Anyone else remember then being the cool new thing instead of a mandatory one?
I would be happy with a Nokia 3310 with Signal and Matrix support.
It really cracked me up 15-20 years ago when there was a fair amount of panic about the government / world order microchiping people at more or less the same time that everyone was starting to pay to carry around GPS devices that listen to you.
This is exactly what Orwell feared TVs would become when he envisioned telescreens. Took a little longer for it to come to fruition. What’s fascinating about the novel that people over look is that the older generation in 1984 tend not to own them because they’re resistant to new technology just like today. So they aren’t really mandatory. Like smartphones.
not my fault your phone isnt cool
The number of places that expect you to download their app to do business with them, or sign up with them, is beyond disturbing.
I now actively try to make their life difficult. I’ll ring up,.or try to order at the counter. I had a table at one place, and rang up and ordered pick up. Better service than I was getting lol
And then I pull out my wallet and try to pay with cash and all hell breaks loose 🤣
I spent 30 minutes looking for an item at Microcenter.
I got someone to help look. no good, can’t tell you where it could possibly be.
called up and ordered it for pickup, came back 30 minutes later, there it was at the pickup desk.
My experience getting help is complete opposite. I love microcenter. Lucky to have 3 of them within 45 min of me.
Ohh yeah, I love them, that guy didn’t last long there :)
Same for me. Super helpful staff. I frequently have to wait a minute because they’re helping someone else, but if I hang around in their aisle they ask if I need anything as soon as they’re done with the other customer.
When the subject comes up I have often said that cell phones are what we avoided in the PC space when the IBM BIOS was reverse engineered.
It has been a disappointment to me that so many smart otherwise tech literate people have seemed to not be able to see the tech industry, and others, putting the digital noose around out necks with smart phones.
We are not too far away from entire brick and mortar businesses being off limits to someone whose only smart phone is not an iPhone and does not pass Googles Play Services Safetynet checks for an app and the only method to pay they have being cash or a physical credit card. That is wild, and something that should worry nearly everyone that has a vested interest in being able to live their lives without being under the thumbs of private corporate interests if they so choose.
And that is before even getting into the even more concerning parts of modern phones which take all of the above and make it scary by replacing private corporate interests with governments.
Nothing good ever comes from getting in a position where you have to interact with, or obey, another party and they get to set all of the terms.
I would buy my Xperia Play again in a heart beat if it had even midrange modern specs.
I was watching a show the other day where the wealthy protagonist got his phone thrown to the grown and smashed by someone and he freaked out because it was a $200 phone. I think the episode is like 10 years old or so. Phones used to be cheap to own as well as cool.
I dropped $250 on an HTC Apache in 2006 and thought I was quite fancy.
Ack most phones are really expensive now. But I pretty much just use mine for comms, personal organisation. I have never paid more than 300 for a model and i typically buy a new one every 4 or 5 years. Crazy seeing models priced at 2k or up though.
I have my blue and grey Nokia still.
When I was on my way home from work on the subway, I just tried to fill the screen with a snake the whole time.
I still hope for a cool game to be included when I buy a new phone. Spoiler: there is no cool game included
I still remember the day I beat Brickbreaker on my 2007 Blackberry. It was a glorious day in my personal gaming history that may never be surpassed
I was probably one of the last to hold onto a dumbphone because all I then needed was text messaging. But then the phone was starting to fall apart due to age, and it wasn’t easy having it, a sketchy digital camera, and a beat-up Shuffle and my clients were inching up the tech tree.
15 years later I keep two separate personas: one for the smartphone because you have the fucking suits expecting the face of a compliant lemming, with nothing incriminating whatsoever; the other is only on my computer, the one having more freedom to express dissent. Neither device are to be connected together in any way.
And should to join any form of general civil disobedience, better carry a dumbphone and a digital camera.
Its now also IMPOSSIBLE to create an email account without a cell phone. Imagine that. You can’t send email if you don’t have a cellphone
is this a meme
Technology makes me want to retch these days.
Hopefully, I will someday be able to buy a Linux smartphone that is truly controlled by me.
GrapheneOS with no Google play services/sim is the best experience currently available
The year of the linux phone.
I wish it could actually happen. But corporate has learned a lot from the 90s and early 00s. They are lock in experts that won’t let that happen easily.
I’m building a cyberdeck
Yes! I remember being obsessed with Samsung Note phones because they were for power users and had so many cool features. The Note 9 was the last smart phone I actually was excited about and I kept that thing for 5 years. I got the S22 Ultra and it was cool but by that point Samsung had removed all the cool hardware features from their phones (thermometer, barometer, iris scanner, finger proximity sensor [could do really cool mouse like actions by hovering your finger above the screen], and a bunch of other cool features).
Now I have the Pixel 8 pro and slapped GrapheneOS on it. The OS is really cool and so technically amazing but I could care so little about the actual device it’s loaded on.
How is the P8P with Graphene? My P8P has been absolute hell lately, with constant wifi disconnects and calls break up every minute or so. I wanted to like this phone coming from OnePlus but honestly it has felt like Google just seem to pop out new phones and leave the old ones riddled with software bugs.
I’m not a huge privacy person, more like mild so I haven’t heavily considered Graphene but I’m getting fed up with this one haha
Sounds awesome! I remember being blown away when my friend showed me the IR camera on his Cat phone, which could see footprints. (He had a Cat phone because he’s very clumsy and drops his phone every single time that he ties his shoes.)
Beyond cool hardware, I had a Huawei P30 which came with a really good “augmented reality” ruler. It was quite accurate. And it had a nice IR transmitter that could act as a legacy remote (Xiaomi also does this but their software is not as good).
Now I have a Pixel and holy hell is it too large for its own good. Supposedly a compact phone.
That’s how they get you every time, now, it seems! First release…
Them: hey look at this cool *cheap new thing that’s so amazing *soon you won’t be able to live without it!
Us: wow, shiny.
Little time later after you’re hooked… $$$$$$$
