My first mobile phone was a CDMA handset from Telstra, bought in 1998. It was made by Hyundai (yes, Hyundai), and is so obscure that after an hour of Google searching, I’m no closer to rediscovering it. Needless to say, it was hilariously bad; the phone equivalent of K-Mart brand parachute trackpants. If anyone knows it, it was a dull gold colour, with a flip out mouth piece, and it had the sensuous design of a plastic house brick. Drop me a line at [email protected].
An approximation of all phones pre 2007
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A few years later, I upgraded to an Ericsson model, also completely undiscoverable. Still on Telstra’s CDMA network (which was just fantastic in the city – puts modern GSM fidelity to shame). It was slim and also had a flip, and it seemed irreplaceable. The type of pleasant device that you can’t imagine ever needing to upgrade. But of course, it’s now in that big 2nd drawer down in the sky (ie. a landfill somewhere, where it’s leaking dangerous chemicals into our drinking water).
Mid 2000’s, I got the Sony Ericsson W800. OMG, this was an amazing phone. Creamy white and orange, with a built in MP3 player and apps that allowed you to convert gallons to litres. Ok, apps weren’t a thing yet, but this beautiful little brick lasted several years, until I got an iPhone and gave the walkman phone to a girlfriend, who didn’t give it back when we broke up. I’m convinced she was after the phone the whole time.
Photo courtesy Wikipedia. AND YOUR DREAMS
I’ve now been an iPhone aficionado (iPhoneiado?)for 4 years, and will remain one for the foreseeable future. But s’posing I lose my phone? What then? I mean, apart from immediately replacing it? What would happen if I had to go back to Ye Olde Dumbe Phone?
So for the last week, I’ve tried living with an old phone. For this experiment, I used a Nokia 6085, the pride of 2006. An appropriate phone, as this “fashionable flip phone” was what passed for state of the art before Apple’s juggernaut came to town. I picked it up for $4 at a garage sale. Bargain.
THE FUTURE OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS
The 6085 is almost indistinguishable from the 6175, 6175i, 6103, 6102, and many, many more. It comes with Wireless Access Protocol (WAP), an internet protocol that might be classified as 2G. So it can do internets. It runs an ancient build of Symbian, the almost-dead operating system that still runs on some recent Nokias.
True to Nokia form, the phone runs as well as it did 6 years ago, despite looking like someone’s taken a baseball bat to it. That is to say, it runs just perfectly. Even the flip, a notoriously flimsy design element, is strong and springy,
Day 1 – Not so bad. Went work to home, so had plenty of access to email, Facebook, etc. I was even charmed by the classic “NANA NAANA, NANA NAANA, NANA NAA-NA-NA” ringtone, which is about as pleasant as Apple’s “THWIPPA-DAPPA-DOOPA-PECHONK-CHONK”. I took about 10 calls, and lost almost no battery. Nokia FTW!
Day 2 – Went into the city to check out a comedy festival show. Couldn’t find the hotel. No Maps feature, so I tried the browser feature and tried a simple Google search for the hotel. I have no idea if this ever worked, and wondered what sort of masochist would include a feature that is this hard to use. Gave up after 5 mins, had to ask a passerby who ignored my insistence that normally, I carry an iPhone. He checked it on his Android phone, and told me how to get there in slow, deliberate fashion. Because clearly, with this phone, I’m a hobo.
Day 3 – Some withdrawal at this point. Tried setting the alarm on this thing. Nightmare, but got it working. Tried some alternative ringtones. There was a polyphonic ringtone in there, a snippet of “Maneater” by Nelly Furtado. How embarrassing. I set it as the alarm. Battery still strong!
Day 4 – decided to try some multimedia on this bad boy. It can take pictures! Well, it could, if Nelly Furtado hadn’t taken up most of the 4MB (yes, megabytes) of on-board data. I popped in an old 8GB microSD card, and loaded in some songs. I don’t have the proprietary Nokia headphones, so I had to listen to them through the miserable little speaker. No thanks.
Day 5 – Battery finally dies. 6 hours to bring back up to full charge. Le sigh. Also, text messaging on this thing is terrible. I DON’T KNOW HOW TO TURN OFF CAPS. OR T9 PREDICTIVE DIATRIBE. I mean dialing.
This was going to be a 7 day experiment, but after 5 days, I was ready to boot this thing into a river – which, to Nokia’s credit, it probably would have survived.
So now I’m back with my fancy smartphone. The thing I missed most? It wasn’t the apps. It wasn’t the music player (full disclosure- I still used the iPhone as my music player during this test). It was the simplicity with which a smartphone does text and calls.
I maintain that these old phones are LESS suited to kids and old people. At the end of the day, smartphones are vastly easier to use, and the large screen makes everything easier to see. Many would argue that for the price, it’s not worth using such a powerful device, but that misses the point – smartphones are still a better phone, the other stuff is all gravy. When you can get powerful handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S2 for $0 on reasonable plans with Vodafone, it’s hard to argue for the old dumbphones. They still have the edge in durability, battery life and price, but the gap is closing, especially in price.