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I've intentionally never owned a smartphone. Dumb phones abandoned by my family have been serving me very well for years (strategy: use them until they stop wor
by marttt 4y ago
I've intentionally never owned a smartphone. Dumb phones abandoned by my family have been serving me very well for years (strategy: use them until they stop working; get next one; repeat).
My daily work is in forestry, as a brush cutter -- occasionally, GPS would be necessary (unavoidable even). For 95% of the cases, though, I've found a workaround by postponing the map-related tasks (e.g. making sure I understand the borders of a particular forest subcompartment correctly) to the next day and hand-drawing the shape of the subcompartment from an online map to a piece of paper. With the drawing in hand, I can usually accurately confirm the borders by visual observation. Once more, this probably only works for simple blue collars, not for guys that need to do more on-site planning.
Other than that, I occasionally miss a tolerable camera (for digitizing expenditure checks) and QR code reading ability.
All in all, living with old dumb phone is fun. Zero cost if you break it or ruin it in the forest (mud!). I hate my current Nokia, though -- but can't ditch it because it still works, lol. I still miss my Nokia 3310 (the original one), which I used every day for 12(!) years in a row, starting in around 2001 as a high school student and finally letting it go in around 2013 when I was a young father. It was one hell of a phone.
My current favorite oldscool dumb phones are the "senior phones" with huge buttons. This ZTE s202 was really enjoyable to use (belonged to my grandpa), and the no-bs design somehow feels really elegant: https://i.hinnavaatlus.ee/p/1200/99/43/S20220must__6ee8.jpg https://i.hinnavaatlus.ee/p/1200/99/43/S20220must__6ee8.jpg
- ryan-duve 4y agoWhat is the current Nokia you have that you hate?
- marttt 4y agoIt's a Nokia 2600 Classic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_2600_classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_2600_classic Really slow UI; too much of everything. Not even close to the simplicity of the 3310.
- 4ggr0 4y agoHope you don't mind me asking - How come that a brush cutter is on HN? Did you use to work in IT or are you a hobbyist/part-timer?
- pigsty 4y agoHN attracts people who have interest in tech or simply came across a news aggregator that isn’t full of political spam and endless dread.
- 4ggr0 4y agoYeah sure, but I'd say that 95%+ of things posted and discussed here require some form of understanding you only get when working in IT yourself or doing it as a hobby. I don't want to sound condescending but I doubt that HN would be interesting for the average brush cutter or just for anyone not being familiar with IT, that's why I asked :D
- selfhoster11 4y agoWhy do you assume that a brush cutter is not familiar with IT or technological topics? People's backstory can be more complicated than most people expect.
- 4ggr0 4y ago> Why do you assume that a brush cutter is not familiar with IT or technological topics? It's definitely not usual and it made me curious. Most of the people I meet who talk and understand IT also work in IT, or at least did once in their life. I've never met a blue-collar worker who seems to understand IT. That doesn't mean that I'm saying that blue-collar workers are dumb or can't ever understand IT, the venn diagram is just very slim in my experience. Sorry for asking I guess, I'm a bit confused by the fact that now two people have questioned my question, I didn't mean to be rude. > People's backstory can be more complicated than most people expect. That's why I asked...