I bought a new phone today!

[Freija]

Since it has been slow here, I though I would post something personal: I bought a new phone today!

Caution: talk of crass consumerism below

In late 2014, I bought a new flagship model phone. Five plus years later the charging port broke and I was forced to get a replacement. At that time, I purchased a used refurbished Galaxy S9 because it was all I could afford then and it has been a good phone for almost four years but two corners of the screen are broken and the battery is showing its age. It still works well enough but I questioned for how much longer and if it crapped out when I didn’t have any money, then I would be in a pickle plus it is no longer getting updates.

With funds unexpectedly available I had a decision to make between practicality and desire. After finishing up my storage bed/sleeping pod project with a cheap but nice 42” TV and realizing how bad the picture in my living room’s 60” ancient technology DLP unit was, to replace my living room dinosaur I added a 65” UHD TV to my Amazon wish list hoping the price would drop below $599 for Black Friday. Of course, I would need a wall mount too and added in some backlights for a nice cinematic experience and I would also probably end up wanting a soundbar so I was looking at a chunk of change for the whole package.

But then I got to thinking…

With no longer having visitors or doing any entertaining because people suck, I haven’t watched TV in my living room area or even used that room in almost a year and when I did, it was only because the TV was hooked up to my Technics amp/receiver and I could rattle my neighbor’s windows watching music videos so I reasoned that if I did get a new TV, it wouldn’t get used very often but would be a nice upgrade anyway.

Today I decided a new flagship phone (SAMSUNG Galaxy S23 Ultra) would be more practical especially since I rely on my phone for work and because it was on early Black Friday special for $899.99 down from $1199.99, I clicked the buy button. I also bought a serious rugged heavy duty case BF deal for $44.95 down from $79.95/ I had this brand on my previous phone and really liked it but wish it came in more colors and was a little less butch but I went for protection over aesthetics .



I don’t use my phone for games but the contacts, calendar and text messaging are critical and the mega camera in this thing is something I’m really looking forward to.

I’m still kind of reeling from dropping almost a grand but think this is a better and less frivolous purchase? Hopefully this phone will be the last one I ever buy or I can at least get 5 or 6 years out of it if I l live that long? It will be here Wednesday.

[727Sky]

Congratulations ! A friend by the name of Rudy just bought a new phone also. It came with a watch which is wirelessly connected to his phone through an App that monitors everything from blood pressure, breathing, and even monitors your heart rate and stress level when you are exercising or sleeping. I did ask him if his heart stops will the phone and watch let out a loud beep; he was not sure and figured he would have to wait and see...

[Freija]

...App that monitors everything from blood pressure, breathing, and even monitors your heart rate and stress level when you are exercising or sleeping...

Thanks for your comments.

This is all stuff I'd rather not know anyway so no smartwatch in the works for me! 

[Ninurta]

Disclaimer: I'm a Luddite.

Therefore, I don't understand what a phone could possibly have in it that would prompt anyone to pay nearly a grand for one, but folks do it every day, much to my confusion. I wouldn't pay that much for an actual computer, and they have screens that are almost big enough for me to see, and programs I can actually use to do stuff!

I nearly had a heart attack paying a measly 125 bucks for the phone we have, but then the only real use I have for a phone is talking on it, which I hardly ever do. It's nice that it'll take pictures in case I ever run into bigfoot in the wild again, but I rarely ever make use of that function, either - I have cameras for that sort of thing.

I've loaded this one down with programs that do crazy stuff like... find satellites (as if I ever need to any more), and it has sensors in it to detect it's location and orientation, so I've installed a program that will show me the names of what stars I'm looking at in the sky just by aiming the phone at them... and a bunch of mapping software that takes advantage of the GPS and compass functions, but haven't yet found any good uses for them.

In the end, it's just a phone I can drop into my pocket, and I don't even do that unless I'm going to Walmart and have to pick up an order, so the Powers That Be who are in charge of monitoring my movements are now convinced that I only leave the house to go to Walmart, and so they seem to be satisfied that I'm behaving myself.

So 125 bucks seems a pretty steep tariff for a mere phone and government  tracking device. I can't even begin to imagine paying upwards of a grand for one...

... because I'm a Luddite.

.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Since it has been slow here, I though I would post something personal: I bought a new phone today!

...

I’m still kind of reeling from dropping almost a grand but think this is a better and less frivolous purchase? Hopefully this phone will be the last one I ever buy or I can at least get 5 or 6 years out of it if I l live that long? It will be here Wednesday.

Congrats! Hey, whatever makes you happy, right?

I'm still happy with my old phone.



Gordon Gekko’s phone in Wall Street:

*took 10 hours to charge

*had 30 minutes of battery life

*would cost nearly $12,000 in today’s prices.

