Dumbphone Sales Are Soaring As People Revolt Against "Overwhelming" Smartphones
(www.zerohedge.com)
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I used a dumb phone for eight years but carriers have been dropping 3G support making that Samsung phone nonfunctional. I had to get a smart phone. Hate it. Am looking for a 4G dumb phone and good carrier now. Not interested in 5G radiation at my ear.
There are LTE flip phones. Not entirely dumb but definitely not smart. I think at&t has one for $70 but I can't speak for other carriers. My grandma had one before she passed.
Same happened here, we had a great heavy duty 3g we got on ebay for $30. You could drop it all day without breaking it and could still do photos and text. But 3g is going away and the 4g once are expensive and they seem to suck too. Not happy...
Wireless home routers use 5G, no?
Completely unrelated. WiFi uses frequencies around the 5Ghz range. 5G refers to the fifth generation of cellular signals, which use a variety of frequency ranges.
Thanks. But wifi router signals still enable bad actors to physically see you inside your home. Like batman
Yes, they do. Which is why I don't have one but instead use cables. My current smart phone lives in a desert of data because I do not use its data abilities which would add up on the comm network without access to WiFi.
Yes, the 5G system uses a variety of bands for its operation, not just one frequency, but it does put more energy into its higher frequencies than earlier standards.
I use H2O pre-paid wireless. Unlimited calls and text for $18/month, and you can use any ATT phone. I have a $30 "smart" phone that works fine. It's a touch screen and whatnot but it doesn't have all the fanciness / overkill of expensive phones.
This is the phone I have.
https://www.thelightphone.com/
Me, too! I have had it quite a while - a couple of years. I have to have a smart phone for work, but it doesn't leave my apartment complex. If I have to go anywhere, I grab the light phone just in case I need to get ahold of someone. I wish payphones still existed.
The faces people make when you say you can't scan a code are great. The chick at Quest Labs asked to see my phone because 'all phones can do it' and I handed it to her and it was like I handed her alien tech.
Nice! How responsive is the screen? My kindle screen doesn't update very fast.
It's decent, but still e-ink. Recent firmware updates have made it better. The biggest challenge is bc it's small, accurate typing can be a challenge for those with thick fingers. I still like it
I came reeeeeally close to buying one about two or three years ago, but I watched a video showing the atrocious texting experience and decided not to buy. Given 2+ years of sw upgrades, how is the texting, now?
It is better. I've had it for about a year. It does also have a speech to text option you can enable.
OK that's a big improvement. I will probably buy one. Ty.
That’s pretty neat. Thank you
They added an optional feature you can enable via dashboard to have pictures texted to you forwarded to an email address. Mine works that way. Someone sends me a picture, I get a little pic icon on the light phone, and can look at it when I check my email :)
I think much of the demand is the 3G shutdown, all the smartphone holdouts are being forced to get LTE phones. I know of a couple LTE feature (dumb + data) phones, so it's likely that.
i will say , that the PERFECT phones were blackberrys, samsung sgh series, nokia slider and sidekick, and stuff like that. you could STILL text, get email, call, and go online to look at stuff. it was a TOOL.
but it wasn't something that was like it is now. overwhelming af
We need a dumbphone with an amazing camera and storage Slider to hide the lens too.
Hold on, are you saying you browse the internet on a phone???
A couple years ago, my phone broke and I just didn't get another one for an entire year lol.
I told people to email me, drove them nuts and everyone thought I was crazy like a phone is required to go down the street "just in case", much like fear psychology surrounding masks now that I think about it. Anywho, I was a late adopter to smart phone tech, I'm coming up on 30 so I've seen it all happen, but I just always lagged behind as far as phones and tablets go because I primarily always dealt with PC and used the PC for the longest time as the primary hub for all media,communications, and work.
Anyway going phoneless for a year was great. Literally no problems. The only thing I would say is it's pretty handy to have a smart phone for things like verification purposes and being able to check your bank account very quickly, you know to pull stuff up when you are doing some boring errand, good to access virtual documents instead of having to prepare physical papers.
Other than that if you really think about it you probably only regularly speak with maybe 5 people, then maybe a cluster from work. You can easily get away with a flip phone to just talk and text these people simple messages if you don't want to go completely phoneless like I did.
Or if you want to be a reallllllly big cheapskate I think one dumb phone for a couple could work and could essentially be used like a house phone with additional benefits of being mobile.
I don't know. I type this from a smart phone right now, but they really aren't necessities and honestly if you just got them all taken away tomorrow it wouldn't hurt. I literally had no problem not having an actual phone, if I ever reallllllllyyy needed to make an emergency call I would just ask someone for a phone and be like my bad I left my phone at home and I need to call my wife do you have like a regular phone anywhere? Then, imagine that, I would be able to make a call for free with someone else phone to establish plans or whatever.
That literally happend like maybe 3 times in a year. Otherwise emails worked great. It was kind of nice spending like 30 minutes on email time. It was nice like not being available to everyone all the time. It was like okay "this is my communication time let's see who wanted to speak with me today" OH my uncle? Okay yeah let's send him an email? Oh Ted from work okay meeting on the 25th. Cool glad I didn't get that text while I was out to eat with my wife. It was just great to partition my availability with people. It was like I had my own secretary guarding my office, and the secretary was basically- if you want to communicate with me you have to go through the effort of sending an email and you need to establish purpose with your message or intent, and also must wait at least a day for response. Otherwise, don't bother. It's not important enough for me.
Anyways I for one am super supportive of less phone movement. Real world case study here. Definitely promote this. Try it yourself. Just try it for a week yourself too lol. Turn smart phone off tell everyone you broke your phone and your just off the grid for a week or two until you get it fixed. If they need you they can email you. Try it out, it's liberating in certain ways.
Any recommendations on the launcher?
The only true dumb phones are the old analog systems and phones like the motorola startac.