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-UE
Changing our phones has wiped my photos, broken my mom's SD card,...
...and caused me to have to recustomize everything...not to mention that the new phone is crappier than my old phone.
My old phone has a texting keyboard but also has a number pad. I didn't have to wait for the touchscreen of the new phone to update itself to a new configuration before I could go and press stuff. (Thankfully the new phone has separate numbers from the letters on its texting keyboard so at least I can, albeit awkwardly, pull out the keyboard while talking on the phone.)
That said, it still has the extra problem of wiping all our pictures. Well, I don't know about my dad's pictures, since his old phone is a different model from my old phone. My mom's SD card somehow got jammed by the person at Best Buy Mobile into the new phone's microSD card slot and became bent, and now I can't even read it with a full-size SD adapter. And she had a number of nice pictures on there.
My microSD card had a bunch of photos too...and now they're all gone because my new phone couldn't figure out how to read them (despite the fact that they're just jpegs) and decided to delete them. Now I have to figure out how to recover the files.
As for my mom's card...well, I guess I can try to hit up a computer stuff repair store sometime... Well, at least the person at Best Buy Mobile was nice enough to replace her SD card with a new one.
Oh, the reason for all this stupidity? The new phones don't come with SD cards, the way the old ones did. Also, our carrier now has a "$36 activation fee for each new phone" thing going. This wasn't the case the last time we got new phones. So your "free" phones aren't actually free anymore.
Not to mention that the selection of new phones was...very, very poor. ALMOST ALL THE PHONES WERE FUCKING SMARTPHONES. FUCK SMARTPHONES. I WANT A TEXTING PHONE OR A FLIP PHONE, WHY ARE YOU NOT CATERING TO MY NEEDS. I DONT NEED SMARTPHONE FEATURES AND THEIR PLANS ARE TOO FUCKING COSTLY.
FUCK YOU SMARTPHONE GLORIFYING POP CULTURE. FUCK SMARTPHONES. FUCK APPS. FUCK THE IPHONE. FUCK ALL THESE NOVELTY FEATURES THAT HAVE AT BEST MARGINAL USES IN REAL LIFE, BUT WHICH PEOPLE ARE CONVINCED TO BUY BECAUSE COMPANIES ARE TRYING SO DAMN HARD TO CONVINCE PEOPLE THEY NEED THEM.
The only phones available were two flip phones that didn't have SD card slots (yes, there are some that do) and two texting phones that don't have numpads.
Okay, fine. I already don't like how my new phone has just a touchscreen rather than a physical numpad, but my parents were like "try it out, you might like it". So I start customizing it. I'm checking out the ringtones it has built in. Just for icing on the cake, the phone has to go back to lock screen before the longer ringtones are done playing. So I have to keep on smushing my finger across the screen just to keep it from going out on me as I'm trying to listen to the whole ringtone track. I remember that this was a problem when I first tried the older edition of this phone. I haven't figured out how to extend this time.
Oh, I also have to make sure I MOVE my finger while it's on the screen. And that means moving it a significant distance. If I move my finger too little, it will think that I'm actually clicking.
This is why I don't like updating my hardware. I'd rather get a second instance of the exact same damn device that I'm already using.
In other news, fuck touchscreens.
(Cross-posted to the TV Tropes forum.)
Comments
Yeah, I remember when I first got my iPhone, it sure was an annoying adjustment at first. Now I can't imagine going back to the numpad though.
You have to wait for any touchscreen to change itself into what you want to do, don't you? Like, you have to wait for the numpad to come back up when you want to dial a number, rather than being able to do it with your finger right next to your face.
It's that delay that I dislike.
This is why I plan never to get a smart phone. I will always try to get a basic phone.
The only touch screens I like are those on the DS and 3DS.
If/when I get a smartphone I'd definitely prefer one with a physical keyboard.
I might get a Blackberry if I get a smartphone; Blackberries seem to be the most "professional" of the three OS styles.
If I ever get a phone, I'm going to make sure it has a physical keyboard. No touchscreen bull for me.
Blackberry is going to go bankrupt in short order and most of the hardware they've rushed to market post-iPhone has been shoddy.
