Smart phone or basic phone?

[k0ua]

My success rate is way better than 80 percent. I don't even have a landline anymore.

I would rate my smartphone phone call completion rate at 99.5. Once in a great great while I have a dropped call, but it is rare anymore. Cellphone service is much much better than say 10 years ago.

 

[sixdogs]

No landline since 2012. Didn't use it for years before that.

We dropped our land line a year ago after it hit us that the only calls we got on it were fraudulent. I told the phone company I would stay with it if they gave me free caller ID but they declined. That would have cost them nothing but was their call. It was tough to get rid of the land line because it was such a part of life but now we don't even miss it. Some day we'll take down the wall phone. I may still have a rotary dial phone in the basement.

 

[newbury]

I was just at McCoys and the girl at the cash register uses her phone to watch what's going on inside and outside her house. She has teenagers and she knows if they sneak home from school, or have friends over, or pretty much whatever they are doing when they are there. I've thought about getting that for my house just to watch the front gate, who comes over, and what they do when they are around my house.

And unless they're angels or complete idiots they'll go to their friends house instead.

And if it's like my chunk of suburbia those "friends houses" will be monitored also.

The police are finely wising up and putting out requests for any videos from the public that might have captured perps. DC has even initiated a Private Security Camera Voucher Program,
which essentially establishes a web of cameras like you see on many tv shows.

I used it yesterday evening while I was at the store. Wife sent me for some personal product. SO I am at the wall of this stuff, and I called the wife and turned on the video camera. Reversed the camera to the one pointing out and let her scan "the wall of product". pretty soon, "thats the one", and I threw it into the cart. Technology wins again.

I've used it similarly. Son located in our house in Virginia needed a key to give my other son. We were in Mississippi. Son scans the wall of keys with his phone, I tell him which one to pick out.

A few years ago I parked my company car in this huge dang parking lot at the ST. Louis airport. As I shut off the key, I was thinking, "how the he77 am I going to find this thing when I get back here in a week" I thought "I bet there is an app for that". It took me about 20 seconds to find a suitable app, another 20 seconds to download and install it, and about that long to figure out how to operate it. I set the car location into the app, and made my way to the airplane that whisked my butt off to Chicago and beyond. I looked at it when I was away, and it pointed the way to the car and said I was over a million steps away. When I got back to St. Louis and off of the plane I made my way towards the car through the very large and crowded airport, and popped outside. It said I was about 300 feet from the car, and I followed the arrow. I was within 3 ft. of the car when it said I was there. I call that good enough. I haven't needed that app since, but it was darn handy when I did need it. And I didn't even know that it existed, but I just figured that there would be one. Flip Phone my arse... ha!.

I used to just take a quick picture of where I left my car.

You people may become instant zombies when the comet hits or yellowstone erupts. That thing about clutching your phone, may just come to pass.

There used to be pride in telephony. Commercials about hearing a pin drop. Now your lucky if you can even understand the other party. And that often echo of myself on a call, just drives me nuts. Like being on a 1950s transatlantic call.

We get poorer voice quality on our voice line than on cell.

I'm speaking more about background noise and poor RF coverage. I don't think a day hardly goes by that I don't experience someones cell phone dropping a call. And they ALWAYS say "Don't know what happened" How stupid! Garbage technology, that's what happened. Try calling on a copper line! Not saying the technology isn't truly amazing, just too flaky like most modern technology. Works 80% of the time!

I've had more problems with the"landline" companies NOT maintaining copper, all going to fiber.

I still use a 'flip phone' that actually takes pics.
Not long ago I wanted to capture some interesting wildlife but since I had no cell reception I could not access the pic feature.
Would a 'smart phone' be better?<snip>

Do you have a storage card in the phone?

Sorry, but wrong again. Cell service has become more reliable than the old copper for most people. Cell service undergoes constant improvement, and copper plant is being allowed to degrade to never before low levels. No one is putting any money in copper plant any more. Just ask many copper plant users out in the boonies how their landline service is lately. Not good.

Maybe just an internet rumor but I was informed that the old copper lines were under a different regulation/pricing structure.

We dropped our land line a year ago after it hit us that the only calls we got on it were fraudulent. I told the phone company I would stay with it if they gave me free caller ID but they declined. That would have cost them nothing but was their call. It was tough to get rid of the land line because it was such a part of life but now we don't even miss it. Some day we'll take down the wall phone. I may still have a rotary dial phone in the basement.

SWMBO wanted to keep the landline because "it always worked when the power went off", then they put in Fiber which requires I maintain a bank of 24 alkaline D cell batteries to run it when the power goes off. That ain't happening.

