# Plain cell phones--the latest trend?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [March 25, 2022, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663 "2022-03-25T01:19:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2022, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/21 "2022-04-12T21:16:58Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#):
>
> I mean, really, you might just love your 1910 horseless carriage but you still can’t take it on the freeway since its top speed is about 30mph and nobody thinks there should be a dedicated lane on every freeway to accomodate slow old cars.
True. But you can drive your horse-equipped carriage on all the other roads. Nobody makes them all unusable for horse, or bicycle, or pedestrians just because cars have been invented.
And 5G isn’t even available here yet.
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### Author:  [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2022, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/22 "2022-04-12T21:40:02Z")
Just because you CAN do a thing does not mean that thing you want to do is commonplace nor even advisable–when a car whips past a horse at 50mph, honking the horn and not bothering to move over you’d best hope that horse is incredibly bomb proof or you and your horse could be dead in seconds. Asphalt is very hard on a horse’s hooves and tendons and it’s not advised to drive or ride them too much on roads at all. And bike lanes covered in horse shit are not going to fly so good with the two wheel crowd OR the pedestrians.
And just because 5G isn’t available in your area yet doesn’t mean it isn’t coming, and cell phone carriers have to order phones that will work with their network–especially Verizon, so beloved in the rural areas. Verizon phones have to be made specifically and only for Verizon, so if you have ten million customers and say one tenth of those are outside the currently built out 5G networks it simply isn’t economically feasible to continue ordering and making dumber phones available. 5G is backwards compatible, 3 and 4G are not forwards compatible however and the customer service/tech support headache of continuing to support outmoded equipment is likewise economically a pisspoor idea. Much better to explain to a relatively small group of resistant customers that their upgrade is going to happen whether they like it or not than to endlessly cater to people with a very poor grasp of what’s actually involved in maintaining a cellular network.
There’s also the bandwidth perspective–the FCC regulates which devices can operate in each spectrum and when a band gets overcrowded all that traffic has to go somewhere, and an overcrowded spectrum means dropped calls, poor reception, slow data and pissed off customers. From the standpoint of latency alone 5G is a huge improvement, then you add in the faster data traffic and going to 5G is literally a no brainer. People act like their personal preferences simply MUST dictate the way the other 200 million people using cell phones must follow and that’s simply no way to run a business. Because people can complain when they need to upgrade to a network capable device but they get over it and where are they going to go? 5G is happening and if you want to use a cell phone you’re just going to have to accept that. It really is an improvement no matter how people might pine and yearn for the “good old days.”
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2022, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/23 "2022-04-12T22:10:28Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#):
>
> It’s actually a real issue around here (DC metro area), as so many people work in secured facilities where those are not permitted. The one time I visited such a place, I had to leave my phone (and my Fitbit) in a locker outside the office.
The presence of a camera is practically irrelevant in those circumstances. Any transceiver with a software-controlled microphone (e.g., a dumbphone) is sufficient to get any device banned from a SCIF.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2022, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/24 "2022-04-13T01:27:52Z")
> [@SmartAleq](#):
>
> Just because you CAN do a thing does not mean that thing you want to do is commonplace nor even advisable–when a car whips past a horse at 50mph, honking the horn and not bothering to move over you’d best hope that horse is incredibly bomb proof or you and your horse could be dead in seconds. Asphalt is very hard on a horse’s hooves and tendons and it’s not advised to drive or ride them too much on roads at all. And bike lanes covered in horse shit are not going to fly so good with the two wheel crowd OR the pedestrians.
People drive buggies down the road here ALL THE DAMN TIME. (So does farm equipment, of various widths and speeds.) They are just as entitled to use the road as you are. Anybody idiot enough to lean on the horn right next to the horse’s ear is liable to find themselves up on charges if it causes an accident.
Horses driven on pavement wear shoes suited to the purpose. Buggies don’t go in the bike lane if there is one, which there generally isn’t. Pedestrians walking around in farm country should learn to look where they’re putting their feet, and everybody on the roads needs to learn to share the road and to look out for everybody else. Cars do not own the planet.
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### Author:  [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2022, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/25 "2022-04-13T01:35:12Z")
I see the appeal.
But I need my smartphone to live, so no.
The compromise I’ve made is I will not be ruled by the chime, and keep my ringer off always unless I am expecting communication from someone. I’m also virtually nonexistent on social media, so I’ve remained sane, but also can whip out my phone to do anything from give me directions to let me scan prices at Target when the signage is missing. Also, the cameras on phones these days are insane.
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### Author:  [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2022, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/26 "2022-04-13T12:34:25Z")
Come to think of it, how about a phone like the Nokia 8810? (Relatively) cheap, but it has a camera, runs Linux and apps. Is it a smartphone or not?
Actually, I observed, even back in the day, that a really minimalist phone was a design choice, and that remains true today. It has always been an alternative trend; it is not something they just came up with.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2022, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/27 "2022-04-13T13:13:35Z")
> [@DPRK](#):
>
> Is it a smartphone or not?
Definitely not. Very solidly a feature phone (as are mentioned earlier.)
> **[Feature phone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_phone)**
>
> A feature phone (also spelled featurephone) is a type or class of mobile phone that retains the form factor of earlier generations of mobile telephones, typically with press-button based inputs and a small non-touch display. They tend to use an embedded operating system with a small and simple graphical user interface, unlike large and complex mobile operating systems such as Android from Google or iOS from Apple. Their functions are limited compared to smartphones, which integrate the phone wi...
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### Author:  [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2022, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/28 "2022-04-20T15:13:15Z")
> [@gnoitall](#):
>
> The presence of a camera is practically irrelevant in those circumstances. Any transceiver with a software-controlled microphone (e.g., a dumbphone) is sufficient to get any device banned from a SCIF.
I stand (er, sit) corrected.
A facility I used to visit, 20 years back (i.e., before smartphones) had a ban on cell phones with cameras. At that point, many did not yet have cameras, so it was no hardship. Though, they never searched my purse or car, so I imagine I could have smuggled one in if I’d wanted to.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [April 20, 2022, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plain-cell-phones-the-latest-trend/961663/29 "2022-04-20T17:04:25Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#):
>
> A facility I used to visit, 20 years back (i.e., before smartphones) had a ban on cell phones with cameras.
I presume some places still do, since the Kyocera Dura is available with or without a camera.
It also won’t do a batch of stuff that other smart phones will. I don’t know how much of that (inability to download apps that it didn’t come with, for example) has to do with security of certain workplaces. I need the thing because it’ll survive a day working on the irrigation system, quite possibly combined with being whacked against something heavy and/or sharp edged.
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