You had every reason to be tense. But yeah, you’re more than taken care of. This is a 2+ year lead time worry, kind of like when the Win10 sunset was announced. Being ahead means less last-minute issues!
Speaking of having a phone at hand, I’m replacing my nice but dated Mobovi TicWatch 3 Pro. It’ll work with most Android phones, though not iPhones. If someone would benefit from it and feels comfortable setting it up (it is a Chinese company, and WearOS is NOT as user friendly as iOS and forks) please let me know.
Most of my friends don’t live here, so I text them during the day. I watch too many YouTube videos, but that’s probably not the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.
I even have the phone when I’m out on the race committee boat when I’m helping sailing races, but it’s in a waterproof bag, and I just have it because.
At home it sits next to my PC on a charging cable. It’s always there, so I have never scrambled around to locate it. When I am out and about it is in my pocket. When I am at work it is in its dedicated spot on a shelf next to my station. I wander around a lot so it’s not usually with me when I am having a meeting.
I’m not a heavy phone user, but it has its convenient uses.
Yup, this 100%. My phone is always either in my pocket or within arm’s reach, except when I am kayaking (my dad brings his.) My roommate so often has to have me call her phone so she can hear it ring to find it and that is just so alien to me! She has left it in the park more than once! Every time I get up I pat my pocket to make sure my phone is there, there’s no way I could leave it somewhere. I do also have an Apple Watch so it needs to be in range to get service. (Paying an extra fee for cellular would be pointless precisely because my phone lives with me all the time.)
My phone is my constant companion. I carry it in my pocket all day (I work at home, so I’m usually wearing shorts/PJ pants with pockets) and at night it’s on a charger right next to my bed. There’s pretty much no time that it isn’t within arm’s reach of me.
I almost never use it as an actual phone, though. It’s either for looking things up/playing games/surfing the net/texting with the spouse.
I’m pretty sure any of my cats with super powers would be a super-villain if anything. I mean, it’s bad enough to get a passing swipe from a bored kitty that wants attention, but combine it with metal claws or superhuman strength and it’s horror movie time!
Of course, I’m not ruling out that they don’t have mind control powers, but still doubt they use them for any good but their own!
And FSM forbid, a super intelligent cat with a cellphone (back to the thread) is a nightmare beyond imagination.
“I’m out of food, buy some of the good stuff on the way home. Surprise me, but if I don’t like it I’ll ruin your sleep all week.”
“The birds bother me human, come home and chase them off. Or the couch will pay for your negligence.”
“Bring me a toy human. I don’t care if you’re 630 miles away. Get it, or have one of the other bipeds get it and bring it to me Right Now!”
During the work day, my phone is usually near me while I work from home. It’s just easier for reading emails and not missing any calls from my kid’s school or something else important. In the evening, it migrates to a shelf in the kitchen where it sits until morning.
When I leave the house, it comes with me because it’s my music source in the car. It then usually stays in my front right pocket and, if I get a message or email, I get notified via my watch.
I:m nearer 80 than 70, and I use the phone for a whole lot of things that are more computer than phone: paying bills and checking my bank accounts, buying/booking tickets/hotels, messaging the health centre for an appointment (just recently submitting a run of blood pressure measurements), checking where a particular book is available, looking up odd facts when I hear or read something related, and of course different social media like this.
And yes, it’s usually on my person. Last winter, it fell out of an over-stuffed pocket on a tram in Amsterdam, and I felt bereft, until I was able to confirm (online) that some kind soul had handed it in - and to follow up with payment (online) to have it couriered home within a few days. Fortunately I had my old phone to access wifi to do all that - and that the A’dam transport have such an efficient (online) lost and found service.
Mind you, I’m not sure how few dragged anchor “accidents” from mysterious ships at sea it would take to bring it all crashing down.
I leave on the default “bedtime mode” which turns off notifications and alerts at bedtime. I think maybe there’s a way for a caller to make it ring anyway? Call twice in rapid succession? But my phone doesn’t bother me after bedtime. And if i wake up at 3am and want to check messages, i need to actively pause bedtime mode.
