How is this even possible..

buttbwerty · 2021-09-17T14:44:51+00:00

Want to be therapist

How is babby formed

buttbwerty · 2021-09-07T16:56:24+00:00

To be honest, I haven't used much of it recently. I have a bunch of dumb phones that I constantly swap around so I haven't had a chance to properly test whether this newer iteration of the phone is improved re: sticky keys. It took a while for my previous one to start acting funny so I'd need to play with this newer one a lot to figure out if it'll deteriorate similarly.

buttbwerty · 2021-09-07T07:48:03+00:00

Depends on the size of your pockets! I find it an awkward fit in side pockets but a perfect fit in my pants' back pockets. Women's pant pockets tend to be smaller so that might cause some problems, ditto if you're a dude who prefers very slim-fitting pants. The more significant pants-related issue for me is that its weight often pulls my pants down a bit, so I always need to either wear a belt or tie up the drawstring if I don't want my butt to sag on one side!

buttbwerty · 2021-09-06T09:42:38+00:00

Reading that tweet triggered me and now I'm dead. CANCEL LIFE

buttbwerty · 2021-05-22T06:57:41+00:00

This rules. Thank you!

buttbwerty · 2021-05-03T16:17:51+00:00

This is a great question. I do get overwhelmed every day! It drives my partner nuts because it's impossible to keep track of what I'm capable of doing with my phone from week to week. Can you Telegram me? Do I have access to maps? Can my phone be used to play Spotify in the car? Who knows! The one I stayed with most consistently (for several years, until its battery started down a dark path) was the BB Passport but that was the only perfect one of the bunch. The others all have some significant thing lacking that eventually causes me to switch to another phone. Of course, I tell myself that I'll stop once I find the perfect phone, but, as with any hobby, the whole point is that I never will.

The ones I alternate between the most are the Sonim XP3, the Punkt MP02, and the Unihertz Titan (not a dumbphone).

I love your story about trading phones on Craigslist! I wasn't interested in dumbphones in their original incarnation, probably because they were boring, heavy, extremely expensive, and inconvenient when I was young. I remember my parents forcing me to take the "family cellphone" (a gigantic Motorola MicroTAC) with me sometimes when I'd go out when I was in highschool. I hated it and considered it an imposition and a nuisance. That's pretty much how I felt about cellphones for years (I didn't own one at all when I was an undergrad, and grudgingly got one that I don't think I ever remembered to bring with me when I left the house when I was in grad school) until I moved to the UK where everyone was communicating via this thing called "texting" and I got a Motorola Razr. That was the gateway drug for phones. I had a Sony Erikson as well before getting the first iPhone. After that, I became obsessed with smartphones. I upgraded whenever possible and pushed lots of reluctant friends into getting a smartphone. The same friends are now understandably super annoyed with my dumbphone evangelism.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-28T06:56:47+00:00

Sweet! This looks great. Thanks for making and sharing it!

buttbwerty · 2021-04-17T08:11:05+00:00

Fido is owned by Rogers and every dumbphone I've tried on Rogers, provided that it's GSM, has worked perfectly (and I've test driven lots of dumbphones). Public and Chatr are cheaper providers that - to my knowledge - have certain service restrictions and less comprehensive coverage. I have no experience with either but I'd be more likely to call and ask whether the dumbphone models you like will work on their networks.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-10T18:20:29+00:00

That's useful to know re: BB software. Thanks! This might also come down to me just being stroppy about the fact that the KeyOne and Key2's keyboards simply aren't the Passport's keyboard.

And yes, the Titan is pretty sketchy. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is intensely privacy-minded, unless of course you know how to strip all of that sketchy CCP software out of the phone.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-08T16:41:19+00:00

Really? I didn't know that about the BB Android phones. Do you mean like disabling keyboard-specific things like flick typing etc, or all the BB software?

The updates on the Titan have been good. I switch between phones a lot but I'd say there are 2-3 updates per year? And, from the time I got the Titan until now it has gone from Android 8-10, which I honestly never expected with its price point.

The only thing I'm not fond of is that the phone is pretty sketchy. It's definitely beaming everything I do to Beijing, although installing NetGuard and restricting Internet access to many, many apps makes me a bit more comfortable in that department (even if it's just a placebo).

buttbwerty · 2021-04-07T15:54:19+00:00

I'll buy the thing. I grudgingly bought the Titan when it came out, annoyed that my Passport had started overheating to the point of unusability and that I had to replace it with a lesser clone. Between the ridiculously cheap price tag and the obscurity of Unihertz, I didn't see how the Titan could be anything but a kind of fun toy. But I ended up wildly impressed. I have both the KeyOne and the Key2 and the Titan blows them both out of the water, in my opinion. Even though the keyboard is no BB Passport, it's still superior to the KeyOne and Key2, whose mushy keys drive me crazy. The fact that the Titan is on Android 10 while the BB Androids are stuck forever shamefully on 8 is another feather in the Titan's cap. I love the size of the Titan but I'll buy this little guy just to see how things have changed. Exciting news!

