The Cell Phone / Mobile Phone Thread

Us youngsters and our smartphones and our on-the-go web (and troping) and our mobile games...

Be respectful of others' preference in phones. No flaming, please.

Currently have a Blackberry Curve 8310, hopefully getting an iPhone 4 soon. (Admittedly, a somewhat major influence is Cave ports.)

edited 7th Apr '11 2:36:37 PM by TsundeRay

I used to have a 1st gen HTC Touch, but I've recently downgraded to a Pantech Pursuit.

If I can ever afford a smartphone again, I'd definitely go back to HTC. They make a damn fine product.

I have a Samsung Rant that used to be my mother's.

I'm waiting till I get my "upgrade" discount in the fall to try and find an Android phone.

You're with Sprint, right? Seriously, can't recommend HTC enough. And they make phones that run DroidOs on 4G.

I don't remember what mine is called, but it decided to have a White Screen of Death on Sunday, so I have to go take care of that sometime soon.

Hmm, I may defect to an Android phone as I've heard it has more capabilities than iPhones. I don't think I should get a particular phone just so I can play danmaku on the go.

Although I'm sure iPhones have their good uses.

I have a Samung phone. All I do with it is make and recieve phone calls and send and recieve texts. And occasionally set alarms.

I believe it could connect to the internet and all kinds of stuff if I wanted it to. But I can't be bothered working out how.

Yay, I have a phone charger again! (does the happy dance)

As soon as I get a new phone, I may install Skype on it. It'll come in handy the next time I travel abroad and don't wanna deal with the hassles of roaming fees, not being able to switch SIM cards due to SIM lock, etc.—just find a place with wireless like a Starbucks and load up on some Skype credit and I'm good to go.

I wanted to get an android, but my mom just had to buy me some crappy phone she thought was 'so cute'.

You're gonna laugh. I have a Nokia C3. Mostly because I dislike touchscreen phones - they're either insanely expensive or useless, or sometimes both. I need keys - they work faster (although yesterday I saw a girl tapping out a text message on a touchscreen just as fast as I usually do on normal keys, Technology Marches On I guess).

After-action edit- Well crap. This is not a long-winded thread, is it? Oh dear. I've done it again.

Look, if you ask me to talk about cell phones, I'm giving you the whole spiel, ok? There's a TL ; DR at the bottom.

There was always one cell phone in our family since way back in the 90's. A series of big clunky Motorolas, and we always used the word "car phone", because we literally only used it to call people from the car. When we got the StarTac or whatever it was called, it seemed positively sleek by comparison.

We got our first modern cell phone (another Motorola, simple single-bodied thing) when we formally got on Verizon some time in the earlier 2000's. It was still the only one in the family. I was in middle school through to sophomore year of high school during the time we had it, and my mom almost always was the one to carry it around. It got rather good service throughout its life, even as it became mostly quite outdated.

By the summer of 2006, with me headed off to a multiweek camp for the first time ever, we decided to modernize. My mom and I got identical LG VX4500s, and my dad got a Razr. These phones faithfully served us through the rest of the time I was in high school. The 4500 was a good straightforward flip phone, and a lot of my friends had it...we'd joke about being a "brotherhood". My dad never liked his Razr much because he said it often had poor reception. Probably because of the lack of antenna? Texting was an option, but we didn't have a plan (or phones, really) conducive to lots of it, and none of us ever texted during that time.

Once I graduated high school in '09, we realized those phones were getting old, so we decided to upgrade again. We kicked our plan up a notch to include unlimited calling and texting to each other, and unlimited to anyone on nights and weekends. We all got the LG EnV 2 because that was what was offered to us and we knew we wanted phones with a keyboard so we could text. (Why the change of heart? My mom read somewhere the texting was a great way to keep in touch with your kid in college. That is correct. I text her more than I do friends. Well, many of my friends don't text...) (And oh yeah, we rejected something like the EnV Touch because we wanted real keys on the outside.) We're largely happy with our situation, although it was kind of annoying that they made the EnV 3 the standard available phone for such things right after we got ours.

I do nothing with my phone but text, occasionally call people, write down notes to self, calculate tips and other things, and take the occasional picture. Its other major duty is alarm clock. Sooner or later we'll be due for new phones, maybe, and my dad is looking into getting some sort of smartphone, which he had previously avoided because none offered what he wanted. I personally have no need for something that sophisticated.

TL ; DR- I have an EnV 2 on Verizon and I'm satisfied with it.

edited 9th Apr '11 7:41:59 AM by frog753

I don't own a cell phone and I never have.

*runs for the hills*

^good for you. *eyeroll*

I'm honestly not that knowledgeable about cellphones. I've got a T-mobile that runs a modified version of the Android OS. That's about all I know.

I have an elderly (I think maybe um, 4ish years old? 5?) orange Samsung that takes crappy pictures, can crappily browse the Internet using its primitive interface, cannot have Skype installed on it, cannot play music, and can't do a lot of things.

It suits my needs perfectly.

Blergh, I used a Verizon payphone for a year or so. Not something I ever want to do again.