I literally pay a tailor to convert the women’s pockets on my jeans to men’s pockets. It’s expensive, but so nice to have pants that fit my hips and also have useful pockets. I can shove an apple in my pockets. My cellphone fits “below the fold” when my legs are bent.
I’m surprised at the number of people who use their phones in place of computers or televisions. The screen is so small!! OK, maybe my eyes are just crap… I have a difficult enough time doing things on my tablet rather than my PC, I can’t imagine trying to even check my bank balance on the phone. Even games are a challenge on the small screen.
Maybe that’s just the geezer in me. As is actually making calls on my phone, tho I do prefer texting because it lack the immediacy. If the phone rings, specifically the friends/family ring, I assume it’s for something important (and it usually is.) We tend to use texting if it doesn’t require an answer or action right now. And the default ring is almost always Suspected Spam, so it’s easy to ignore. On the rare occasions it’s a legit call, I’ll have a voicemail waiting.
One thing that is handy - having Alexa call my phone when it’s somewhere. I do make an effort to leave it next to my recliner or my keyboard, but I’ve found it on the piano or the dining room table or the kitchen counter or in my purse.
Tangentially related - even tho we got rid of our landline ages ago, when we return from being out of the house for a while, I still feel like I need to go to where the answering machine used to sit and check for messages. Old habits, yanno…
So that was you I saw the other day with a big German shepherd hanging out of your back pocket!
This absolutely! Many of my friends don’t own computers any more or even iPads or some kind of tablet. Trying to do anything seriously financial on your teeny phone screen to me is nuts. This does not make you a geezer. It makes you smart and practical.
I do this, too, although 99.9% of the time the phone is near me. I don’t ever just set it down randomly, even in my small apartment. In each room I have a specific spot where I’ll lay it down, if I lay it down.
I’m sort of both. Many things are much harder on a phone due to the teeny screen and keyboard. But many things are easier.
Here’s an example. What’s my checking account balance right now?
PC/tablet: Open browser. Click on password manager icon to open it. Keystroke master password into password manager to unlock it. Type a few characters into its search box to pull up the entry for my bank. Click the entry to navigate the browser to the bank’s home page. Wait for the page to finish loading, then click in the username box, have the password manager pop up the relevant entry, then click that to autofill the username & PW. Click [login]. Wait a couple seconds for the home page with balance to appear. Read balance.
Phone: Swipe up for the alphabetized app list. Scroll to the bank app. Tap it. Wait a couple seconds for the fingerprint login icon to appear. Press that with a finger. Wait a couple seconds for the home page with balance to appear. Read balance.
There’s no comparison which is easier; phone wins hands down. But wait, there’s more! With the rapid spread of websites whose login process now includes sending a code to your phone that you need to key into the website to complete the login, that just keeps getting harder and harder.
Now once the bank app/website is open on either device, then checking the balance or even paying a routine bill to a known vendor is about equally arduous.
OTOH, just today I had to set up a new payee, and that process would have been very painful on the teeny phone compared to the ease of using the ~ 9x11" screen and the real keyboard on my tablet/PC.
Overall I’d say the phone VASTLY favors inquiry over input. The phone also favors quick logins for brief unitary tasks, rather than long sessions of repetitive whatever done on a single site / app.
Yeah, banking is way quicker on the phone. Paying bills too. So much easier and faster. The only time I use it to watch TV though would be if I’m on a train and want to watch something live, I’d never choose to watch tv on such a tiny screen otherwise.
I always go for the biggest phone I can affordably buy. Which can be done cheaper than you might think. Here is what my phone (bought on sale for $250) looks like compared to an $800 iPhone 17 base model. Screen size comparable to that of a classic portable DVD player and probably bigger than on the very earliest models. The screen is slightly taller than the screen on my 7 inch Kindle. (Unlike getting the largest phone I specifically went for the smaller than standard Kindle because that’s about as large as I can comfortably grip in one hand.) And unlike a television, the phone is held a foot or less from my face.
