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I've been using a Nokia 216 for a month while my smartphone gets repaired. It has 4G and Bluetooth, but not WiFi (why?). It has a lousy camera, but the LED torc
by joshvm 8y ago
I've been using a Nokia 216 for a month while my smartphone gets repaired. It has 4G and Bluetooth, but not WiFi (why?). It has a lousy camera, but the LED torch is good. It has threaded texts (this is not common, apparently) and the battery lasts forever even using data. There is no GPS nor, tragically, Snake.
You get Opera Mini installed which is... an experience. There is no cache (and probably hardly any RAM either), so if you close the browser your entire session gets deleted. History somewhat works. Every now and then you get an ad injected - the ad never seems to change. My phone is trying to make me buy a German Honor A10. I live in the UK.
Javascript, of course, is not supported. If you want to interact with an element it refreshes the entire page and re-renders it to reflect the update.
It makes it painfully obvious which websites are really optimised for mobile, which ones just have a setting for small screens, and which don't bother at all. Simple sites work well - HN comments is good, most news websites (e.g. BBC) work, Wikipedia is fine. People are astounded when I can fact-check in the pub. Browsing Google images is also surprisingly good. Pages with custom fonts often don't load at all. Forms are hit and miss.
Data usage is really light. I have a 100MB bundle and I barely put a dent in it.
It's, on the whole, usable. I can look up things, check the weather and procrastinate.
What is really missing is maps. Google Maps does not work at all. The interface doesn't work - if you get a list of possible destinations, often you can't click on the one you actually want. There don't seem to be any usable ultra-low bandwidth navigation websites. Bing doesn't even try, and not much luck with Bing either.
If I had access to slack, 2-factor authentication (without using texts) and semi-decent mapping, I'd be tempted not to go back to a smartphone.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoAbout 4 years ago, before my current employment made owning a smartphone a necessity, I was a dumb phone user. I was able to easily give up Reddit, HN, other various things but the single most painful missing thing to give up was maps. My approach at the time was to route on my laptop and print directions. It worked most of the time but still was rather painful. It ended up being a lot cheaper though. When I was a poor college kid I was able to get on a prepaid plan with no data, unlimited text and like 200 minutes of calling a month (way more than almost anyone in this day and age uses) for about $15 a month.