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I did an experiment similar to this a few years back, but I lasted about six months. After touchscreen on my iPhone 6 Plus died prematurely two days after the w

I did an experiment similar to this a few years back, but I lasted about six months. After touchscreen on my iPhone 6 Plus died prematurely two days after the warranty expired, and neither Apple nor Verizon would help, I decided to simply forgo owning a smartphone for a while. I used one on WiFi only, and went back to an LCD flip phone from 2002. This worked great, except people kept complaining that they couldn’t text me. I try to get sms set up, but they said my phone was too old to work with their current network. Then I moved somewhere new and wanted to do some dating. It was obvious I was going to need a real phone. I bought a Kyocera Hydro for $40. It has similar specs to the device in the review - 1 GB ram, 1 GB clock speed, 2 MP camera: https://www.gsmchoice.com/en/catalogue/kyocera/hydroreach/Kyocera-Hydro-Reach.html https://www.gsmchoice.com/en/catalogue/kyocera/hydroreach/Ky... My first impression was that it was amazing to get a device like this for $40, if you put it in a perspective from 5 or 15 years ago. Out of the box, though, the system couldn’t keep up with typing. Simply entering text was a strain on the processor. In general though, it seemed roughly as capable as an iPod Touch G4, though with inferior system software, but less capable than a Samsung Galaxy S3. I would complain about the buggy firmware and apps but it seems no worse than Motorola or Samsung, who are each poor in the regard compared to Apple. The main drawback was the camera. Battery life on it is still better than my current iPhone. Reception is poor. To make a long story short, after using the phone for six months, I realized that I should’ve just bought an iPhone 4s for $50. I would have had at the least a good camera and OS updates.

peterburkimsher 8y ago
I still use the 64GB iPhone 4S that my dad gave me as a graduation present in 2011. It's great: nice camera, USB sync, Third Rail battery case, small screen, enough space for offline maps/music/Wikipedia and 300+ apps, and lots of jailbreak tweaks including OS downgrading. I bought a used 32GB iPhone 5 from my friend who wanted to get rid of it, but I prefer my 4S for daily use (including this comment).
TomK32 8y ago
I bought a used Galaxy S3 Mini a few years back after my two years without any phone at all. Had to replace the screen once but even that was a used part. I think people should put their phone into sleeves more often, I see them walking on the street carrying the phone unused and unprotected in their hands and accidents happen too often.
pferde 8y ago
I find it a bit disheartening that in this day and age, one apparently needs a good enough phone if one wants to date. :)
- code_duck 8y ago
  Thankfully, just for texting capabilities and not appearances. If I was able to hook up my flip phone to SMS I would have kept using that. Also, it’s fairly egalitarian since ‘good phone’ was satisfied adequately by this $40 prepaid from RadioShack.
bo1024 8y ago
It's not a hardware problem. Typing worked just fine on Windows 95 withd 8 MB of RAM and 50MHz processor.
- code_duck 8y ago
  If you installed Windows 7 on that machine it would probably be slow, though. I think this one was running Android 4 when new. Probably it would have been better with a version made a few years earlier. I looked into rooting it to install a more lightweight OS, but this was my first experience with that and it doesn't seem to be a popular phone to hack.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
walshemj 8y ago
To old to work with SMS I doubt that :-) it just the poor way sms was implemented in the USA. Though I thought they had solved most of the really egregious problems ie cross etwork SMS now.
- code_duck 8y ago
  Right, one would think it would work since the phone had SMS built in, and it was the same carrier (Virgin, i believe using the Sprint network). I have no idea of the technical details but I assume it’s some protocol version incompatibility.
hedora 8y ago
> Out of the box, though, the system couldn’t keep up with typing. Until the most recent iOS update, my 6+ couldn’t reliably keep up with typing on iOS 11, fwiw.
- code_duck 8y ago
  Right, I think it’s a matter of running an OS made for a new machines on an old machine. It was also a matter of switching off superfluous graphics features. This phone had android 4.4 new and got upgraded to 5.1, and worked better with 5.1.
code_duck 8y ago
Oh, and I’m replying to my own post to add another advantage of an old iPhone over a cheap android: good included system utilities. On the Kyocera many important tools are some combo of crippleware and spyware. There are ads in the included file browser, unless you pay this random third party. Also, there are several useless apps that I cannot install, like the Sprint and Virgin game apps, and apps from people who have paid them, like Lookout, but I guess that is more of an android thing than merely a cheap android thing.

peterburkimsher 8y ago

I still use the 64GB iPhone 4S that my dad gave me as a graduation present in 2011. It's great: nice camera, USB sync, Third Rail battery case, small screen, enough space for offline maps/music/Wikipedia and 300+ apps, and lots of jailbreak tweaks including OS downgrading. I bought a used 32GB iPhone 5 from my friend who wanted to get rid of it, but I prefer my 4S for daily use (including this comment).

TomK32 8y ago

I bought a used Galaxy S3 Mini a few years back after my two years without any phone at all. Had to replace the screen once but even that was a used part. I think people should put their phone into sleeves more often, I see them walking on the street carrying the phone unused and unprotected in their hands and accidents happen too often.

pferde 8y ago

I find it a bit disheartening that in this day and age, one apparently needs a good enough phone if one wants to date. :)

code_duck 8y ago
Thankfully, just for texting capabilities and not appearances. If I was able to hook up my flip phone to SMS I would have kept using that. Also, it’s fairly egalitarian since ‘good phone’ was satisfied adequately by this $40 prepaid from RadioShack.

bo1024 8y ago

It's not a hardware problem. Typing worked just fine on Windows 95 withd 8 MB of RAM and 50MHz processor.

code_duck 8y ago
If you installed Windows 7 on that machine it would probably be slow, though. I think this one was running Android 4 when new. Probably it would have been better with a version made a few years earlier. I looked into rooting it to install a more lightweight OS, but this was my first experience with that and it doesn't seem to be a popular phone to hack.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

walshemj 8y ago

To old to work with SMS I doubt that :-) it just the poor way sms was implemented in the USA. Though I thought they had solved most of the really egregious problems ie cross etwork SMS now.

code_duck 8y ago
Right, one would think it would work since the phone had SMS built in, and it was the same carrier (Virgin, i believe using the Sprint network). I have no idea of the technical details but I assume it’s some protocol version incompatibility.

hedora 8y ago

> Out of the box, though, the system couldn’t keep up with typing. Until the most recent iOS update, my 6+ couldn’t reliably keep up with typing on iOS 11, fwiw.

code_duck 8y ago
Right, I think it’s a matter of running an OS made for a new machines on an old machine. It was also a matter of switching off superfluous graphics features. This phone had android 4.4 new and got upgraded to 5.1, and worked better with 5.1.

code_duck 8y ago

Oh, and I’m replying to my own post to add another advantage of an old iPhone over a cheap android: good included system utilities. On the Kyocera many important tools are some combo of crippleware and spyware. There are ads in the included file browser, unless you pay this random third party. Also, there are several useless apps that I cannot install, like the Sprint and Virgin game apps, and apps from people who have paid them, like Lookout, but I guess that is more of an android thing than merely a cheap android thing.