I have never owned a smart phone. AMA

[EuclidianGeometryFan]

I have never owned a smart phone. I don't think it is worth the money.
I use a laptop to access the internet.

What do/will you do about concerts (app required or for the tickets to be saved on Google Wallet) and boarding passes for holidays (Ryanair is the first to move to smartphone passes only but they won't be the only one).

My DH is 60 and has never had one. Does have an ipad.

How old are you? I generally think the younger you are, (adult of course) the more useful and necessary a smart phone becomes.

I suggest you don’t ever try and park in London - vast majority of street parking requires an app on a smart phone (and councils have been hauled up on digital discrimination.

It seems like cost and fear of loss/damage is your main fear. No arguing with that.

I'm very intentional with my smartphone. It's my tool, I am in charge of it rather than the other way round. I have to have one (live abroad thousands of miles from family, young children, DH travels a lot for work, elderly parents etc) but I'm not its gimp.

It's possible for smartphones to enhance your life with minimal thought. It's a mindset. There's nothing more/less addictive about a smartphone than alcohol, say - you can have a glass on a Saturday night easily enough, not everyone becomes an alcoholic. I don't have any of the Facebook or Instagram or TikTok platforms as I realised from the outset that they're nothing more than advertising platforms and they are built (like tobacco products for example) specifically to become addictive.

All in all, a smartphone makes my life easier: I have maps in my pocket, a phone to make and receive calls and texts across time zones, vouchers and coupons, I can pay for parking, a camera at all times, I can pay for things in shops without ensuring I have the right cash or cards. I use it when I need it, it doesn't have a hold over me. I have a phone case and a screen protector and don't fear damage. It's in my bag so unless I lose my bag I won't lose it (and if I lose my bag there are more troublesome things to worry about). Maybe consider it. It needn't be a bad thing.

I hope work issue you with a phone then! I run the team that does our socials and I don’t expect them to use their own phones, or check work stuff if they’re not on the rota.

Yes they do. We are a tiny team - I AM the rota!

No worries.

What do you think of digital ID? Will you get a smart phone for that or pay for the alternative? I don't know if the alternative will mean a one off payment for a paper version or if you'd have to pay a fee each time. Have you thought about this since the announcement?

Btw, if I didn't already have a smartphone (and an addiction to it) I wouldn't be getting one now. Life seems to be much more secure without one!

I have just come back from a holiday with Ryanair flights. We checked in for both flights online and printed paper boarding passes before leaving home.

The odd theatre ticket (maybe once a year) I print the ticket with the QR code.
Same for returning parcels by QR code - maybe 3 or 4 sheets of paper printed over the course of a year (I don't order many things that might need returning).

For cinema, we always go to the same one and have a plastic membership card that they use at the till to identify our booking.

I would never drive into London.

With adult DC, we speak on the landline about once a week or once a fortnight. Either phone first. I don't think they would want much more contact, they have their own lives to lead.

I would like to use my phone less and am.consciously trying to concentrate on one thing rather than looking at my phone at the same time as watching tv for example.

But there are things that are a lot easier if you do have a smart phone. Even if you print directions they won't be in real time if there is a traffic jam or road closure.

I actually think losing /having phone stolen would be a lot worse than having 200-500 stolen. It's not the phone people want but all the data/banking details that are likely to be on it. Im conscious of that when Im in busy areas. Last year we went into the west end to look at Christmas lights and I wrote all the directions on paper to avoid having my phone out.

DD is at uni and we whatsapp just about every day, and face time once a week. I'd hate not to do that

I must confess, DH has a smartphone, and he has used google maps and Uber on our annual holiday abroad - is that cheating on the premise of this thread?

Definitely cheating!

It's like those on the competitive central heating threads where it's seen as a moral failing to put the CH on before November - only to reveal that they have a wood burner which heats the whole house 😄

On holiday my phone stopped working and DH said it would do me good to be off my phone (he had point with regard to doom scrolling) .....but ignored the fact that I'd directed us using googlemaps, found the holiday place and opened the email with instructions for the key safe, looked up nearest supermarket etc etc (he has a smartphone but rarely uses it!)

Ha, been there!

Would you say that you don't have a smartphone because you don't see any benefits for you personally? Or is it more that you like feeling that you're in some way proving a point/sticking it to the man?

As long as your dumbphone uses 4G/5G - the 2G and 3G networks will all be one (here in the UK and abroad) in the next few years so any phones relying on those networks will no longer work.....
Plus - if you were away without your DH, would you really manage without a smartphone? They're so useful for translating menus, signs etc.!

Its that the costs outweigh the benefits.

If I outlive DH I will reconsider - I might inherit his phone and use it abroad. Prefer not to think about that.
We have never holidayed abroad without each other.

It’s not just London where you’ll encounter parking issues. In my town in the north of England you can’t use council car parks without a smart phone.

And your adult DC only speaking once every fortnight and never being able to send a quick WhatsApp photo. I’d hate that. Never mind “having my own life to lead”, my mum is a huge part of that even though we aren’t local to each other anymore.

It’s an awful lot of unnecessary printing you’re doing too and many airlines and other companies won’t accept that soon.

It’s cheaper to have a cheap smartphone and I’m not sure why you think you’d lose it. Do you often lose things?

How do you find stuff travelling, how do you even read menus? Google maps gets us out of so many scrapes (in cities, not open road where you can use a European roadmap) and the google translate in real time is amazing, especially in countries where the language is more challenging let’s say - eg Finnish, nothing like any other language. The bus is via smart phone now, so is every car park here, no cash. And you need one to fly really, who wants to have to locate a printer to print a boarding pass.

So if you could find a smartphone and deal that costs the same as your current phone, would you make the switch?

I could quite easily live without one, a non-smart phone would do me fine.

Current one I have is one of the family cast offs. They don’t understand why I don’t upgrade to something fancy. Errr, because I don’t need it.

I might be tempted if it cost about £40 to buy the handset, it was guaranteed not to go obsolete for about 8-10 years due to lack of security upgrades, and the contract or package cost no more than about £5-6 per month.

But I would be concerned at a diminished quality of life due to their addictive nature.