(If this isn't retro enough, moderator must move it to Other).
So it's been several months now, since I gave up using modern smartphones. They just kept disappointing me in various ways. So in the end I decided to go back to an old feature phone.
I found a used Sony Ericsson W995 at a flea-market very cheap, did a factory reset, and I was off. Literally, as in
offline.
At the time of writing, I have been using this old phone for many months. It wouldn't surprise me if it's been a whole year already.
So what's it like using such an old phone here in 2018, when you're a geek like me?
Well, actually pretty cool. Here is a short story from my life.
Every morning, I take the bus with my daughter, to bring her to school. At school while waiting for another bus to take me back again, I realize that my old phone is really retro, because the other kids from my daughters class come up to me, see me stand there with my old W995, and then go: "I've had one of those too. It was my old playphone"... and by that they mean that they used to play with one of these - long ago. That's how old it is....
These old phones does run apps, and there are plenty of apps to choose from - all nicely ad-free too.
There's a nice big app store available at
http://sony-ericsson-w995.oms.apps.bemobi.com/en_dk/I've installed Moby Explorer, which is a file explorer with a built-in ftp client and text-editor. So I can use the waiting time writing various texts.
And I know what you're thinking here. How can I possibly write on such an old phone with such a tiny screen and closely placed tiny buttons? Doesn't it take like forever? No it doesn't. But it did on smartphones. I never learned to get along with touchscreens. Typing on touchscreens took forever for me. I'm faster on a good old T9 based button input.
Everything you're reading right now was actually written on my phone. Then copied to this forum post later (after a few edits of course).
You probably wouldn't think all of this was written on an old phone, but it was - and it was rather effortless too.
I used to use my trusty Ericsson MC218 pocket computer for these things. But it broke a while back, sadly, to such a degree that not even the mighty Bryce could rescue it. So I had to find another solution. And that ended up being my new old phone.
Sometimes the bus back is running late. So I risk standing outside in the cold for quite some time before the bus arrives. But luckily I don't have to. Because I can see on my old phone how late it is, and how far away it is. So I can stay at the school those extra minutes instead of moving outside in the cold. I have to admit though, that this is only possible because I made my own little PHP file that extracts this information from a bigger website that my W995 can't view.
After work I go shopping. Here I use a nice little app I made myself long ago called "SimpleList On FTP". It lets me maintain the lines in a simple text file via an FTP connection. That way my better half can update the shopping list at home, and then I can do the shopping on my way home. We use the same app for various other lists, like Christmas shopping list for example.
In the afternoon I have to go pick up my daughter from school again - also by bus. Once seated I open jmIrc; a J2ME IRC client. Then I connect to my channel where I have a chat with a game-developer that I'm doing music for at the moment. This is our daily status chat about the progress of the project.
I don't use any of the various social media channels available out there, but if I did there ARE apps available for those too. Yes, they are limited compared to smartphone versions, but they'll do fine.
So while I'm on the bus, I'm chatting on IRC while listening to music and checking if the bus back is running late. Yes sir, multitasking on a dumb old phone.
Sometimes I go out for a run. The W995 comes with a built-in app called "Tracker" that can tell me how far I ran and how long it took. And that's all the info I'm interested in after a run. Well it was fun to see the graphical outline of the route too at first, but that's not so interesting anymore.
What could I want more?
Well, it could of course be awesome if it was possible to use my travel time and waiting time for some CPC productivity. But I haven't been able to find any apps that would let me do this yet. Something like a sprite editor, or level editor, or music app. The closest I got was with an app called PaintCAD that can be used to create pixel graphics, but it was a bit too tedious I thought. I suppose I could create such an app myself of course, but that's just yet another of a thousand ideas I will never have the time for.
I did start a Sprite Editor MIDlet a while back though. But we all know how it is, don't we? A million projects are started up - extremely few are ever continued.
I thought I might also enjoy some games on my W995, but I've found that's not the case. None of the many games I've tried seems to appeal to me, except a single one called BrainJuice which was fun for a while.
But the overall conclusion is that an old dumb feature phone is all I need.
Who will join me in my retro revolution?
Topic: Using a "dumbphone" in 2018 (Read 331 times)