Why did you change phones if you hate change this much?
My mom needed a new phone. Her phone's mike was starting to go bad because some sort of pressure plate wasn't working right, and her screen was starting to peel from itself causing the pressure-based touchscreen to stop working where it was peeling.
Given that we usually get new phones every two years as part of an upgrade-phones-and-renew-contract thingy from our carrier, we decided to go and do it now since we're upgrade-eligible and due for some new phones.
First, the selection of "non-smart" phones is minimal. At Best Buy and Radio Shack, there were only two (a messaging phone and a flip phone); at Best Buy Mobile there were four (two messaging phones and two flip phones).
Second, we found out the carrier now charges an activation fee for every line, so even the free phones aren't actually free. My mom had to talk to customer service for a long time to get us a partial fee waiver for that, and it's only partial. We've never had to pay this sort of thing before when upgrading phones.
Third, the person switching our phones for us somehow (accidentally) broke mom's microSD card. Thankfully, that person was nice enough to replace it for us, but I still can't access the data that was on the old one. That said, this isn't really the fault of the upgrade, just an unlucky coincidence.
My parents convinced me to get a new phone just to keep as a spare. So I first expected that's what I'd do, as I don't really like the lone messaging phone the stores offered. (The other phone offered by BBM was very similar but just had a crappier camera and no separate set of number keys on the keyboard.)
Then my parents convinced me to try out this new phone. I agreed to this so I can't blame them for my decision to try it out.
But that doesn't make me any less pissed off about the phone.
For what it's worth, I've also been kinda pissed off at another major but unrelated meatspace issue that I don't want to talk about here, so that might have added to the fire. But losing one's photos and having an irritating interface to deal with are not exactly pleasant things to deal with.
Until smartphones became common, phone companies had essentially as much bandwidth as they needed. But now spectrum crunch is a huge problem.
TBH, it's more to do with phone companies being lying jerks that like tacking on fees so that "free" isn't free.
Better regulation of advertising and charging practices would cure this, but alas the US is uninterested in actually useful regulation.
Smartphones -- I love mine, but I'm not really a phone person. I don't like talking on the phone. I rarely exceed 100 minutes of usage a month. No, a smartphone is really a pocket computer, and a pocket computer is what I actually want. Thus, it suits my needs.
That's true, but I don't think they'd have been so thorough about it without the spectrum issues.
This. I quite like my pocket computer.
And that is why I want a smartphone.
Yeah, it's great as a pocket computer/portable gaming device. I've been playing 10M and its ilk more than I play 360 or PC games anymore.
re "pocket computer": Oh, I see. Well, I knew that smartphones are basically pocket computers and not phones.
But I guess it never really occurred to me that so many people actually want pocket computers.
This may be related to the fact that I don't do much in the way of instant-access communication. I don't like giving out my cell number, and currently that's the only way to reach me in real time, so I prefer people use that only in the case of emergencies. Otherwise...well, I don't use Facebook or Twitter--well, technically I do, but I don't use them for real-time updates on anything (except for short bursts of time with very specific purposes in mind)--and I've never, ever been interested in broadcasting to the world (or even to my friends) "hey, look at me, I'm enjoying a chili at Wendy's".
On the other hand, I see my computer as a communications and info-gathering hub, document processor (reading, writing, and editing), and gaming system. A smartphone would only do that first thing, and do it very badly because the screen is so small (resizing isn't the same as being able to see all of something at the same time at a reasonable size). Not to mention that it would kinda wreak havoc on attempts to go "off the grid" and focus on something, between the accessibility of internet communications and the possibility of people contacting me anytime. If I want portable computing, I take a laptop computer with me--and I would like to have nice long battery life, but it at least gives me an excuse not to have to respond to people in real time immediately pronto stat.
I understand that there are some professions that really benefit from smartphones--one great example is being a real estate agent, considering how much my mom called them when she's searching for a property to buy, expecting them to look into properties ASAP--but it's just not for me.
Edit: Yes, I know there are tons of game apps for smartphones. Doesn't make their screen any bigger, not to mention that a PC running Windows is still the most versatile game system that exists right now.