Monday 30 March 2015

Smartphones

Not having a smartphone is apparently a thing.

And of course I'm well known as a luddite when it comes to phones, but I recently bought myself a new phone. Not exactly a smartphone but a bin-end unlocked Nokia Asha 302.

Not as my main phone, but as a phone to use when travelling overseas.

You see, I have one of these travel sims that allow you to make low cost calls and send texts for pennies when overseas without incurring punitive roaming charges. It also doesn't come with a data bundle, although I could add one, but in practice you can get everything you need over wi-fi.

So, the Nokia has:

  • wifi
  • basic browser capability
  • excellent battery life
  • keyboard for ease of texting (like in German to a taxi company)
  • good sound quality
  • lightweight
all in all a very good phone.

It should have email, but Nokia had this system where they collected your mail, stripped, textified, and compressed it for you and then downloaded it to your phone, and Microsoft closed this service when they bought Nokia's phone division.

Tant pis! - the browser still works and is good enough to find an email and get that phone number you're looking for out of an email - and I've got wifi.

It's also got a reasonable camera and bluetooth, so it doesn't lack connectivity. And of course it was considerably cheaper than a smartphone.

The next thing is to see how it works out in practice I guess ...

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