Progress or Regression

[onesea]

Remember the early phones, I cannot say I had one but, some adults did when I was a kid.

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Crb21p7rS8X/?igshid=NjIwNzIyMDk2Mg==

 

Horribly expensive, to big for your pocket, expensive with batteries that could hardly last the day, constant battery anxiety.

 

It's good that we have moved on with smaller and cheaper phones..

 

For £1250 more than my present pocket size phone, what extra can these phones do?

 

[Bender]

18 minutes ago, onesea said:

Remember the early phones, I cannot say I had one but, some adults did when I was a kid.

 

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Crb21p7rS8X/?igshid=NjIwNzIyMDk2Mg==

 

Horribly expensive, to big for your pocket, expensive with batteries that could hardly last the day, constant battery anxiety.

 

It's good that we have moved on with smaller and cheaper phones..

 

For £1250 more than my present pocket size phone, what extra can these phones do?

 

What do you want it to do and does your current phone still do what you want it to ?

 

If the extent of your phone use is calls and a bit of internet connectivity then as long as your battery is not crap the main driver for phones that I can see is driven Purley by consumerism and the need to have the latest thing.

 

My last Sony I had for nearly 4yrs, my new pixel unless the next version of Android fixes some serious glitches will probably be gone before contract is up

[manxie49]

I still have an old iPhone 6,  bought 2nd hand.  Admittedly they no longer do updates for it, apps are limited, and over these past 12 months it seems to be going slower at loading stuff than JSO taking a leisurely stroll down a London Street!  But I'm fooked if I'm gonna spend over  £1500 on a new one!  Not that I'm tight, but I read that Apple are taking 30% profit from every sale, and for me, a cheap phone, that I usually end up dropping, bashing or losing anyway, does exactly what I want it to do .... And as an added bonus, no one really wants to nick my heap of crap, out of date tech .... Happy days! 

[geofferz]

I get a be phone every 2 years with my contract. have the s23 ultra pictured above. It's excellent, but an s20 from a few years ago is 95% of the phone, for £260.

 

That would absolutely be my advice for anyone looking at smart phones. Only very very increment updates thereafter imo. 

[Fozzie]

It's worth noting, that the state of the art phone of the day at the start of the 80s was worth over £2000 by todays standards if you allow for inflation. 

 

So state of the art phones costing about £1500 isn't too bad. But what is bad is that all the market offers these days is various types of state of the art device. It's quite rare to get an honest phone that's cheap, and does everything. I have a Pixel 6A as a work phone, and it does everything my other phone does, just for things like low light photos and videos it struggles. But that was still £300. 

[Gerontious]

first 'mobile phone' I ever saw ran on two car batteries. in a wheelie case, it had a standard old fashioned handset complete with curly wire and a spin dialer. It worked on a network that was limited to the city of London. Parts of the M1 and M6 as far as Manchester. and at my place of work at that time in silly oak Birmingham. no worky. This would have been in the early/mid 1980s.

 

the latest phones seem to have shifted the emphasis over to the camera system. Thats certainly going to be the big update on the next iPhone. so-called periscope lenses on the high end models with more efficient hardware and greater battery life. 3nm chips.

 

if my phone was a pie.. I would only be eating a very thin slice of it. and what it has to offer.

[Steve_M]

1 hour ago, Gerontious said:

 

if my phone was a pie.. I would only be eating a very thin slice of it. and what it has to offer.

 An interesting expression.., I like it.

 

Back when I was employed I had cause to attend various events around software, its development, and how to project manage those deliveries. An interesting bit of information came out of an event where Agile software delivery was discussed. Part of the cost advantage of (proper) Agile delivery is not delivering function that is not going to be used. We were presented with the information that most software function is rarely used, if ever, so why spend time creating it? I think the same applies for phones.I need phone and text capability, safe browser access to the internet, and a half decent camera for happy snaps (no need for professional level images). Anything else is wasted… and I have to spend my hard earned pension on loads of function I’ll never use.

 

Incidentally, the same applies to my car and motorbike… 

[S-Westerly]

I think it's a pretty widespread phenomenon- computerisation purely for the sake of it. Some years ago my company built a class of ships that were fully integrated and computerised. Unfortunately the system wasn't as reliable as it should have been so when the system inevitably crashed we were running around having to do mickey mouse work arounds. Previously we'd flick a switch.

