Can you work all the functions in your cellphones?

Absolutely not and I have a flip phone. Texting is very basic with it. I can't really figure out how to make a capital letter or punctuation. You can but it's kind of complicated. Camera is easy. But that's about it.

If I'm ever able to dump the landline, I'll upgrade the phone. Plane to stay with Consumer Cellular, I've been pleased with them.
 
I almost never make or receive calls on my Samsung mobile phone. My main use of it is to track all my health records. It tracks daily my weight, blood pressure, steps walked, sleep and many more items. I make and receive almost all my telephone calls on my Panasonic landline phone.

My Samsung smart phone is linked to my 2 Samsung smart watches where all the data is received from my body.

I recently discovered that my Samsung smart phone can enable me to talk to Mexicans who cannot speak English. It receives the calls in Spanish and translates them to English for me. Then I speak in English and it speaks to the Mexicans in Spanish. I rarely need this function but the few times I need it I really appreciate that feature.
 
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fuzzybuddy said:
I still don't know how to text. Why should I spend time trying to type words on a tiny keypad with big fat fingers, when I can just call you? I just found out my phone counts the number of steps I take each day. Also, I noticed that people, who were brought up with a cellphone, hold it differently than I do. Plus they know all about them. Are you a cellphone aficionado? Or, are you like me, just able o use them?
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I'm like you. I know how to text, but I don't choose to do it. I just use the phone as a phone, usually to call my husband if needed. It's off most of the time, I use my landline. Years back I did add a walking app to measure distances on my walks, and loaded the NPR radio app so I could listen while walking my dog. I haven't used either for a long time. I'm sure I hold it like you, I never bonded with it, never will.
 
Remy said:
Absolutely not and I have a flip phone. Texting is very basic with it. I can't really figure out how to make a capital letter or punctuation. You can but it's kind of complicated. Camera is easy. But that's about it.

If I'm ever able to dump the landline, I'll upgrade the phone. Plane to stay with Consumer Cellular, I've been pleased with them.
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I have consumer cellular too, will stick with them if I ever buy a new phone, mine is several years old, android. I think on the keyboard there's an arrow that you tap to get to the capital letters.
 
I use the stopwatch when boiling vegetables, alarm clock sometimes, and it is my watch. I have used the flashlight and calculator. And the GPS.

Otherwise texting is a big time saver. I need to keep the chicks I'm dating capped at 12 so it's easy to dump those that don't make the cut.
 
No smartphone here albeit my wife wanted an upgrade so I bought her one for her birthday last year. I don't need one. Anything they do I use an alternative. I have an Alcatel mobile which must be between 15-20 years old. I take the occasional photo but apart from that I call and occasionally text. I am a tech dummy with honours!
 
RadishRose said:
No, I am a failure at smart phones. I can make and receive phone calls and texts but I don't use it for anything else. I don't know why even have it!

Texting seems so backward to me. Long ago, people wrote letters or sent telegrams. Then Joy to the world, they invented the telephone, a truly amazing and useful invention.

But now? People have reverted to typing "letters" they call texts. Which to me, is a PITA!
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summed up perfectly
 
I think that cell phones are over-engineered, and fall into the category of technology I didnā€™t really want, but that was foisted on me when pay phones became extinct. I never cease to be amazed and at times annoyed by people who walk about in public babbling into their phones, or noisily interrupting my peace by their loud and offensive ring tones. I belong to an age when phone calls had a distinct and necessary purpose that was performed in private.

Rather than suffer the eye strain of tiny screens and risk hitting the wrong tiny key on cell phones, I much prefer to work on a bigger screen and keyboard offered by a laptop or tabletā€¦
 
Murrmurr said:
Fuzz, when you initiate a text to someone, above the keypad there's a bar of icons. If one of those icons is a microphone, that means you can just talk and the phone will type what you say...so you don't have to use the frustratingly tiny keyboard.

I always use the dictator....um, the voice to text feature. I always proofread what it writes, because it doesn't always get all the words right, and I have to correct a few things before I *send*, but it's still way better than typing out everything.
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That's what I don't like about the voice text feature. I have to go back and correct everything. Maybe it needs to get more used to my voice. I don't do much by voice. I don't want AI to know it and/or copy it. šŸ‘µThis is not gray hair, it's my tinfoil hat emoticon.
 
