Smartphone phobia

[rvlifer]

I vowed I wouldn't own a phone without an external SD card, but alas when my OLD Galaxy Note 9 finally died I discovered that phones with an SD option are rare.

Android was headed in the direction of eliminating expandable storage. Blamed it on a speed issue. That was a few years ago and i dont know if they changed their minds. External storage was the main reason i went with android over an iphone

 

[Jackiemac]

Samsung Galaxy phones still have 2 sim slots....

 

[NY_Dutch]

Although it is frightening to see another person driving on the road holding a smart phone in their hand looking at it, instead of the road, I can certainly understand the "why."

Modern technology has compacted absolutely everything in our lives into a little bitty box that can be carried in a shirt pocket .... everything.... everything from banking to communication to education to entertainment to employment!

Forget about the real reason (government conspiracy ... "they" are tracking you) as the underlining purpose for this technology, they've convinced us we need this stuff and in a way, and have succeeded by making it next to impossible to exist as a person without it.

Older generations still resist new technologies. Newer generations grow up with it and it's just a matter of fact of life, no big deal.

Bottom line: Modern technology is not going away, neither is the smartphone. Except, I am now wearing a wrist watch that can do almost all the functions that my smart phone can do now! Even more .... it monitors my "health".... talk about "big brother intrusion into my private life!" Yes .... that data is stored somewhere, and I certainly do not know where that is!

So, we can either accept the technology or continue to be frustrated over it.

Still, it does not give us any comfort when the distracted looney toon driving directly toward us isn't watching the road though because their attention is drawn toward some mindless TicToc video that a 13 year old posted about how marvelous it was he jumped off a bridge and only broke 1 leg!

The VA supplied me with a small device that clips to my shirt. It connects my phone to my Signia hearing aids and has a microphone so I can do hands free calling. Answering a call just takes one quick button push on the device. Another push hangs up.

 

[rvlifer]

Samsung Galaxy phones still have 2 sim slots....

Sim or memory expansion slots? I know some phones come with 2 sim slots but thought one was to prepare for the transition to esim cards

 

[Larry N.]

Android was headed in the direction of eliminating expandable storage. Blamed it on a speed issue. That was a few years ago and i dont know if they changed their minds. External storage was the main reason i went with android over an iphone

The Motorola Edge+ I got this past fall doesn't seem to have a place for an SD card, but it came with 512 GB internal memory. It has an eSIM in addition to a slot for a sim card, but no SD port. I like this unit, most ways.

I know some phones come with 2 sim slots but thought one was to prepare for the transition to esim cards

Each of my previous phones (all Android) had slots for an SD card (mini, of course) as well as for a sim card. This Edge+ is my first without the SD slot.

 

[jymbee]

Sim or memory expansion slots? I know some phones come with 2 sim slots but thought one was to prepare for the transition to esim cards

I ended up, after a lot of contemplation between the two models I was looking at both Samsung phones, getting a Galaxy S25+.

Verizon wanted $$$ to swap data from my old Note 9 to the new S25+ but declined their offer preferring to do it myself.

All went relatively smoothly (they have an excellent app where you just connect the two phones with a cable) until it came to the activation part. Ah... need to put the SIM from the old phone into the new one. Dial tone came up and I could make calls as usual.

But shortly after I realized the new phone has two SIM slots, one for regular and a 2nd for eSIM. You can actually have two phone numbers for different purposes if you want.

New to me so now I'm studying just how it all works as at times I'm getting a popup saying phone not activated.

 

[Chef Duane]

I maintain a POTS line into my house for my alarm system. Cheaper than going cellular and I get a discount on my homeowners insurance for the alarm. Plus it's the number I give out whenever I don't want to give my cell # out. I just turn the ringer off and I never hear it.

 

[rvlifer]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-r...card-slots-are-disappearing-from-smartphones/

 

[rvlifer]

it came with 512 GB internal memory.

I paid an extra $800 on the very first computer i ever bought to upgrade the hard drive from 40mb to 80mb. I thought i would never ever use that much disk space in my entire life. A couple years later i upgraded the hard drive again.

I like having an sd slot and keeping my data on an external memory device. Moving the data from one device to another is a breeze and i dont have to give anyone else a copy of my data to move it

 

[jymbee]

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-r...card-slots-are-disappearing-from-smartphones/

That's exactly what it comes down to-- no doubt at all about it despite the nonsense from the manufacturers mentioned in this article. HUGE profit for them to force you to buy additional INTERNAL memory and not provide external SD slots.

