Turns out it is trivially easy to accidentally disable the ability to
answer the phone on the smartphone model I own (Motorolla e22i), and one
only discovers that the next time someone calls.

How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
able to answer the infernal device?

Sylvia.

On 4/8/2024 4:06 AM, Sylvia Else wrote:
> Turns out it is trivially easy to accidentally disable the ability to
> answer the phone on the smartphone model I own (Motorolla e22i), and one
> only discovers that the next time someone calls.
>
> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
> able to answer the infernal device?
>
> Sylvia.

that reminds me of the time when a technician tried to report an issue
with the Lotus Notes servers not working... on our Support inbox, which
was on those servers. He could have called, but nooooo...

I had a very calm Saturday. That is, until he called just before I was
off asking why I hadn't logged the incident yet.

On 2024-04-08, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
> able to answer the infernal device?

I hear you!

My latest phone has several annoying anti-features. One is that it
hides the virtual keypad by default. So when i make a call, i have
to go through the screen menu to open the keypad before i can press
numbers to navigate a robotic phone tree menu.

But i have to be quick because the display has a surprisingly short
timeout. If i wait 5 seconds while listening to a phone dial,
greeting, and finally realize it is a robotic prompt, my screen has
gone dark and i have to unlock it, then "open the keypad", and
finally i can press a number. Usually the robotic prompt hasn't
timed out yet.

Likewise, when i press the dialer button, it hides the virtual keypad by
default and instead shows me recent calls or contacts. I have to press
another button to open the virtual keypad to actually key in a phone
number. Even here it defaults to the most recent phone call as the
"suggested number". So it is all too easy to accidentally dial someone
else before i key in a phone number.

This phone is running "Android Go Edition", which was designed to run on
reduced memory phones for poor people. It has all kinds of
not-so-helpful restrictions.

The physical volume control buttons are limited to 10 possible volume
settings 1-10. Volume level 5 is too quiet. Volume level 6 is way too
loud. It doesn't help to use a bluetooth headset. Those too are
restricted to 10 possible volume levels by Android Go Edition.

It is restricted to running approximately 4 processes at once. This
means that if i am playing an mp3, Android kills/suspends background
processes for other apps including their notifications. Consequently, i
pretty commonly miss notifications for text messages, WhatsApp, and the
like. It's a bit of a roulette. It doesn't normally kill the media
player while it is playing, but sometimes if i put it on pause, it will
"forget" what and where it was playing when i re-open it.

I am not inclined to trust this device with anything important. I'll
keep my important stuff elsewhere.

On Mon, 8 Apr 2024 15:13:50 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:

> This phone is running "Android Go Edition", which was designed to run on
> reduced memory phones for poor people. It has all kinds of
> not-so-helpful restrictions.

Why do I suddenly hear the phrase “you pays yer money, and you takes yer
choice” ... ?

On 09-Apr-24 8:23 am, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Mon, 8 Apr 2024 15:13:50 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
>
>> This phone is running "Android Go Edition", which was designed to run on
>> reduced memory phones for poor people. It has all kinds of
>> not-so-helpful restrictions.
>
> Why do I suddenly hear the phrase “you pays yer money, and you takes yer
> choice” ... ?

It's a nice theory, but these days one doesn't expect to know about
these issues until one discovers them later.

Sylvia.

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

> Turns out it is trivially easy to accidentally disable the ability to
> answer the phone on the smartphone model I own (Motorolla e22i), and
> one only discovers that the next time someone calls.
>
> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to
> be able to answer the infernal device?

My mother has some kind of Oneplus where she has managed to make
answering really hard, there's only a notification that it's
ringing. Also, how do you search for that? I remember I got a ton of
hits for the basics about answering the phone and ring tones and volumes
and do no disturb and nothing at all about the actual issue. The setting
is there somewhere but it's misnamed, no doubt a little translation
problem from Chinese. I should've taken notes or screenshots back then.

The first time this happened I had to go to a shop with the damn thing
and the guy took some time and called around before he finally found it.