Back to smart phone vs basic phone -
Just yesterday SWMBO (the navigator) and I (the driver) had to go to a section of town about an hour away which we were not familiar with during rush hour traffic to meet one of our sons for shopping and dinner. The navigator is a Luddite, even though her first job was a computer programmer, before she became an Attorney. She refuses to get a "smart" phone. So the driver printed out a few maps using his phone and a wireless printer. The driver was confident because he had his smart phone w/ Google map in his pocket.
So we get to his hotel and then the navigator and son decide they have to determine where to shop and eat ( :confused2: ).
But no problem, son takes out his smart phone, he takes over as navigator, we find where he wants to shop 10 miles away. During shopping the driver took out my phone and searched a deal site for any breaking deals where they were shopping.
For dinner the new navigator pulls out his phone again and lists off a number of restaurants for SWMBO to choose from for dinner. It was a long list so I told him to sort it by highest ratings and distance. We quickly found a good BBQ place to eat. On what should have been a simple of retracing of step to his hotel there is a major detour. The new navigator just accesses Google maps, reroutes the driver through a maze of new construction and we were back with only a slight delay. All during rush hour traffic in DC.

If he had not had his smart phone we would have saved a lot of time. We would have just eaten at the hotel or maybe not even gone

With basic phones:
We could not have selected the shopping site
We could not have looked for deals
We could not have looked for restaurants sorted by type and ratings
We probably would have gotten lost

 

[Creamer]

Being in a rural area we did not have many options for internet connect and DSL through the phone company was the best but after 10 years of getting service that was supposed to be "up to 7 M/sec" we rearely achieved over 1.25 during any of the usual times like 7 AM to 10 PM and maybe up to 2.5 at 3 AM. We kept getting told they were updating equipment. Finally, after 10 years, I called it quits and moved to a wireless service that had developed and it is much better. I can regularly get 2 M/sec from this service - still not great but much better.

This told me two things - 1) the phone companies are not updating their landline equipment and 2) the state utility regulatory body is not doing their job. Either way I have had it proved to me that private enterprise is better and government is unto itself not for us.

 

[downsizingnow48]

What newbury laid out is same as our experience. For Thanksgiving we met the kids at an air-bnb rental in Sedona AZ. Finding outstanding restaurants along the way from Sacramento, is part of the fun of the trip, but would be absolutely impossible without a smart phone and the apps that go with it. And who knew there was a five-star rated YARN store in Prescott? Only two hours drive from Sedona! And from there we made up a route that crossed back into California at Parker. A smart phone is invaluable for navigating through unfamiliar countryside and towns to a place you never been to before.

 

[Creamer]

What newbury laid out is same as our experience. For Thanksgiving we met the kids at an air-bnb rental in Sedona AZ. Finding outstanding restaurants along the way from Sacramento, is part of the fun of the trip, but would be absolutely impossible without a smart phone and the apps that go with it. And who knew there was a five-star rated YARN store in Prescott? Only two hours drive from Sedona! And from there we made up a route that crossed back into California at Parker. A smart phone is invaluable for navigating through unfamiliar countryside and towns to a place you never been to before.

Until service drops which happens on a regular basis - like in the Tehachapi Mountains in California this spring or the Black Hills of South Dakota this fall. the problem with technology is that you always need a backup.

 

[downsizingnow48]

My own personal experience since getting smart phones in 2010 is that I have rarely - as in almost never - had a calling or receiving problem in any area served by the cell network (Verizon).

On the California north coast we lost cell phone service during the recent Wine Country fires, when many of the towers in Sonoma County burned up. For two days. The third day the service was back up better than before, as the company replaced the old burned up equipment with new equipment.

So I agree that the technology can fail, but my experience is that it is not much of a problem. And when we travel we always have lots of maps, the Navigator trusts the cell phone but also likes the old fashioned feel of a map in her lap.

 

[k0ua]

Nothing wrong with having a map and knowing how to use it. As noted any technology can/will fail but there is also no reason to not take full advantage of it when we can. I have batteries and solar backup for my 2 way radio equipment.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Nothing wrong with having a map and knowing how to use it. As noted any technology can/will fail but there is also no reason to not take full advantage of it when we can. I have batteries and solar backup for my 2 way radio equipment.

And I keep a USA Atlas in both trucks... Pulled them out plenty of times. I actually find old timey maps easier to use.

 

[Creamer]

And I keep a USA Atlas in both trucks... Pulled them out plenty of times. I actually find old timey maps easier to use.

that's because you know how to use them. It is amazing how many cannot.