new phone

AT&T has been after me for months to get a new cell phone, because the old network is being shut down. In February, so what's the hurry? Putting this off has been encouraged by the prospect of the difficulty always attendant on getting a new device with new protocols and new arrangements, and having to learn them all. Antipathy to technological advances would considerably lessen if interfaces were standardized across versions, instead of being upended and redesigned every time some engineer has a brainstorm.

However, the last time they badgered me, they also revealed - which previous badgers had not - that I was entitled to a free upgraded phone, and that it would be a flip phone like the one I already had. So it arrived yesterday and I set it up and actually got my account transferred through the online interface, even though it crashed halfway through.

Of course I'm not as happy with the phone's interface as I was with the old one. The navigation buttons, the ones that surround the OK key, are not programmable as they had been. I'd had them set up to go directly to useful apps like the tip calculator. This one doesn't even have a tip calculator. On the other hand, other useful items, like the contacts list, are easier to get to in other ways than they had been on the old phone. I was able to change the settings list from a page of cryptic icons - I hate icons, I'm an iconoclast - to an actual list with the names of the items on them, and what's more one can re-order the list so that the preferred ones are on top.

Biggest problem is that the phone is full of links to online things like Google Assistant, Bluetooth, WiFi, even YouTube, dangerous things that would use up all the money in my prepaid account in a flash. I made sure they're all off and I hope they stay that way. The net effect is to make my flip phone feel more like a smartphone. I don't want a smartphone; if I wanted a smartphone I'd have gotten an actual smartphone. I want a dumbphone. I'm an iconoclast and I want a dumbphone.