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> writes:

> On 09-Apr-24 8:23 am, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> On Mon, 8 Apr 2024 15:13:50 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
>>
>>> This phone is running "Android Go Edition", which was designed to run on
>>> reduced memory phones for poor people. It has all kinds of
>>> not-so-helpful restrictions.
>> Why do I suddenly hear the phrase “you pays yer money, and you takes
>> yer
>> choice” ... ?
>
> It's a nice theory, but these days one doesn't expect to know about
> these issues until one discovers them later.

Precisely. Not to mention that it used to be as I want before the last
update.

Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
<snip>
>
> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
> able to answer the infernal device?

No kidding! Also I have a hard time hanging up the "smart"
phone. These phones do not make using it as a phone easy.
I am not far from tossing it out the window and going to a
dumb phone.

>
> Sylvia.

--
[t]csh(1) - "An elegant shell, for a more... civilized age."
- Paraphrasing Star Wars

On Fri, 12 Apr 2024, John McCue wrote:

> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
> <snip>
>>
>> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
>> able to answer the infernal device?
>
> No kidding! Also I have a hard time hanging up the "smart"
> phone. These phones do not make using it as a phone easy.
> I am not far from tossing it out the window and going to a
> dumb phone.

Do it! I haven't had a smartphone for about 5 years or so and I love it!
The highest price I pay is not being able to get Über taxis so I pay about
3x the price with a regular taxi, and I also miss the wireless sharing
functionality.

But in many cases it is possible to Stallman yourself an Übertaxi.

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Apr 2024, John McCue wrote:
>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
>>> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
>>> able to answer the infernal device?
>>
>> No kidding! Also I have a hard time hanging up the "smart"
>> phone. These phones do not make using it as a phone easy.
>> I am not far from tossing it out the window and going to a
>> dumb phone.
>
> Do it! I haven't had a smartphone for about 5 years or so and I love it!
> The highest price I pay is not being able to get ?ber taxis so I pay about
> 3x the price with a regular taxi

I never started using a smartphone, and I recently ran into my
first financial disadvantage resulting from that. I got a
Mastercard gift card as part of a promotion, which I'd made a
deliberate effort to obtain, and it turns out I need a smartphone
app to activate it. Old forum threads suggest that there used to be
a way to do it on their mastercardgift.com.au website, but that
seems to have gone because of course everyone has a smartphone now.

To be fair, so far I've only established that it can't be used
online without setting it up in the app, I still need to find an
appropriate time and place to try using it in-store.

But I'm still sticking to dumb phones. Only I stuffed up trying to
find a cheap 4G one with good reception - it won't talk to the
telco I use. Previous network-locked phones didn't care whether the
network they were locked to was accessed via an account with a
reseller using that phone network, but apparantly they've been
silently shifting the goalposts.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On Sun, 14 Apr 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 12 Apr 2024, John McCue wrote:
>>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
>>>> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
>>>> able to answer the infernal device?
>>>
>>> No kidding! Also I have a hard time hanging up the "smart"
>>> phone. These phones do not make using it as a phone easy.
>>> I am not far from tossing it out the window and going to a
>>> dumb phone.
>>
>> Do it! I haven't had a smartphone for about 5 years or so and I love it!
>> The highest price I pay is not being able to get ?ber taxis so I pay about
>> 3x the price with a regular taxi
>
> I never started using a smartphone, and I recently ran into my

You are very strong with the force! Much respect.

> first financial disadvantage resulting from that. I got a
> Mastercard gift card as part of a promotion, which I'd made a
> deliberate effort to obtain, and it turns out I need a smartphone
> app to activate it. Old forum threads suggest that there used to be
> a way to do it on their mastercardgift.com.au website, but that
> seems to have gone because of course everyone has a smartphone now.
>
> To be fair, so far I've only established that it can't be used
> online without setting it up in the app, I still need to find an
> appropriate time and place to try using it in-store.

Well, if you won it as a reward, then I'm sure you can just ask your
company to add it to your salary? The card they can just reuse the next
time someone does something good. =)

> But I'm still sticking to dumb phones. Only I stuffed up trying to
> find a cheap 4G one with good reception - it won't talk to the
> telco I use. Previous network-locked phones didn't care whether the
> network they were locked to was accessed via an account with a
> reseller using that phone network, but apparantly they've been
> silently shifting the goalposts.

I've had a nokia 220 4g and a nokia 110 4g and both work great with 3g and
4g. Actually I turn off the 4g to save on battery. But maybe you tried
those already?

