Anyone else remember then being the cool new thing instead of a mandatory one?
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.
Technology makes me want to retch these days.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
They’re still cool form factor minicomputers tho, and cameras, video players, game consoles… and also phones.
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… $$$$$$$
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.
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
And shit form factor, huge and bulky but very flat only. Because all customers demand it.
Same thing’s happened to cars: They all look like SUVs because people want to feel rugged.
No, that’w because the larger vehicles have more lax emissions standards.
Yeah. Got a loaner car from Volvo and even as a “compact” it’s bigger than my 10 year old car in my garage.
There’s a stupid EPA rule that needs to go away like the chicken tax.
Chicken tax?
AKA why America never got the Hilux
Dammit I’m supposed to be a tax expert. I knew about the protectionism but I didn’t know it was called the Chicken Tax. Pretend I told you that fact it’ll be good for my ego.
What fact?
You can’t exist without a smart phone now. I went to a baseball game and refused to install their app for the ticket (which couldn’t be purchased with cash). They said they can text a link to a QR code. Printing it wasn’t an option.
I should have asked what I could do if I didn’t have a phone but I suspect their head would explode.
Yeah, I essentially can’t go to most concerts anymore because of the “mobile only” ticketing.
Yeah I can’t do tickets cause my Ticketmaster account broke and won’t send me emails anymore. I can’t get into the venue any other way or I have to spin up all new accounts for the monopoly machine
I was actually able to buy paper concert tix last November at a major arena. I wanted them for a gift. I had to go to the box office during a sporting event. He told me to keep it on the down-low because they are only supposed to print them if there is a very good reason like equipment failure or something. And he still said I had to give him my phone number. Not sure whose number I gave him though.
At Costco, you can’t get in line at the optical center. unless you use a phone camera to shoot the QR camera. I hate that: for most of my life, I was phoneless, and now I am obligated to pay for a service and device that I don’t care for.
Really? I haven’t personally run into anything at Costco that needed a smartphone, though I admittedly haven’t used their optical center.
Yup. Went there to get some new glasses a couple days back, had to figure out my smartphone’s camera feature on the spot. An old lady also had to be taught by someone how to do the QR thing.
I don’t like it. The haves and have nots of the world will be determined by smartphone status.
Welp, I guess I can never use their optical services then.
Pepperidge Farm remembers
Find yourself a privacy comm and settle in. You have agency over you digital life.
