AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Thanks for bringing up one of my favorite rants!

I have this thing that I call a "phone". It's a Casio G'zone, which also contains a rudimentary camera, compass, thermometer, altimeter, pedometer, maps of the night sky, and tide tables. I can drop it into a bucket of saltwater or sawdust without harm, and it can (and has) survived drops into a five foot snowdrift and down a flight of concrete stairs. It is superb at making those old fashioned "phone calls" in areas where my wife is frantically calling "Hello Moto?" to her Galactic Universal smart phone and my daughter's latest isn't even getting a signal. It's also nearly as satisfying to slam the flip phone closed as it used to be to slam the receiver down.

In another pocket I have an iPhone. Not the latest and certainly not the largest - it's an 'SE' version. I want something compact in this role. It doesn't have a phone line, I can only use it when I'm on WiFi, but since I have a Jetpack with unlimited data and good connections at home and at work, that's pretty much all the time (The Jetpack can also provide a good connection for my laptop in the field). I use the iPhone as an emergency camera, as my datebook, address book, portable email, portable browser, and to run a large number of apps, for both my hobbies and my work. It's a superb tool for those functions, whatever its value as a phone.

I even have a third device with me much of the time - a dedicated iPod Touch, on which I carry my entire 64g music library. I can connect it to my vehicle audio systems, a nice little stereo in my office, the sound bar on top of our television, and my portable Bose mini. And no downloading or cloud support is required - it's all inside.

So I need a few more pockets, but at least I have the proper tool for the job and don't have to rely on a Swiss Army knife or multi-tool that is less than ideal for many specific jobs.

My kids make fun of me for not adopting the Latest And Greatest all-in-one tech. But at the cost of a few ounces, the tools I carry can do everything their all-in-ones can do better and more efficiently.

Andy

Bill_de Loc: US

I had my phone through Comcast. When they raised the rental on the router to $10 month I bought my own. At the same time I bought a MajicJack that cost me $49 for the first year and $100 for the next 5.

It plugs into an ethernet port and gives me the same service and quality that the $30/month Comcast service provided. Twenty/year as opposed to thirty/month on top of the ten/month for the router pays for a lot of film.

I keep a flip phone in the car.

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gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Until people buy it primarily to take pictures and do computer stuff, I guess I too will have to keep calling it a cell phone or smart phone, as the case may be. But it seems so far removed from that ancient devise on my wall.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

That would be difficult for me because I have an Android phone.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Haha, me also.

(I really do like the apps, like messaging; maps; camera; grocery list; tide tables, sky map; flight aware; ISS detector; Blue Tooth in the car; ... They do come in handy.)

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

I am retired as well, but even at home my smartphone is my phone. We do have a landline, but never use it for outgoing calls and only get occasional incoming calls on it, and these days most of them are spam calls. We will probably eliminate the land line within the next year since it is totally unnecessary.

Calling this type of device a cell phone or smartphone is unfortunate since the phone functionality is just one more available app, and for many people, if not most, it is not even the most used one. My phone is on 24/7 and never more than a few inches from my side.

Besides browsing the internet, like I am right now,
I text, check the weather forecast with the Weather Channel app, read or view videos of the news, pay my point of purchase expenses with Google Pay, use the scientific calculator and competent camera, use the full featured calendar with alerts, use a Microsoft Office Emulation program with a complete set of editing tools for MS Word, MS Excel, and PowerPoint documents, watching a Netflix or Hulu movie, and a hundred other and varied tasks many of which could not be accomplished on a desktop computer.

All this is in addition to making and receiving phone calls. I can use it whenever I want and wherever I am without being tethered to my desktop computer. To be sure, I still use my desktop computer with its 28in 4K screen for number of purposes, but my smartphone frees me from having to sit there when I don't wish to.

And, there are dozens of tasks I can perform on my smartphone that cannot be performed on a desktop computer, like using my phone as a level, a compass, a magnifier, or a flashlight, In short, it is the single most important tool I own because it's a thousand tools.

Kmgw9v Loc: Miami, Florida

Should have hung a picture of the phone.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Pretty much the same with us!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Do be careful of the MW RF from your SmartPhones. Might be best to minimize proximity and contact. Especially anyone with implanted (medical) electronics!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Hopefully one's doctor will warn if necessary!

I had my (smart) phone in my pants pocket for about six hours one time and wound up with an RF burn on(in) my leg. I won't put it in my shirt pocket either!

Bill_de Loc: US

I haven't tossed it yet.

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lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Yikes!

I have an implanted Defibrillator (Similar to a Pace Maker but for AFib). If I get close to a strong magnet it buzzes in my chest! Once I picked up a speaker cabinet with a woofer in there with a 2 to 5 lb. magnet, that got a bit scary.

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Seriously? Wow! I carry my phones in my pants pockets for 10 or 12 hours a day and sometimes longer, everyday, for more years than I can recall, and have had no problems. I'm now on my fourth smartphone. Before that I had in succession two earlier semi smartphones, and before that four or five not smart at all clamshell phones. Except for my Motorola StarTac which I wore on a belt clip at my hip in the late '90s, I've been carrying every one of my phone's in my left pants pocket since about 1990.

G Brown Loc: Sunny Bognor Regis West Sussex UK

I really don't need a phone - I'm married. Phone calls are for her to make and take. If I want to search for anything she tells me where I left it OR that I cannot afford it. People phone her because I don't have the information to hand or cannot be trusted to get anything right.

My phone is for the odd occasion I break down or miss a train. It might as well be stuck to the house wall.

Bipod

Busy Box.



Kohner Busy Box (TM), circa 1971