[Bender]

I've had a mobile since they were small enough to carry, my dad for work, so he said, had a Motorola that was like half a briefcase, clipped into boot, it had its own hand set and limited battery life but you could remove it and carry it off and still make calls, no idea how he wrangled that from work

 

I can't remember what my first phone was but it was chunky and had a pull out aerial and the sim card was like a full on credit card , next phone was Sony mars bar so called because it was similar size, mars bars were bigger back then, it got stolen out of my van, everything got stolen in the 90's.

 

 

[Tiggie]

2 hours ago, Bender said:

it got stolen out of my van, everything got stolen in the 90's.

 

 

 

 

[Bender]

44 minutes ago, Tiggie said:

 

 

 

We didn't have removable face plates, the radio had a handle you pulled the whole thing out

[keith1200rs]

I remember being in Italy in the late 80s and in a restaurant people were coming in with the men dressed in smart suits, each carrying a car radio which they put on the table next to them while they ate dinner. Seemed bizarre at the time.

[bonio]

5 hours ago, Bender said:

everything got stolen in the 90's.

Too right. I parked my car for a weekend at Yeovil station. I knew it would be safe, as it was worthless. And when I got back on Sunday evening, there it was. Only someone had nicked the dashboard and left me with just the wires hanging out of the fascia. 

Insurance wrote the car off and sent me a cheque for £150 - no excess in those days.

[Tinkicker]

My first mobile phone was issued through work and was a handset connected to a shoebox sized battery.  When I got in the van, I disconnected the handset and plugged it into a socket in the dashboard and it turned into a car phone.

 

I went up in the world and was then issued with a motorola brick.   I was on 24/7 breakdown callout and with the company I worked for owning 27,000 hire vehicles nationwide, a full nights sleep was a rare occurrence.  That thing blinking away on my bedside cabinet sparked a phone phobia that lasts to this day.  I absolutely hate the things.

 

Hateful device.

[daveinlim]

I've got a OnePlus 8 pro. Bought it outright from OnePlus. I've had it 3+ years and still going strong. When I bought it, it was higher spec than the top Samsung in UK and a lot cheaper. 

I've been paying £8 a month for my SIM since. (30GB, unlimited calls, no roaming charges).

 

I like my tech and gadgets but I can't see myself upgrading until this phone dies. There isn't enough of a jump in technology to pay out for another phone and I'm well past the age of anyone I know caring what phone I have. 

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

My phone is crap. 

[Bender]

13 hours ago, keith1200rs said:

I remember being in Italy in the late 80s and in a restaurant people were coming in with the men dressed in smart suits, each carrying a car radio which they put on the table next to them while they ate dinner. Seemed bizarre at the time.

Mine had a little discrete velvet bag you could pop it into, was as discrete as a brick.

[manxie49]

I believe they do a rather nice shoulder holster to go with this one 

[Steve_M]

29 minutes ago, manxie49 said:

I believe they do a rather nice shoulder holster to go with this one 

I wouldn’t fancy taking that out in an airport.

[onesea]

I just saw the price of that one and realised that for years phone prices have dropped now they are sneaking back up.

 

I seem to change phones every 2 years.  Normally due to mal treatment dropped (screen smashed), sunk (2m of water and soft mud I didn't even try), dropped in oil (even after soap and water the mic and speakers never recovered), lost from motorbike.

 

That's 8 years worth of phones. I used to get them insured.   Now I spend between £100 and £300 on one is cheaper.  SIM only contact £10 a month and gig data I only use 10 on average.

 

Presently I have a Nokia XR20 meant to be tough 6 months and not a scratch.  Although I am on second screen saver.

 

A decent camera, GPS for navigation, internet browser, NFC, Bluetooth, WiFi, torch hell what more do you want from a phone.

 

I think like laptops and PC's you no longer need top end for most uses.  It's just buying at your budget prioritising your features.

[Bender]

I've never had phone insurance, that's probably paid for a couple of my phone's over 30yrs

[dynax]

A couple of years ago I needed to get a cheap phone just to get by on, picked one up from Sainsburys for a grand sum of £2.50 which also included £1.00's worth of airtime to get you started