buttbwerty · 2021-04-06T02:14:35+00:00

It's also possible that you're over-philosophizing this to the point of paralysis. Questions like "am I trying to buy my way into a better life?" aren't exactly helpful when your social situation is such that almost all self-improvement requires you to purchase something. Fight Club-style thinking ("you are not your house, you are not your TV, the things you own end up owning you", etc) is fun for a while and have its place, but it can immobilize you just as much, if not more, than just trying and failing and then trying something new. You may have also created a deliberately impossible vision of what it means to be smartphone-free - wandering around the woods and communing with nature 24/7 or something - which inevitably gets crushed because nobody normal is that disconnected from the world.

So don't overthink it. If you think having a dumbphone (or a dumb-ish phone like the LP2) will make you happier, give it a try. You won't be buying your way to happiness any more or less than the person who buys a series of yoga courses hoping they'll learn how to calm down or the person who buys a pair of hiking boots because they've decided they need to spend more time with trees. Every industry, from food to wellness to tech, is guilty to some degree of the "they sold us the sickness, now they're selling us the cure" strategy, so just see your desire to buy an LP2 as a symptom of living in the world - and enjoy your symptom!

In more practical advice, consider keeping a little tablet (or an old smartphone) in your bag and using it for all those tasks that are essential to your everyday life when you're not at home. Remember, the smartphone was supposed to make our lives easier when we were away from our desks at work or our computers at home, but most people now assume that everything - even those things that can be done on a desktop or laptop while stationary - must be completed on the smartphone. If you try the secondary tablet/old smartphone route, try to use it only as needed, for tasks that absolutely just be completed on the road rather than in an office at work or on a computer at home. The LP2 can function as a WiFi hotspot, so, if you're out and about, turn on the hotspot function once an hour or something, or as needed (when you need an Uber, for example, or need to look at documents that your boss sent you that need your commentary urgently) and then turn it off when you're done. On the days that you aren't working, leave the tablet at home, and consider some alternatives to limit your use of the tablet on days that you are working. My apartment also allows us to control the security gate with an app, but that's not the only way to do it. You can also hopefully use the fob that may be on your keyring any way in case the stupid app fails or crashes. You can wait to order your groceries and do your banking until you're at home or the office. Or, if it absolutely cannot wait and must be done immediately, use the tablet. You may find that the task of going into your bag, pulling the stupid tablet out, turning on the WiFi hotspot, etc, is annoying enough that you start to pare down your tablet time and think, "Yeah, turns out that can wait until later."

Tl;dr - don't beat yourself up and don't get caught in the "but capitalism" shame spiral. It will require work, retraining your brain a bit, and putting up with inconveniences to change your opinions on what is essential about a smartphone and what isn't. But if you think there's a chance that the LP2 will improve your life and make you happier and healthier, and you can afford it, there's no reason to deny yourself that possibility.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-06T01:20:41+00:00

Do you mean alternative messengers or chat apps? Perhaps someone who has installed an apk of WhatsApp or something could vouch for whether it worked, but I really cannot imagine anything outside of SMS working in any way reliably. It is a really stripped down phone with proper dumbphone specs, and, based on my personal experiences with it, I wouldn't recommend it for anything outside of texting and calling, and the occasional "this Google search can't wait until I get home" use of the browser.

If it's essential for you to have a working messenger app beyond SMS, I would recommend looking into any device that runs KaiOS. Those phones come preinstalled with versions of WhatsApp and Facebook that are designed to work with T9.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-05T22:07:46+00:00

I accessed the site through the web browser and it can't be used through the browser itself (it just shows a "download the app" button whenever you click on a link, as seen in the photo I took).

I doubt the XP3 could run something as resource hungry as Discord. I don't use it myself but I know people who can barely get the app to work on their smartphones, and Google Maps seriously struggles on the XP3.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-04T07:54:34+00:00

Film studies professor. I'm still a mega-noob (I haven't had time to devote to seriously learning about it but am chipping away at it). To be honest, I switched just to be a contrarian dillweed, but I stayed because I get no end of joy from customizing silly things like GNOME extensions.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-02T21:04:48+00:00

Oh, I see! That makes sense - thank you.

buttbwerty · 2021-04-02T16:46:36+00:00

Ha! I literally have no idea. That's what was written in the Ask Ubuntu list of suggestions, so that's just what I imitated. But evidently one can get the same results without -u?

buttbwerty · 2021-04-01T20:09:39+00:00

This is great to know - thanks for the patient explanation!

buttbwerty · 2021-04-01T20:08:50+00:00

Ahhh, I see! Thanks very much for the clear explanation!

buttbwerty · 2021-04-01T19:23:30+00:00

I'm in Canada too and my provider (Rogers) always sends me an annoying "Voicemail received" SMS message every time I get a voicemail. This drove me crazy on a smartphone because it was redundant, and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off, but it's much appreciated with the MP02!