Capt Lightning said:
A lot of people say they 'couldn't live' without their phone. If I wanted to kill one of them, I would simply have to steal their phone. As far as I can see, I might be fined for stealing a phone but I'd be getting away with murder:devilish:

NO, you could live without your phone. You might be inconvenienced, but you'd soon learn.
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'The Smartphone Stealer Killer'
 
fuzzybuddy said:
I still don't know how to text. Why should I spend time trying to type words on a tiny keypad with big fat fingers, when I can just call you? I just found out my phone counts the number of steps I take each day. Also, I noticed that people, who were brought up with a cellphone, hold it differently than I do. Plus they know all about them. Are you a cellphone aficionado? Or, are you like me, just able o use them?
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I'm more like you Fuzzy.

I grew up in a house that had no phone. We had to walk around to the next street and putt coins in the public phone.

After Hubby and I moved into our house he wanted a phone so we had one with a circular dial mechanism. Since then we've had various updates but I have grown to hate the telephone. They are intrusive and usually don't ring for long enough for me to pick up. They make me feel angry and and frustrated.

Yesterday I updated my 3g second hand mobile phone to a brand new 5G in one swoop. I have yet to understand the various menus and it is about as useful to me as a brick.

I will persevere. I will dominate my phone.
I will persevere. I will dominate my phone.
I will persevere. I will dominate my phone.
I will persevere. I will dominate my phone.
I will persevere. I will dominate my phone.

Who am I kidding.:(
 
Smartphones are designed for the market segment of our population using them most and buying them most frequently. And that is not seniors. Given the rise of microprocessors with vast memory that control devices, equipment, software, programming languages, and applications today, we humans are far beyond the level of an expectation of individuals being able to fully operate whatever and instead rely on accessible Help and Documentation to control functions we may not regularly use. Not only is Android complex, but also continually changing just as our computer operating systems.

As someone up to my neck in technology, I've played that game for decades. Before the Internet rose, I had bookshelves full of technical how to books and IC data books. At most, even gurus have limited areas of expertise today. Only AI with huge cloud memory resources will have command over such in the future.
 
I'm not a huge fan but I have no idea how anyone gets by without a smartphone and the skills to use it today. Any number of government, financial, and other classes of services including commercial make use of texting as a secondary form of authentication. Smart home devices are nearly impossible to configure and adjust without a smartphone and many of their operations require one as well. Most cars from the last decade or so are linked to smartphone apps, not to mention infotainment system extension and navigation linked to your smartphone. Banking, grocery, shopping, fast food ordering and discounts are tied to smartphone apps. Many products involve QR codes that must be scanned, some services have you scan them off your TV screen.

I'm even posting this from my phone.

How are people getting by without these simple skills?
 
hearlady said:
That's what I don't like about the voice text feature. I have to go back and correct everything. Maybe it needs to get more used to my voice. I don't do much by voice. I don't want AI to know it and/or copy it. šŸ‘µThis is not gray hair, it's my tinfoil hat emoticon.
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I was told it takes a while for the voice-to-text thing to get used to your voice, but I've had this phone for at least 4 years, and it still doesn't know if I'm saying 'she' or 'he' and it consistently gets my son's name wrong. It's Liam, but it comes out as lean, leave him, knee him, or neem. I finally stopped yelling his name into the phone, I just know I always gotta switch to keyboard and fix that one.

And it drives me crazy if I forget, cuz then I gotta do one of these: *Liam. And then I feel compelled to add "not lean" or whatever, for context.

Watching my DIL and grandkids write long texts in nano-seconds using their thumbs makes my head spin. How....?
 
Murrmurr said:
I finally stopped yelling his name into the phone, I just know I always gotta switch to keyboard and fix that one.
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Do like the young folks do. Just send it out with all the errors. They know how to read it. Texts are for fast corresponding.

Adding punctuation is a nuisance. I have to tell DH to stop doing that. His family knows that he knows what is correct. If they donā€™t, they wonā€™t appreciate all his effort anyways.

Even here on an iPad, Iā€™m too lazy to put in ? marks. Itā€™s sure not happening in a text.
 

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