D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Apr 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>> Do it! I haven't had a smartphone for about 5 years or so and I love it!
>>> The highest price I pay is not being able to get ?ber taxis so I pay about
>>> 3x the price with a regular taxi
>>
>> I never started using a smartphone, and I recently ran into my
>
> You are very strong with the force! Much respect.
>
>> first financial disadvantage resulting from that. I got a
>> Mastercard gift card as part of a promotion, which I'd made a
>> deliberate effort to obtain, and it turns out I need a smartphone
>> app to activate it. Old forum threads suggest that there used to be
>> a way to do it on their mastercardgift.com.au website, but that
>> seems to have gone because of course everyone has a smartphone now.
>>
>> To be fair, so far I've only established that it can't be used
>> online without setting it up in the app, I still need to find an
>> appropriate time and place to try using it in-store.
>
> Well, if you won it as a reward, then I'm sure you can just ask your
> company to add it to your salary? The card they can just reuse the next
> time someone does something good. =)

Oh not that sort of "promotion", I mean the reward was for not
buying someone else's product. :)

Actually it was a bribe to make me switch away from a service that
the provider wanted to discontinue, onto one which will cost me
more than the gift card's value in the long run of course. Actually
in my case it was a reward for dragging my heels for as long as I
possibly could, ignoring previous warnings if impending
discontinuation. I can hope that a similar thing will happen with
the 3G turn-off, but it probably won't with the cheap telcos at
least.

>> But I'm still sticking to dumb phones. Only I stuffed up trying to
>> find a cheap 4G one with good reception - it won't talk to the
>> telco I use. Previous network-locked phones didn't care whether the
>> network they were locked to was accessed via an account with a
>> reseller using that phone network, but apparantly they've been
>> silently shifting the goalposts.
>
> I've had a nokia 220 4g and a nokia 110 4g and both work great with 3g and
> 4g. Actually I turn off the 4g to save on battery. But maybe you tried
> those already?

I haven't tried those but at the moment I'm comparing reception
between a Nokia 2660 Flip and an Alcatel 3080T, the latter being
the network-locked one but I can buy them unlocked from Ebay.

The Alcatel claims to have two more reception bars than the Nokia
most of the time, but I think its bars might be deceptively scaled.

--
__ __
#_ < |\| |< _#

On Mon, 15 Apr 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, 14 Apr 2024, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
>>>> Do it! I haven't had a smartphone for about 5 years or so and I love it!
>>>> The highest price I pay is not being able to get ?ber taxis so I pay about
>>>> 3x the price with a regular taxi
>>>
>>> I never started using a smartphone, and I recently ran into my
>>
>> You are very strong with the force! Much respect.
>>
>>> first financial disadvantage resulting from that. I got a
>>> Mastercard gift card as part of a promotion, which I'd made a
>>> deliberate effort to obtain, and it turns out I need a smartphone
>>> app to activate it. Old forum threads suggest that there used to be
>>> a way to do it on their mastercardgift.com.au website, but that
>>> seems to have gone because of course everyone has a smartphone now.
>>>
>>> To be fair, so far I've only established that it can't be used
>>> online without setting it up in the app, I still need to find an
>>> appropriate time and place to try using it in-store.
>>
>> Well, if you won it as a reward, then I'm sure you can just ask your
>> company to add it to your salary? The card they can just reuse the next
>> time someone does something good. =)
>
> Oh not that sort of "promotion", I mean the reward was for not
> buying someone else's product. :)
>
> Actually it was a bribe to make me switch away from a service that
> the provider wanted to discontinue, onto one which will cost me
> more than the gift card's value in the long run of course. Actually
> in my case it was a reward for dragging my heels for as long as I
> possibly could, ignoring previous warnings if impending
> discontinuation. I can hope that a similar thing will happen with
> the 3G turn-off, but it probably won't with the cheap telcos at
> least.