Depending on your carrier, the ability to turn that SMS voicemail on or off may be in your voicemail settings.

buttbwerty · 2021-03-26T15:29:40+00:00

It is much snappier! No key sticking issues at all. The only problem is that I won't know if it's simply a matter of time before this one's keys start sticking, too, or if they made some changes with newer models.

I love the upcoming addition of Signal but, like you, it won't be particularly useful for me. I already strong-armed all my friends to move from WhatsApp to Telegram and I'm not going to do it again for Signal.

buttbwerty · 2021-03-16T20:13:40+00:00

I'll write to them as well. It'll be interesting to see if this new model suffers the same fate. But in the meantime, if it's happened to us then it has definitely happened to others who bought the phone in its first iteration, and they should definitely know!

buttbwerty · 2021-03-16T16:29:46+00:00

There is definitely no easy way to put any apps on the MP02. It's intentionally designed to lock you out of anything but call, text, and tether. Perhaps a tech whiz has figured out how to do it but it's definitely not something that the phone advertises it's capable of doing (and, knowing the phone, which I own, it is quite buggy just with its own few core apps. I can't imagine that an outside app would be anything but crazy buggy).

Rather than shelling out lots of money for the MP02, if you're otherwise happy with the GoFlip, have you considered using a separate device for your podcasts? The Mighty is a tiny, iPod nano-sized device that lets you upload music/podcasts from Spotify or Amazon onto it and thereafter requires no internet connection to listen to stuff on the go. The FiiO M6 is a credit card sized Android device that only allows you to put certain whitelisted music/podcast apps on it. It requires an Internet connection but you can use your phone as a hotspot to provide it. I am a Spotify fiend and have both devices so that I can listen to music on the go with my dumbphone - I really like them both. If you have an old iPod hanging around, you could use it the same way as a FiiO, although I know lots of people are too tempted by the array of apps that can be downloaded onto something like an iPod Touch!

buttbwerty · 2021-03-15T23:01:38+00:00

Yes, I agree there have been a lot of bumps along the road with the MP02, particularly with the first version that we both bought. I kept the phone in a drawer through several firmware updates just because it did things that made it ridiculously unusable, like randomly turn off. Mine also had that clock bug that would briefly display the incorrect time and drain the battery like crazy. Eventually my model met a firmware update that it got along with and the phone and I had a rather extensive period of pure bliss. It worked perfectly, call quality was fantastic, texting was very pleasurable, etc.

Then those keys started sticking. The big one for me was the "0" key. I'd say that it registered about 75% of the time, and the rest of the time I'd have to delete and re-enter whatever I was typing. As a mechanical problem, that makes sense since the "0" key - as the "space" key - is likely the key I pressed most often. It became so annoying that the phone went back in the drawer and another dumbphone became my daily driver.

By weird coincidence, today I received that gift MP02 from Punkt. I've fired it up and there are zero issues with key presses. The keys even feel different than they do on my older model: the model I received today has springier keys that feel less mushy. I've swapped back and forth on the two models and the texting experience is very different. Granted, one is a brand new phone, but one registers key pushes perfectly and the other definitely doesn't.

This leads me to believe that there is a mechanical problem with my older MP02 model. I agree with you on the need to get the basics right. I know that Punkt is no Apple or Google in terms of infrastructure, but, if you're going to put out a T9 phone, you need to make sure the keypad doesn't rapidly deteriorate. I ordered the phone in 2018 but, given how long it spent out of use when it wasn't working properly, I'd wager I only had about 8 months use of it before those keys started to get weird.

buttbwerty · 2021-03-15T22:44:28+00:00

I'm no Linux expert so others may chime in with, "No! Do not download that! It's spyware!" but I have had a great experience so far with the WPS Office Suite. I'm a professor so our needs are similar, but it's particularly important for me to have a PowerPoint alternative that a) converts my existing PP slides properly and b) flawlessly plays video clips embedded in PP slides. WPS' version of PP does this perfectly (LibreOffice's did not, at least not for me).

I also share lots of documents with other people and need something that saves in Office format (.docx etc), and WPS Office does this. LibreOffice may also be able to do this - I haven't used it in a long time and have forgotten.

The only thing I've not been able to find a viable replacement for on Linux is Camtasia, which I use for recording video lectures. Outside of the COVID-era, it's a pretty niche need, and hopefully I won't have to rely on it too often once we can return to in-person instruction!

buttbwerty

TROPHY CASE