I am a modern person thanks, my phone does need to be able to text message.

Another after-action edit- Damn, my posts keep coming out long. All this really is necessary in my opinion, I swear. I'm not just laying down empty words to intentionally bore you and drive you away. I know that if I spoke this in conversation, it would not seem excessive.

I...well, I don't listen to music as just a thing while doing other stuff almost ever. My iPod never leaves my room and there's an authorization screwup on my music anyway. So I don't care if my phone can't do that. As for internet...I waste enough time on it as it is, so I have no need to spend more money to be able to use it anywhere in some crappy diminished cell phone version. And the camera...well, I have no easy digital or internet-based way of showing off phone pictures because I honestly don't take that many, because there's only so much that can be done with a 2-megapixel camera with no stabilization whatsoever. (I'm lazy and periodically offload them with a card, though that's not the easiest/most intuitive process ever...) So yeah, I'm fine with my phone not doing much, and I get a little annoyed at all the bemoaning of people being so attached to their phones and social media and whatever it is people are griping about because I'm really not that addicted to it.

Really, one of the most important things I consider my phone to be that I didn't mention in my above post is an emergency communication device. I am a physically weak and fragile person, and rather paranoid to boot. If I got attacked by someone, or witnessed something similarly bad happening, about the only option I have is to call for help. That's why I take my phone everywhere without fail, and why I have the campus emergency number (infinitely better option than 911 while on campus because that defaults to state police a few towns over) on speed dial, on a key that I chose because it's large and easy to feel without looking. Sometimes I wonder how people felt safe in the days before cell phones. (Ok, that sounds a little absurd...but I stand by it. Not strongly. But I ponder it.)

Also, I must again state that while texting is probably the most prominent thing I do with my phone (the other being using it as an alarm clock every night), I still text much less than most people, and most of it is with my mom. Within the family there is no character limit which is great, because I really can't say that much in 160 characters. That's why texting is really only useful with friends for extremely basic quick communications. It's not a substitute for real conversation. Also, for what it's worth, I don't really believe in using textspeak. (I have the same attitude towards chatspeak.)

edited 9th Apr '11 10:08:17 AM by frog753

Sony Ericsson W995.◊ 2010 model.

Oh, baby. Hate touchscreens, so I got this phone for its conventional buttons, and amazing music playback and storage. But it also has 3G internet.

edited 9th Apr '11 11:10:51 AM by Shichibukai

Verizon LG something-or-other, at least a few years old. I kind of hate it because it has by far the most deceptive battery indicator out of all my gadgets and always dies right when I need to call or text someone.

It's an LG something-something-something. Don't remember the model, too lazy to search, was a gift from my cousin when the last one I had (a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery old Siemens) broke. And no touchscreen.

Nokia 6288, a slider with a half-decent camera. Years old, but it works and it's far better than my last one (a Siemens-made brick).

I had a good couple of phones before.

• The first was a Siemens S6, a plank-shaped monstrosity with a rip-off prepaid plan. It did everything the phones back then did, that is: calling and texting.
• Then I got a slim, sleek and SHITTY Panasonic that had a minor construction glitch: over time, it VIBRATED ITSELF TO DEATH. Yeah, vibrations caused it to brick itself, starting with the screen. But it had seven different colors of screen backlight!
• Nokia 5510 was a weird thing that had a music player (which required shitty software that turned your M P3s to useless shit unplayable anywhere else when you loaded it into the phone's 64 MB memory) and a full keyboard.
• Siemens S55. To take photos with it, you had to jack a separate camera in.
• Then, Sony-Ericsson W300i. Really good: it played music, it took photos, it had a freeware program that allowed you to change the look of almost all things in the GUI (if you had enough time and Photoshop skills to make the graphics). It also had a rudimentary video editor.
• Sticking with Sony-Ericsson, I switched to W380i, which was UTTER SHIT. Editing your playlist? Not available. Automatic playlist sorting? Not available. Video playback? Not available. Video recording? Forget it.
• Then I switched to a Motorola Razr V 3 XX. My only gripe with it was uncomfortable headset, so I ordered a Chinese stereo headset that worked but liked to go COMPLETELY FUCKING MENTAL from time to time.
• And here I am now, with Nokia C3.

edited 9th Apr '11 1:23:58 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

I have a samsung Strive and I love it. I can text and get on the Internet, so I'm content.

I'm posting this from my Samsung Flight right now.

But I'm going to do the same as Central Avenue when my upgrade comes in May. My girlfriend, on our family plan, went the smartphone route last round, and it's time for me to join the modern age.

Update on my situation: I won't be able to get a new phone until May 6th (when I get my upgrade), so I'm stuck using a spare one we had laying around.

Said spare one is a cheap piece of crap that makes my cheap piece of crap look like a bloody iPhone *

In short, I have to use an old-person phone for a month because I didn't remember that my brother still has his old phone until after getting the temporary one activated.

... It doesn't even have a camera!

edited 9th Apr '11 3:39:50 PM by Malph