Sunday, July 31, 2016

I Gave Up On My Half-Assed Smart Phone

Last winter before heading South to Missouri I got a cheap smart phone. I was told that Johnson's Shut-In where we were going to be campground hosts had WIFI, but poor cell service so I got a cheap smart phone that had WIFI  with the thought that if I couldn't use the cell service, maybe I could connect thru the WIFI. Turned out that wasn't the case because the WIFI signal area was so small you had to be right next to the antenna to receive the signal. Turned out I had an occasional cell service so I was able to use the phone to talk and text when I had a signal.

The WIFI part of the phone works great, too bad it sucks as a phone!! I was learning how to operate the phone for various things and downloaded several apps to make it work better. (Didn't like that fact that I had to download an app that would tell me how many minutes I had left on the phone or another one that would tell me how long the calls I had made or received were!!) I was able to do Twitter and facebook using WIFI, didn't want to burn up the limited amount of data I had available on the phone. Using it as a phone is another story.

I had trouble making calls with it. If I went into my contact list and was looking for a number, it would sometimes start to call when all I wanted was to look for the number. I guess I just don't have the right touch with my fat fingers. The sound quality sucked, it would break up and I would miss words, etc..  Like I said it was hard to make calls, either thru my contact list or dialing the number using the keypad (fat fingers again, would hit the wrong numbers or same number twice).

One of the more annoying things about the phone was there was no way to do different alert ringtones for different things. Like I couldn't do a separate one for text messages. It would do the same ringtone for messages, new twitter messages, picked up a WIFI signal, etc... Every fucking thing was the same ringtone for everything other than a phone call!!

My problem was I went with such a cheap phone. It said it was 4G WIFI so I thought it would be good. The WIFI works great, but not the phone. I may try a smart phone sometime in the future, but I would like to be able to try it first, but when all you see is either a dummy one in the store or pictures and info online, that isn't possible. Or maybe I need to be smarter than the phone???

So yesterday I went back to a flip phone. It will be more of a hassle texting, but hopefully I'll be able to make and receive calls.

9 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure it's more about the carrier than the phone, per se. Also, it sounds as if you were in an area with poor reception, that is to say, coverage.

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  2. It's a Tracfone and the carrier was ATT. It probably was the phone as other phones we've had that used ATT had better coverage. This one would lose signal at home and I've never had any other phone do that. It would say no signal and then later maybe it would have a signal again. It was too off and on.

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  3. Yeah, sometimes it varies between equipment on the same system, as well. I have a laptop that continually drops the wifi signal whereas other electronics and my wife's laptop do not, right here in our house. I've moved it all over the house, and the same problem. I finally had to get a booster just for my ferking laptop...and it's a damned Dell, supposedly a better brand.

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  4. I'd like to comment; but what do I know about phones? Nothing...
    the Ol'Buzzard

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  5. My wife is the house phone guru. Every couple of years, she hands me a new phone. The most recent one is a smart phone. Love it. But then what do I know. It might be a POS, but it works way better than the flip phone Ihad before.

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  6. I'm still using the smart phone for things like twitter. Like I said the WIFI part worked great, too bad it didn't work very well as a phone!!

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  7. I just use mine as a phone, and sometimes the calculator feature is handy. You might be better off with a tablet.

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  8. Sometimes I use the camera on my phone, it takes pretty good pictures.

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  9. The camera worked fine, and the one on my new flip-phone works find too. I have a tablet, but I prefer using my laptop for the intratubes. I have a problem using touch screens for some reason.

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