Well, I don’t use mobile phones, and technology is constantly improving, but they still rely on batteries and solid continuous coverage, which in some locations just isn’t practical.
I loathe cell phones and think that they’ve done a lot of damage to how people interact with others…but I do own one. The only reason I have a cell phone is because so many other people have them that pay phones have all but disappeared. Mine is a pay-as-you-go phone that spends 99% of its time off and in my purse.
I’d be all for a plan where you literally only pay for the minutes you use, because I’m required to add at least 60 minutes every 90 days, and I typically use 5-10 minutes in that time frame.
Right now I don’t know where it is–in the house somewhere. About half the calls I get on it are me, calling it from the landline, so that I can locate it.
But boy, there are times when it’s handy.
ETA: I have to buy minutes every 45 days, too–but they accumulate, then I call my sister and talk for three hours.
I use my phone to keep in contact with my kids. My landline is always occupied as I work from home, so the mobile (what youse call a cell phone in the US) is my only point of communication.
So, when my daughter has a crisis with her little baby boy…she rings me for advice and solace.
When my eldest son breaks down on the road 70km from home with yet another fuckup with his motorbike…he rings me, at 3.00am.
When my second eldest son gets evicted from his latest apartment, loses his job and runs out of money…he rings me.
When my youngest kid (also a son) goes travelling overseas and runs out of money…he rings me too.
Funny how I dread my mobile ringing. 
What’s more practical, though: having a phone which is normally charged and normally in a coverage area (although sometimes the battery may be dead and/or you’re out of a coverage area), or never having coverage because one doesn’t have a phone? (I’m not addressing whether or not you, personally, should have a phone, but rather the issue of what’s really more practical literally.)
I’ve had a cell phone for many years, and have used it exactly twice. It’s for emergencies, which don’t happen that often. But when they do happen, it’s great to be able to call someone.
I have a smartphone, and I chose option #1. I use it mostly to text to friends, and use the PDA and Web browser for a lot of my Booster Club stuff. I actually used the phone function this month.
Keep mine off most of the time. I carry it to work in case I should have an accident some cold, dark night coming home.
I can add 1000 for $100, and they last a year. If that’s more to your liking, you should see if your provider has something like it.
I’m somewhere between convenience and 24/7, but picked the 24/7 option. I don’t use it for work so that choice didn’t apply.
Well, now that’s I’ve gotten rid of my landline, yes I keep close to my cell. But I could easily go back to landline with no cell.
I’m pretty sure that if I could track each time the features on my iPhone were used, the most frequently accessed thing would be the Blizzard Authenticator app.
Having a phone is certainly useful in many situations. But we are completely relying on them when they are unreliable. We are eschewing other kinds of contactability (public phone booths are almost completely absent these days) at the expense of an unreliable alternative.
It’s also my home phone. I have a kid, so I want to have it when she’s with me, and want to be accessible when she isn’t, within reason.
I’m the same way. In the mid-90s, I was always carrying a PDA, a phone, and a pager; usually a Walkman or other music device; and often a portable game system or a book or comic.
When the Treo 300 came out, that went down to a phone, an MP3 player, and often a book. The Treo 650 eliminated the MP3 player, but it still couldn’t eliminate the book (mainly because converting stuff to a format it could actually handle was a pain).
The iPhone is good enough to read on, at least for the “killing 20 minutes” kind of reading. Even if I don’t have any ebooks ready to read, I can go download a couple issues with MangaDL, or hit my home web server to pull down a PDF of a short story collection, or whatever.
So, my phone has finally eliminated all the other devices in my life.
Which is probably why the cat looks so scared of it…
One really nice thing about Google Voice (or one of those contracts where you have multiple #s on the same phone) is that you can give your boss a number that only rings your phone during certain hours (or that rings your phone, but only silently).
So, my phone is next to my bed, which is occasionally handy when friends/family have an emergency and need to reach me, or just when I wake up at 4am and decide to play a round of Drop 7 to help me fall asleep again. But that doesn’t mean my boss can reach me at 4am.
40 here.
Inaccurate? My phone syncs automatically to… I’m not sure if it’s the cell tower or an ntp host, actually, but it doesn’t matter; it’s always right to the second. I know there are a few watches that can do this, but not many.
Smartphone user here. It’s indespensable. It’s my alarm clock. As soon as I pick it up to turn off the alarm, I’m checking email, the weather, Facebook and the Dope before I get out of bed. I don’t feel like I’ve connected to the world and have started a new day if I don’t do that. Then I need to pee really bad and that gets me out of the snuggly bed.
Once I’m up, I check news headlines with it and then once I’m out the door it tells me when the next bus is coming so I know if I have time to stop for coffee. If I’m traveling somewhere new on the CTA, it tells me which routes will get me there the quickest. I reserve my iGo cars with it. Once I’m on a train or bus, I’m on the Dope or Facebook again, entertaining myself and seeing what other people are up to. I get Skilling’s FB updates about the weather and video links to practice sessions from a couple of favorite bands. I can use this time to respond to more urgent work emails, and am listening to music the whole time, too.
I’ve left it home three times in the 5 years I’ve been using smartphones, and I’ve missed it terribly each time. It’s contact with friends, family, work, and even Doper strangers, by having free access to email, texting, Facebook, the whole Web. I look stuff up all the time, and feel naked if I can’t - latest searches: How do steam radiators work (because my apartment’s radiators came on for the first time since I moved in and one of them is whistling): What happens when you get arrested (because my neighbor had her boyfriend arrested last night): Find nearest Target store (I needed to check how late the one by me is open): Netflix Queue (did some rearranging for my next discs). That was this morning!
Indispensable.
I forget mine frequently. I forgot it today actually, which was annoying. I was supposed to see my mom after my midterm and she wasn’t home but I didn’t have my phone to find out if she was on her way. Generally though, I rarely use it at home and not obsessively when out and about.
I only joined the Borg Collective last year, when my wife’s grown son bought me an inexpensive, no-frills Nokia and a T-Mobile prepaid minutes account. It came in handy this summer when I was a crew leader for the US Census and I needed to be reachable. Otherwise it’s mainly a convenience- if I’m grocery shopping and need to ask my wife about whether she wants me to get something or not. I still find it more convenient to wear a watch then dig in my pocket for the cell phone.
Oddly enough I was playing around with the built-in FM radio function today, until I realized that since getting broadband I can now just go to any of my local stations’ streaming sites. :smack:
Hey, what can I say, sometimes I find it more natural to heat something up on the stovetop instead of using the microwave.
This is about how I am. I’ve had my iPhone for a little over a year now, and it’s indispensable. I put my paperwork on it as .pdf so I don’t have to carry a binder full of paper around with me at job sites. I play games on it. I has over 8000 of my favorite songs on it, as well as the first 2 seasons of Metalocalypse. I watch movies streaming from Netflix on it. I access my email, make phone calls, send and receive documents, use it to comparison-shop while at stores, look up info on teh intarwebz, take pictures, etc. etc.
It’s rarely out of reach, unless I’m in my own home or my GFs or some other place that I think of as “secure”.