I THOUGHT I had found a (mediocre) solution to my cellphone problems with a Motorola phone that took pretty good photos. However, just about a year after I bought it I noticed the sound quality was diminishing quickly. It got to the point where I couldn't even carry on a conversation. So, time for a new phone!
<irony>Hooray!!</irony>
The old phone still seemed adequate for photos so I thought I would use it as a camera while travelling. I got an iPhone a while back through work and it has been great for taking and uploading photos, and the old Motorola would be fine for times when I couldn't legitimately carry my work phone (e.g. when I'm out of the country. So, I decided I would just get a basic phone to do nothing but phone calls.
Yeah. About that ...
Turns out that it is extremely difficult to get a basic unlocked phone. Okay, I ran into problems last time finding a basic phone that took great pictures because the category didn't exist - this time I ran into problems because cheap-but-not-ridiculously-crappy-and-cheap unlocked phones apparently don't exist. Any more. There were lots of them when I wanted a good camera, but now that I don't, that whole product category has apparently disappeared.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
The "best" thing I could find was an Alcatel that was sold by my carrier of choice, 7-11 (that's right, I have a 7-11 cellphone account. Don't laugh.) This phone was $30 after discount. That was certainly cheap enough, and it didn't look too bad. Here, you have a look and decide for yourself ...
<irony>Hooray!!</irony>
The old phone still seemed adequate for photos so I thought I would use it as a camera while travelling. I got an iPhone a while back through work and it has been great for taking and uploading photos, and the old Motorola would be fine for times when I couldn't legitimately carry my work phone (e.g. when I'm out of the country. So, I decided I would just get a basic phone to do nothing but phone calls.
Yeah. About that ...
Turns out that it is extremely difficult to get a basic unlocked phone. Okay, I ran into problems last time finding a basic phone that took great pictures because the category didn't exist - this time I ran into problems because cheap-but-not-ridiculously-crappy-and-cheap unlocked phones apparently don't exist. Any more. There were lots of them when I wanted a good camera, but now that I don't, that whole product category has apparently disappeared.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
The "best" thing I could find was an Alcatel that was sold by my carrier of choice, 7-11 (that's right, I have a 7-11 cellphone account. Don't laugh.) This phone was $30 after discount. That was certainly cheap enough, and it didn't look too bad. Here, you have a look and decide for yourself ...
It doesn't look TOO terrible, does it? Surely it would work as a nothing-but-calls-and-texts phone, wouldn't it? There were lots of hilariously bad reviews of the phone on the web ("If you take or receive pictures you have 9 days to look at them on a website that does not exist") but for $30 I decided to give it a try.
This phone is ... It's ... I don't know what to say. I actually hesitate to criticize it because it is just not a standard phone and it seems somehow unfair to hold it to regular standards. I don't want to spoil this phone's chances at finding an assisted-living opportunity with someone who will accept a special-needs phone to do basic work in some sort of supported environment. If you are able to, please help this phone.
The sheer ugliness of the thing. You can't really tell by the photo. It is so cheap. So cheap. It has the build quality of a Pez dispenser. The back doesn't slide on, or click on - it snaps on. To get it off, you stick a fingernail in the crack and lever it until it pops off, perhaps without breaking - who can say?
The "on" and "off" buttons (or "send" and "cancel", or whatever they're called ) - can you see them in the photo? One is marked with an ugly stylized x that looks kinda like a sword, and the other is marked with a bent line. Why? I don't know. Push the sword to talk and push the bent piece of metal that brought down the Concorde to hang up.
I could maybe have lived with the extraordinary cheapness and ugliness of the phone, but - It makes loud horrible noises. Horrible noises that I couldn't shut off. When you turn it on, it plays an idiotic tune, LOUDLY. That's bad, but every time you push a key on the keyboard, it makes a cricket like TICK-A sound. So, if you try to send a text, the phone goes
TICK-A! TICK-A! TICK-A!TICK-A! TICK-A! TICK-A!TICK-A! TICK-A! TICK-A!TICK-A! TICK-A! TICK-A!TICK-A! TICK-A! TICK-A!TICK-A! TICK-A! TICK-A!TICK-A!
That's one TICK-A! for every letter. So the cacophany above would result from my just texting my NAME. There is no way I could ever text in public with this phone. It would be like screaming at the top of my lungs, "LOOK AT MY HORRIBLE PHONE! CHEAP SHITTY PHONE OVER HERE! JUST TEXTIN' ON THE WORST PHONE EVERRR!"
So, the Alcatel 356 went back to 7-11 and I ordered a Nexus 4 from Google. Fuck it, I give up. It only costs as much as 10 Alcatels, which is like the best deal in the history of the universe.
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