completely lost without my iPhone. I do everything on it.. including fluther [=

About a 3. If I’m driving, I’d up it to a 7.

(Note: not because I drive while talking/texting, but because I like to have a functioning cell phone in my glove box in case of emergencies.)

1. It’s pretty much for emergencies, only anyways. I like having it, but it’s not an essential.

@shpadoinkle_sue :: Did you know all cell phones can call 911 even without a service plan. That is why I work so hard to get people to donate their old ones to battered woman’s shelters and homeless shelters. The only calls they can make is 911. It doesn’t hurt and you could save a life.

Yeah. :)
Thanks, I’ve got some cell phones that are a few years old and I don’t do anything with them. Thanks for the tip. They work fine. They’re from when I switched over service providers.

@johnpowell That’s where my Trance is going next time I head out to the Verizon store (a drop-off site for that program) to pay my cell bill. Personally, I don’t understand why more people don’t do that and would rather break their phone into little pieces to put in the landfill than help people. but I’m weird like that.

@johnpowell Ummmm…I did not know that. Guess I know what I can do with my old phones now.

@Cruiser @lucillelucillelucille What’s up with the dueling shooting avatars? Seeing who is a better member of the NRA? Har har har

@Hypocrisy_Central I am aiming at and just hoping to hit my cell phone with a shotgun…as for @lucillelucillelucille I think she is aiming at the center of the zero on the keypad of hers. One shot one kill.

Deffinately a tenn , I couldn’t live without my phone ! Its my life haha , I mean how else would I get in touch with my friends ? Lmfao besides my phone is pretty and reddd (:

…. but maybe this is just because I’m still a teenager haha

@gwendolyn05

Once upon a time, in the black age prior to cell phones, people often wrote letters: sitting down to put a sincere effort into relating the necessary information in a deliberate, articulate manner. Or (sit down, this might come as a shock) waited until they saw each other in person to communicate.

I’ve not texted yet, but I lost my cell phone over the holidays, away from home with my dad in the hospital in very grave condition. All the doctors’ names and numbers were in there and much, much more. I was stuck en route without the thing.

All I can think is that the Universe must have decided that I must have needed a break from all of the drama and get back to, if only temporarily, the non-use of a cell phone.

I didn’t have time to write…and just try and find a public payphone these days!

Some of the information is simply ‘gone’ forever…