Cell phones began as huge bricks. Remember Zach on Saved by the Bell? Then they got pretty small. Flip Phones were the perfect size for a pocket. Screen was protected and no butt dialing. I still carry a flip phone and love it. But it is dated and there are a few Apps that I’d enjoy using.
Then here come smart phone and they were big and a PITA again. Screens vulnerable to scratches. Butt dialing, all the old crap problems.
Anyone finally making a basic smartphone that’s actually small? Preferably with a cover to protect the screen. Basally a flip phone style but a modern smart phone.
Could care less about a bunch of fancy features. Just a basic phone, that can run three or four apps. A daily scheduler, and of course phone functions. Web Browsing? Heck no. I got a computer at home to browse the web.
Bonus question!!! Can you suggest a low cost carrier that will provide a very basic and affordable plan?
That’s **exactly **what I’d love to buy. I sure hope its offered to the US market soon. I predict it will be a huge seller. A lot of people like me love the Flip phone design and want a real keyboard.
Otherwise, I’ll have to settle for something else. Maybe a phone with a detachable cover? something, anything to protect the screen.
I bought my son a little $10 smartphone from Walmart recently. LG brand, no frills. Screen is about 3" diagonal. It runs Android kit kat, so that’s fairly outdated, the camera quality is mediocre, and of course it is locked to the Trac phone prepaid network. If you weren’t going to use it alot, you could opt for the $7/month plan, which gives you 180 minutes of talk, 180 text messages, and 180 megs of data. You buy that with a card, $20 every 3 months.
The Gorilla Glass used in smartphones is really hard to scratch. So unless you’re going to be sandblasting right next to your phone, I wouldn’t worry about scratches very much.
Huh. Recently, you were paying upwards of $30 for a phone like that at Walmart. I got my dad one of the last ones, which we had to have shipped from Texas. It was just that the next phone up was $99 and actually had lower specs.
I lock my phone when I put it in my pocket. How is your butt going to input a password and swipe to unlock?
My phone does accumulate some minor scratches on it over the years. But I bet most of them are from me dropping it, not from it rubbing up against things in my pocket.
It can certainly butt dial the emergency number and that’s happened to me a couple of times.
Sometimes I put the phone in my pocket without actually locking it. As a result one time it dialed an overseas number from my contact list and I racked up over $400 in calling charges! AT&T then signed me up to a backdated $5 a month plan and reduced that to $40.
I discovered these butt dials purely by chance when I got into my car and the blue tooth kicked in.
I too would like a small, flippy type phone. I have a smart phone and it is such a pain to use that I simply don’t use it. All I’ve ever had is a trac phone setup. Do I just buy any phone I want and then go to Verizon or whoever and sign up for service?
Here’s what I have to do to dial an emergency number on my iPhone.
Press one of the hardware buttons to enable the screen.
Swipe right to unlock.
Press in the lower left of the screen to enable the emergency keypad.
Dial the three digits, 9, 1, 1, in that order, and without hitting anything else.
Hit the call button.
Hit anything else out of order, and you’ve broken the sequence. Wait a minute or two without hitting something, and the screen locks again, and you have to start over.
Just to be clear. You’re saying that a couple of times this has happened to you, and there was a logged call to 9-1-1?
Does your phone have a much shorter sequence to get there, or do you have an incredibly talented butt?
But Gorilla Glass shatters just as easily as any other glass.
I am much more concerned about the glass breaking than scratching. I don’t remember the last time I saw a phone with scratched glass. I can tell you that at any point in time I know someone whose screen shattered from dropping their phone; there’s someone in my office now who is going through their Verizon insurance to replace the phone because the screen shattered on their galaxy S6.