The reason that smartphone manufacturers are ditching micro SD card slots in their devices, especially at the high end, is money. Manufacturers can't charge a premium for an SD card slot, but they can charge a $100 for a few extra gigabytes of flash storage.​

 

[DonTom]

I can't speak for what Don has, but my landlines are NOT digital.

Many people prefer POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) which is analog on copper. But it is not supported well these days in many cities.

But cable is digital and that is fine with me, since it is not sent OTA where it can have weak spots--often without even realizing it. You can miss one-word answers and that type of thing when OTA.

It's not just cell phones. Even a problem on police radios. One city had so many problems with it that Motorola put in noise generators in their portable police radios to generate local noise when the signal strength was low.

-Don- Kofa NWR, AZ

 

[No cats]

Many people prefer POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) which is analog on copper. But it is not supported well these days in many cities.

My 95 YO mother (96 in two weeks) can't deal with the complexities of a cell phone, no way, no how. Her copper landline has been out of service for 8 months due to copper thieves. My mother still lives in her home alone and she is self sufficient, but she needs her landline.

Every time AT&T repairs her line, thieves strike again. Even when the line is intact, her service is spotty when it rains.

So now we pay for internet service, just so she can have VOIP and use a "regular land line phone". She has Ooma, and she is happy with it. The internet is wasted for anything else.

 

[Larry N.]

I paid an extra $800 on the very first computer i ever bought to upgrade the hard drive from 40mb to 80mb. I thought i would never ever use that much disk space in my entire life. A couple years later i upgraded the hard drive again.

Different generation. My first computer used a cassette tape for storage until I bought a 5" double-sided floppy disc drive -- heaven...

It was a TRS-80 Model I in 1978. My first hard drive was in an Amiga 1000 in the late '80s. We've come a long ways.

 

[gwinger]

The conversion for a standard analog phone takes place in the telephone company central office, which is where the power for it comes from as -48V DC ( a VOM says it's still there at my house) and it powers the lighting in my Trimline. There IS no modem/router before that. An exception might be if the phone company has "recently" put something electronic between the physical phone and the central office other than wiring and the transformer(s), but the -48V DC still comes through and it still works fine when we lose 120V AC electric power here at the house..

Sorry Larry, I was talking about the ones that use a traditional phone using VOIP.
We have Comcast as our ISP, but still use the analog phones from yesteryear.
I's still considered a landline since they are hard wired in our house.

 

[rvlifer]

Different generation. My first computer used a cassette tape for storage until I bought a 5" double-sided floppy disc drive -- heaven...

It was a TRS-80 Model I in 1978. My first hard drive was in an Amiga 1000 in the late '80s. We've come a long ways.

That was the first computer i ever used. No disk drives, 56k of ram iirc, and cassette for backup. When the floppy drive came out it was heaven. Those cassettes never did work lol.

I waited till the 386 came out to buy one.

 

[gwinger]

Different generation. My first computer used a cassette tape for storage until I bought a 5" double-sided floppy disc drive -- heaven...

It was a TRS-80 Model I in 1978. My first hard drive was in an Amiga 1000 in the late '80s. We've come a long ways.

My first one was a Commodore 64. It it also used a cassette drive. I bought the disk drive for it. That drive cost more than the computer and analog monitor combined.

 

[old RV guy]

The computer used for the first radio telescope of its kind at Ohio State Univ. had 18k bits of memory.

 

[DonTom]

My first one was a Commodore 64.

My first was a TI-99/4A.

Later a Geneve 9640.

I was loading up the Geneve on Oct 17, 1989 at exactly 1704 hrs at my house in South San Francisco, CA.

The power went out before it could fully load up.

-Don- Kofa NWR, AZ

 

[Chef Duane]

Apple II. Used a b&w 12" TV for a monitor and a surplus KSR 33 as a lineprinter. VisiCalc!

 

[Jackiemac]

Sim or memory expansion slots? I know some phones come with 2 sim slots but thought one was to prepare for the transition to esim cards

An e-sim is digital not physical i believe.

I've got 2 phone sims in mine one AT&T for US which I'm not using at the moment and my UK one. I got confused with SD and sim.

It doesn't have an SD slot. But I got the 1TB version for same price as 512GB with 5% off at the pre-sale event plus free ear buds.

I back up data to the cloud when I can too.

I only got this phone because after a few sips of moonshine given to us by a fellow camper, I managed to crack my screen. The cost to replace it was around a quarter of the cost of a new one and it's water resistance would have been hone. Plus it was 4 years old.