Do You Really Need a Smart Phone? 851
Roblimo writes "My phone is as stupid as a phone can be, but you can drop it or get it wet and it will still work. My cellular cost per month is about $4, on average. I've had a cellular phone longer than most people, and I assure you that a smart phone would not improve my life one bit. You, too, might find that you are just as happy with a stupid phone as with a smart one. If nothing else, you'll save money by dumbing down your phone." I stuck with a dumb phone for a long time, but I admit to loving the versatility of my Android phone, for all its imperfections.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
my iphone saved me money (Score:5, Interesting)
forgot the details but having email on the go allowed me to get some deals before others. like buying a condo/coop in NYC and getting a lot of the bidding done over email on the go
overall i don't use it that much but i'm part of a family plan, it's only $30 a month and the device is free after i sell my old iphone/smartphone after 18-24 months
Nope (Score:4, Interesting)
Lying in bed and reading web pages without a bulky laptop (or pants, for that matter) is too good to give up.
The secret is you can never go back... (Score:4, Interesting)
I did the dumb phone thing for quite a while a couple of years back. I'm not a huge phone talker and i'd use a couple hundred minutes a month. I bought a tracphone for $20 and loaded minutes on it at the rate of about $20-30 a month. If I lost the phone...who cares?
But when I got my current phone...Verizon/Incredible...can't go back. $120 a month easy...I'm getting murdered on that...my biggest single monthly expense. I'll still pay. I'm a sucker, but it just keeps doing way cool shit. This morning I used google navigate to get to a service call at a client i'd never visited. When I pulled into their parking lot, I look down at my phone and there's a picture of g street view of exactly what I'm looking at out the windshield of my car. It was kinda surreal. And worth every penny.
Best compromise: (Score:4, Interesting)
At home using WiFi it synchs with gmail contacts and calender. Thus even on the road all the contact info is available. Reminders and alarm clocks with multiple alarms work. Cheap 5$ apps like Co-Pilot gives you some GPS functionality, directions etc. (Co-Pilot takes a while to get find the satellite and calculate current position, after that it is not too bad). Some simple games, good storage for lots of music and photos etc.
But the best feature is the Wi-fi calling. Most cell companies charge you air-time minutes even if you use the Wi-Fi calling. But that is home base minutes. Not roaming, not interntional. So if you are on a cruise ship or a foreign country with cyber cafe, you can save a bundle on international calls. Cruise ships typically charge 50$ for internet vs $3.95 a minute for cell phone call. International roaming is outrageous. Most foreign cyber cafes give you internet access at about 1$ per hour.
Need? Yup. (Score:3, Interesting)
Big problem at work and not near home or work. Smartphone to VPN, ssh and solve it quickly.
200 passwords to keep track of. Smartphone does it.
Dumbphone wouldn't work for any of that.
Sometimes it saves money and frustration (Score:5, Interesting)
Needs differ. Duh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shocked. (Score:4, Interesting)
LOL, I just think that about 95% of the people who have them don't need really need them. It is a luxury/toy, which is OK, but its darned expensive one when you figure you're paying an extra $100 a month probably by the time you add it all up. There's a LOT you can do with that much cash. I consult for traders and constantly have equipment that is up 24/7 and people scream if it isn't, yet I still don't need a smart phone, just something that will get an SMS. Heck, a pager would do fine if such things still existed.
Re:Shocked. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes it can be a job-saver. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ancedote:
My smart phone paid for itself the afternoon I accidentally misconfigured the firewall on the company's ecommerce server (which is in a colo several hours drive from me). Misconfigured as in blocked my own IP address instead of whitelisting it. I was able to download a SSH client, open a terminal session and revert the firewall settings from my phone.
Re:Shocked. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's fine, though I'd definitely nit pick on what you say you pay. I pay $115 a month for unlimited text and data, plus generous voice minutes on two phone lines. So if you were being frugal about minutes, text, and data you use you could doubtless pay more like $40-45 a month (maybe even as little as $35 if you shop around) for your plan. That said, in response to you and the original poster, the answer is clearly "no, I don't need a smartphone." I also don't need a dumb phone. Or cable. Or a TV. Or a computer. I could clearly exist and probably even be happy without any of these things. All of them are nice to have however, and in my opinion worth what I spend on them.
I get a *lot* of use out of my smartphone. Of major purchases, I'd rate it below only my workstation computer and my car on the "things I use a lot" list. I play with it, keep in touch with people on it, use it to get around a my new home city, keep notes on it... I don't *need* it, but if you told me I could only keep one electronic device... I'd probably pick the phone. It *can* do everything my computer can (though often not as nicely), does lots of extra stuff like GPS, and is very portable. I wouldn't be thrilled to do away with my desktop or my TV, but I'd probably get rid of them before my phone.
Oh for goodness sake (Score:3, Interesting)
I got into computers when I was fairly young... well, for the time. I was 13, and Way Back Then not everyone was born already having a computer or three in the house.
And even Way Back Then, one of the dreams, the truly grand dreams that we HOPED we'd ever see but didn't know if would happen in our lifetime, was a truly portable computer that fit in your pocket.
AND NOW I HAVE ONE. It's in my pocket right now. It runs Linux, I can ssh into (and out of) it, it is virtually ALWAYS CONNECTED to yet another of our dreams, the now-ubiquitous Internet, I can TELL IT to search for something and 90% of the time it'll get it right, I can check my email on it, and in rare circumstances, and I mean rare... I can use it to make and receive phone calls.
You know what you should do? STOP CALLING IT A "SMARTPHONE". It's a portable internet-connected computer that happens to be able to make phone calls, and it's AWESOME that something like this even friggin EXISTS. I can't WAIT to see what they look like in 5 years, let alone 10, but unless the thing requires brain surgery I'm sure as hell going to have one.
Re:Shocked. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Another way to save money (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a TV, but no cable -- I use the TV for a big monitor, get my TV shows off the internet.
As to the topic, I'd like to have an Android, and I could afford the hardware, but I can't justify the cost of any carrier that lets me use one. I'm on Boost Mobile, flat $45 per month for talk, long distance, text, email, 411, walkie-talkie, and internet. I could justify the initial price of the toy, but not the $80 per month plus minutes a smart phone would cost (and when my daughters call, they talk a long time).
If Apple or Google want me to use their phones, they're going to have to buy out one of the cell carriers and stop the price-gouging the company they buy does now.
Re:Another way to save money (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an LG Optimus V on Virgin. The phones are $150ish, $25/mo (think it's $35 now for new subscribers) gets 300 min, unlimited text and data. It's not the flashiest phone around but I'm just too cheap to pay $80/mo or more for a phone. I had a dumb phone until April 2011, and now that I've gone to a smartphone I'd hate to go back.
Re:Shocked. (Score:5, Interesting)
> Ever go to a restaurant and look around at what people are doing? Sadly, a large % of them have their smart phones out
Different people have different expectations when they go to do dinner, I suppose.
But here's a recent example from my life. I was just out to dinner but one of my friends couldn't make it because she was sick. During the course of dinner we were talking about a movie and none of us could remember the actor we were thinking of. One of us pulled out our phone and looked it up. That was handy and added to the conversation. As dinner was wrapping up, I was able to text my sick friend to ask what she wanted us to bring to her from the restaurant. Maybe if you had looked at me at those times, you might have thought I was engrossed in my phone instead of the dinner and companionship at the table - but that wouldn't have been the case.
But like you say, different strokes for different folks. Much better they're texting away quietly than talking loudly. I was just in a place that had a sign, "no cell phones, there's a phone booth in the back if you want to talk on your cell phone". Odd way for that "technology" to come back.