Funny you should mention that.
About a week ago I came across a 10" tablet that I last used in 2015, I charged it up to see if it still worked. It was fine and the battery still held a charge BUT I couldn’t update anything so sadly it went in the bin (after smashing the memory/processor chip and recovering the battery)
There was a time ,not that long ago ,that we would go bravely out into the world on our own and out of contact with anyone all day.It didn’t seem too bad to me.
Late 90s perhaps. Seems like a lifetime ago.
I refused to get a smartphone for years. I was given one by work and found it useful in a number of ways, particularly being able to navigate maps or google when out and about. It was also getting increasingly difficult to manage without one and people’s face would fall if I said I didn’t have the tech to join in whatever online phone thing they were enjoying. The pressure to be on whatsapp from family and friends was phenomenal a few years ago.
I don’t agree with the phone revolution, particularly when I see people paying with them. I also don’t agree with using it as an authenticator. It’s really annoying that my work phone has an authenticator app on the work phone to access certain secure programmes / databases I need to use. So I have to charge the phone at home to do parts of my job. Wrong on so many levels.
The downside is that when the phone goes wrong, as it did last week when I was on a train, you are basically left helpless. I pressed on the screen and suddenly my phone froze. Froze as in - it could not be switched off. As it’s a newer handset you can’t even open it to take the battery out. I panicked! it was just stuck in the last screen I had visited and it didn’t fade for the entire train journey, there was no screensaver or lock. It was just completely stuck with no way to switch it off. I tried phoning it using the work phone and it went to voicemail! Totally rubbish if you desperately need it to validate a transaction or authenticate your online banking or other websites. The whole experience was totally disorientating as I was very worried that I had broken the phone and it was unfixable. I spent the entire journey worrying about various things I needed it for in the next 24 hours and wondering how to work around that. How would people contact me? (not friends but say the vet or the dentist etc). what if there was an emergency at home?
Anyway I went to WHSmith to see whether I could buy one of those twisted paperclip things to open the sim card slot and maybe see if that helped. Well they didn’t sell those at the station. I got to work, went to the photocopy room to see if anyone in this day and age had lost a paperclip. I finally found one on the floor somewhere, uncurled it and tried the sim option. Well that did nothing at all. So I finally logged onto my work laptop and googled how to switch the dratted phone off when frozen. It turns out that there is a combination of buttons to press to reset it - the relief I felt when it restarted was amazing, and also ridiculous. How can we be this reliant on a little bit of kit - our whole lives are in these dratted devices! Even though I fixed it, the whole experience totally ruined my day because I was so stressed when I thought it was beyond repair.
Really??
the amount of online games o n this senior site would suggest otherwise.
I like paying some computer games and I use my phone for music - and I am well and truly an adult.
I have a smart phone and it is very useful - as with any other thing, use it for the uses you want and not the others.
everyone on here uses the internet - just some people use a desktop or laptop or tablet - and some use a smart phone.
I like my smartphone. It allows me to stream videos a lot easier than a laptop. Similar to others on here, for years I stayed away and carried a flip phone until it was vintage.
Not app savvy, but grateful for the phone in emergencies and being able to stay in touch with my kids through facetime.
Of course my other pet hate is that mobile phone bots “listen” to private conversations. You then find ads all over your social media related to something you discussed in real life while the dratted listening device was in the room. My alarm at this is not the social media invasion, but the fact that this is a bugging risk. We are living in a society where you cannot have a private conversation.
I have a fishing and golf planned this week. Away from home near 300 miles. State owned Lake and Golf Course. Guess what They follow me everywhere my iPad goes. It’s like constant connection even on the golf corse. I feel I have to have it along. It’s like the bate bucket in the boat. I’m mostly kidding but it is a fact of life. Where one is wid you, you have no privacy. Haha. I sent em my Hole in 2 on a par 3. Yea! It was still a good day. Storms passing north too.
You still can
So far I have looked at my phone four times today
I haven’t walked into anything yet. Over and out
you are too cool Bruce. very up to date and what my kids would use their phone for!
I have a smartphone , a tablet, and a notebook. I could do without the tablet but need the other two devices for banking. The smartphone is also indispensable for communicating with family members. Even my 93 y.o. MiL has a smartphone and a tablet for sending Whatsapp messages on a daily basis.
I’m not so worried about how other people use their phones. I’m not contactable 24h but only when I want to. Smartphones are tremendously useful for those who have to be mobile and I wouldn’t want to have those times back when you had to study maps and take copious notes before you could hit the road. Today the latest traffic info guides you through this chaos in densely populated areas with heavy traffic which doesn’t let you ponder over which exit to take. In a city you don’t know you find your way in no time.
Yes I’ve a smart phone .
Although I’m not joined by my hip to my phone I wouldn’t want to be without it.
Not on any expensive contract as I purchased the iPhone outright.
I use Giffgaff £6 a month contract free for unlimited text and calls with limited data.
Thats less than 2 cups of coffee ….whats not to love .
for GiffGaff
I think describing me as “cool” might be over egging the pudding. 
Blimey, I was born in 1973 
The commercial version of Marty Cooper’s prototype, the Motorola Dynatac 8000X, was released 11 years after that first call, in 1984
Thanks for sharing.
Bruce can you download? There’s an option on Spotify Premium.
Enjoy your holiday!
My brother worked for Cellnet from its inception (BTs mobile arm) I was in the UK in 1989 (I think it was) and he lent me a phone as big as a brick.
I was driving from Folkestone to Glasgow overnight, as one does, when I heard on the car radio about a plane crash at Lockerbie. My mother rang my brother to ask if it would affect us, said he would find out and call us back. When he did ring back it took us an age to find out how to answer the damn thing as we had never used a mobile phone before.
BTW the crash did affect us as we would have driven right past where the plane had crashed an hour earlier. I forget how we bypassed the area but these days Google maps would have made it so much easier.
