Time to replace my flip phone

[Thomas L Carpenter]

I've never had a smart phone! I must be a neander at heart but it's time to keep up with technology. I noticed that amazon had an "unlocked" version of an LG smart phone for about $150. What does unlocked refer to and is that a decent deal for someone to start smart phoning?

[Malcolm McLeod]

... it's time to keep up with technology.

You don't indicate your level of familiarity with smart phones, but you can conduct 95% of your life thru a phone now - calls, text, email, web-browsing, shopping, banking, POS payments, etc. I booked an entire weeks biz travel in less than 5 minutes - flight/hotel/rental car - all thru my phone. It can be VERY handy. Or, very confusing. My suggestion would be to start at your current provider's local retail outlet and try several.

First , look at the display. Its it big enough (i.e. matches your visual capability)? Can the screen be customized to suit you? Is making and receiving a call intuitive? Dialing? Answering? Put the call on speaker? It it loud enough? Video call? (if that's what you want)

And then come the apps. And apps! And more apps!! Decide what you want to do with the phone. Will it handle your choices?

And GET A BULLET-PROOF CASE!! Its cheap insurance (just ask my sons.) If you drop a bundle on a new phone, and then drop the phone, you'll spend the next 24 months guessing what the $#@@ you're looking at.

My dad (90y.o.) struggles with his smart phone. Hearing is an issue to some extent, but biggest hurdle he has is with the touch screen. 'Tap' vs. 'Touch/Hold' vs. 'Swipe' has him frustrated at times. If you test drive them, you'll at least know what you're in for. Then start shopping for a bargain.

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Adder: If immediate family or nearby close friends have a particular make/model of phone, you might give serious consideration to matching it...??? They can be the best source of 'tech support' available. My father had Android OS for his first, but everybody else close to him has Apple - so we struggled trying to help him navigate to various settings (that he invariably turned off accidentally). We got him to switch to Apple and now it is a simple matter to remotely talk him thru a 'reset' when needed.

Hope this helps!

[Jim Becker]

"Unlocked" means that it can work on most carriers' networks by just using their SIM card (The SIM card is a tiny thing that provides your phone with it's identity to the wireless networks) Buying an unlocked phone is a good idea because it give you great flexibility to move between carriers for cost control and even use pre-paid services if your usage is low.

Please don't buy a smartphone purely on price...you may regret that as it may mean slower performance or getting a unit with an older, slower, more security vulnerable version of the phone's operating system. For this, I'm speaking about Android which is the predominate operating system for smartphones that are not Apple's iPhone with iOS. You need to consider durability, too. I absolutely agree with Malcolm about going out to various places that sell phones and trying them out in your hand, even if you ultimately buy online. Also consider that in the Android world, pretty much every manufacturer customizes the user interface so each one may actually look different than the next one, unlike in the Apple iOS world. Only Google, for the most part, offers a "pure" Android distribution with their new Pixel 2 device.

Personally, I use Apple's system and prefer it over Android. But that's me and it's a "religious" thing for most folks. LOL

[Lee DeRaud]

You don't indicate your level of familiarity with smart phones, but you can conduct 95% of your life thru a phone now - calls, text, email, web-browsing, shopping, banking, POS payments, etc. ..It can be VERY handy. Or, very confusing.

One key thing to remember is that, while you can treat the phone as a "computerized life partner", you don't have to.

[Malcolm McLeod]

One key thing to remember is that, while you can treat the phone as a "computerized life partner", you don't have to.

I assumed most SMC readers would be suitably mature and astute enough to differentiate between a phone (however much computerized) and a life partner. Silly me.

[Lee DeRaud]

I assumed most SMC readers would be suitably mature and astute enough to differentiate between a phone (however much computerized) and a life partner. Silly me.

I've seen too many otherwise intelligent people get one of the things and promptly lobotomize themselves...reminds me of woodworkers falling into the "Turning Vortex".

[Joe Bradshaw]

Hey, Lee, I resemble that remark.
Joe

[Matt Day]

Malcolm gives some very good advice. Especially the part about getting the type of phone your family and friends use. My parents who are in their 70’s started out with Androids about 5 years ago and it was a disaster. They aren’t tech savvy but they tried hard at it and still had repeated issues with simple things. And I couldn’t help them since I wasn’t familiar with how Androids are laid out. Once they switched to iPhones it was much smoother and if they had a question it was a simple text or phone call to walk them through it. Also, it’s easy to Facetime with them and they can see their grandkids a lot more - much better than dealing with Skype or another service.


That all being said, and iPhone will cost more.

[Robert Engel]

I wish someone would make a phone for calling, texting and gps and that's all.....

[Julie Moriarty]

I've never had a good relationship with phones. Back in the late 80's (pre-cellphone days) the phone switching station was gutted by fire and we were without phone service for 5 weeks. I loved it. But now that land lines are a thing of the past...

If you can surf the Internet for hours, smartphones can steal your life and turn you into a zombie. They are mini computers with 24/7 Internet connection. And everything you do through your smartphone is unsecure unless you use encryption. We're in the Big Brother era now.

Also, when you sign up with a carrier, check what happens when you go over allotted texts or data usage. You can be in for a big shock if you go over your limits.

Good luck entering the smartphone world, Thomas. Just don't let it insert itself in between all your human contacts.

[Roger Feeley]

Julie, are you sure about the encryption issue? I used to work for Frontline Test Equipment, a maker of protocol analyzers (check out www.fte.com) . My job was to write the 'decoders' which was the part of the software the disassembled the packets into human readable fields. I did some work years ago for one of the mobile phone companies. It involved transitioning your phone call seamlessly between the cell system and a picocell in your basement or some other place around your house where the service was bad. So I saw the way the calls were set up, torn down and everything that happened in between.

I can't speak to what happened in the cell network but I definately saw what happened over wifi (802.11).

In the internet (ip) world there is something called IP Security, or IPSec. This is a procedure for exchanging lengthy encryption keys, verifying their receipt and then coordinating when you start and stop encryption. I was able to watch the key exchange and then track what happened because we were provided with special 'NULL Encrypted' phones where the keys were all 0s so even when they went into encryption, the data was sent unencrypted (we aren't the NSA). What was interesting is that when they initiated IPSEC encryption, the first thing they did was set up another IPSEC session within encrypted IPSEC.

These guys took encryption very seriously.

I would think that what happens between your phone and the cell towers is very secure against casual hackers. Of course the NSA is another matter but I don't worry about them. I'm just not very interesting.

[Lee DeRaud]

I wish someone would make a phone for calling, texting and gps and that's all.....

What you describe is trivially easy to emulate by uninstalling or disabling the apps it will let you*, and hiding the icons for the ones it won't on one of the "back" screens...just pretend they aren't there.

They probably don't make them that way because it wouldn't make the phone much smaller or cheaper. GPS without a display and GUI is kind of useless to the average consumer, and once you have enough smarts and display to run Google Maps or equivalent, you've got something about the same size/price as the current generic smartphones.

*A bunch of the pre-installed apps are more-or-less built into Android and can't be uninstalled. I don't know if IOS does the same thing.

[Myk Rian]

You won't be happy with a $150 phone. Old OS, slow, just plain outdated.

The Android OS can be put in "Easy mode" for those less familiar with how they work. Still does the same things, just an easier to understand interface/desktop.

[Roger Feeley]

There are phones for the elderly that are made intentionally simple.

[Myk Rian]

Jitterbug.