Ahh got it. Well, then it does seem like more of a problem. In my case,
what my provider did was to just increas the price until it wasn't
justifiable any longer. =( For decades I had an ADSL provider with the
benefit of giving me a static ip!! They were great but the problem was
that they basically were reselling the service of the biggest telco. So
while they were happy campers, the big telco wanted to get rid of their
copper infrastructure in favour of mobile only, so they kept increasing
the monthly fee to my isp, and they passed it on. Best isp I ever had,
small, personal and very flexible, but eventually it wasn't financially
feasible any longer. =(

>>> But I'm still sticking to dumb phones. Only I stuffed up trying to
>>> find a cheap 4G one with good reception - it won't talk to the
>>> telco I use. Previous network-locked phones didn't care whether the
>>> network they were locked to was accessed via an account with a
>>> reseller using that phone network, but apparantly they've been
>>> silently shifting the goalposts.
>>
>> I've had a nokia 220 4g and a nokia 110 4g and both work great with 3g and
>> 4g. Actually I turn off the 4g to save on battery. But maybe you tried
>> those already?
>
> I haven't tried those but at the moment I'm comparing reception
> between a Nokia 2660 Flip and an Alcatel 3080T, the latter being
> the network-locked one but I can buy them unlocked from Ebay.
>
> The Alcatel claims to have two more reception bars than the Nokia
> most of the time, but I think its bars might be deceptively scaled.

Hmm, I did look at an alcatel but rejected it for some reason. I _think_
it was due to all the information they were leaking to china that was
stated in small print in their manual. On the other hand, since the nokias
are probably manufactured in the very same factory, I doubt there's much
of a difference.

But let's see... nokia/hmd will release some new 4g dumbphones within the
next few months (they already released this years 2g phones) so maybe it's
time for an upgrade. My wife scolds me because I buy new phones too often,
but I counter-scold her, because my phones cost 40-70 EUR and her phones
cost 1000 to 1400 EUR, so I think should be allowed to upgrade every 1-2
years or so. ;)

On 13/04/2024 7:44 pm, D wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 12 Apr 2024, John McCue wrote:
>
>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
>> <snip>
>>>
>>> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
>>> able to answer the infernal device?
>>
>> No kidding!  Also I have a hard time hanging up the "smart"
>> phone.  These phones do not make using it as a phone easy.
>> I am not far from tossing it out the window and going to a
>> dumb phone.
>
> Do it! I haven't had a smartphone for about 5 years or so and I love it!
> The highest price I pay is not being able to get Über taxis so I pay
> about 3x the price with a regular taxi, and I also miss the wireless
> sharing functionality.
>
> But in many cases it is possible to Stallman yourself an Übertaxi.

Increasingly many things just assume you have a smart phone, and that
you want to use it to control your purchase. The Tesla Powerwall 2 is
one such.

As originally supplied it also had a web interface to which one could
connect directly, and which could be used to exert some control over it,
but Tesla have increasingly locked that down, and now it's pretty much
smartphone or nothing.

Sylvia.

On Wed, 17 Apr 2024, Sylvia Else wrote:

> On 13/04/2024 7:44 pm, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 12 Apr 2024, John McCue wrote:
>>
>>> Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> How did we get to the point where one has to do a web search just to be
>>>> able to answer the infernal device?
>>>
>>> No kidding!  Also I have a hard time hanging up the "smart"
>>> phone.  These phones do not make using it as a phone easy.
>>> I am not far from tossing it out the window and going to a
>>> dumb phone.
>>
>> Do it! I haven't had a smartphone for about 5 years or so and I love it!
>> The highest price I pay is not being able to get Über taxis so I pay about
>> 3x the price with a regular taxi, and I also miss the wireless sharing
>> functionality.
>>
>> But in many cases it is possible to Stallman yourself an Übertaxi.
>
> Increasingly many things just assume you have a smart phone, and that you
> want to use it to control your purchase. The Tesla Powerwall 2 is one such.
>
> As originally supplied it also had a web interface to which one could connect
> directly, and which could be used to exert some control over it, but Tesla
> have increasingly locked that down, and now it's pretty much smartphone or
> nothing.
>
> Sylvia.
>

I know, I ran into that trap once, and ever since, I always make sure in
the rare cases when I buy a new gadget, that I can control it without a
smart phone.

In emergencies, it is possible to install an android emulator on my laptop
and use it, but it is very cumbersome and the thought of having a GB-level
VM just to use some bad service or gadget make me sick, so I seldom do it.