[Freija]

Congrats! Hey, whatever makes you happy, right?

I would have been happy frivolously buying a TV I would seldom use and while I am excited to get a new phone, it was a more logical choice based on practicality and need.

The used phone I bought 4 years ago in January was only meant to be temporary. Since I do still work sometimes and am on call 24/7 for texts, emails and calls, should the unit I've been using that's really showing its age and wear crap out, I would be in trouble. I also have a time card app I use to track my billable time on I would be lost without it because I'm too lazy to write things down and it ends up costing me money.

Sure, I could have spent less and definitely should have and the phone has more power and features than I'll probably ever use but part of my decision to go high end was in the name of future proofing. What primarily solidified my choice was the camera as I don't own a real camera and like taking pictures and the new unit has one of the best or at least until the next best thing comes along.

Although I have spent several thousand dollars kitting out my woodworking hobby, this phone will be the single most expensive thing I own. Heck, my 40 year old sub-compact shitbox car isn't even worth $400 and I've never been a latest and greatest keep up with the Joneses kind of gal but I am and always have been kind of a tech geek and this scratches that itch.

I've had a good year. I'm still living rent free and I owe nothing with zero debt so yes, this is clearly a splurge and a luxury purchase but after a couple of years of hardship and being in a good position, I thought it was okay to treat myself to something special since I have no life outside the walls of my compound!

[BIAD]

Disclaimer: I'm a Luddite...

Me too. My Missus has one and I think there's a button on the side of it that makes it
light up. But forget about making it into a telephone, it has a swipe-mechanism to
get into it or something.

I need broken windows of a lonely call-box, dead leaves, curly wires and the smell of
stale urine to fulfil my idea of remote communication.

[Ninurta]

Disclaimer: I'm a Luddite...

Me too. My Missus has one and I think there's a button on the side of it that makes it
light up. But forget about making it into a telephone, it has a swipe-mechanism to
get into it or something.

I need broken windows of a lonely call-box, dead leaves, curly wires and the smell of
stale urine to fulfil my idea of remote communication.

I know the feeling.

I got this mobile phone solely because I thought it was neat for a phone to know which way it was pointing even if I didn't. Grace has operational control of it, and I rarely even see it unless I'm going to Walmart. It's her window on the world, it seems. I have big black boxes with rows of funny buttons for that. Grace knows how to use the phone thingy, and I mostly don't have a clue. I can manage to make a call out on it about 6 times out of every 10 attempts.

The voice mail thingy on it entirely mystifies me. When I carried a cell phone, my voice mail filled entirely up, because I had no clue how to even listen to those little recordings, much less how to get them out of the phone.

I'm with @"Freija" on the cars, though. All my life I've bought what I called "Bic cars" - I'd buy then for between 150 dollars and maybe 4 or 5 hundred dollars, drive 'em until the wheels fell off, then throw them away and get another one. Even my Jeep I only paid 600 bucks for... but it would climb a telephone pole ... whenever I could get it running!

.

[Chiefsmom]

I really  need a new one, the one I have was cheap when I wasn't working.  Now, I have to delete a picture, to take another one.  Says my memory is full.  I even put in a mini memory card, but the phone does not seem to recognize it is in there.  I think the phone is an AO1 Galaxy.

Now, my work phone, that I don't pay for, is one of those S23's.   Man, I really do like it.  I just can't spend that much money.  Way more fun things to waste my money on.
So, I am hoping, that they will come down in the next year, when the "new" models come out.
Otherwise I will have to suffer with the one I have for a while.

I'm glad you like it though!  It does seem like a great phone!

[Macsen191]

Congrats on the new phone! I've had an S23 Ultra for awhile now(trade in your other phone and you get so much taken off... etc.) And I love it... I rarely use the pen though but I use the phone a lot.

[Freija]

Wow! What a neat device!

Things couldn't have gone better. Connected the new and old phones together with a cable and ran a Samsung transfer app that worked way better then I even expected. Didn't lose a thing.. not messages going back forever, emails and accounts and the few all photos I had left on my old device. It even brought over my previous Bluetooth connections.

There were a couple apps It didn't get but I grabbed them off the Play Store. No biggie. I only had to look up one thing which was how to change the notification sound on a per app basis then felt dumb that I missed because it was dead simple.

I manually copied my music from my old phone to my computer the day before. Today I plugged the new phone and copied it to the new device. Being a Boomer and all, most of my music came on physical media I then ripped to my PC so all in all, I copied 102 full CDs to my new phone. There's probably another 50 albums I could copy when I figure out which ones.

Good timing with the purchase too. Samsung just released their latest One UI revamp that came with the latest version of Android too (14). I love Android and have been using it since Cupcake. Too bad they quit using names for the different versions (cupcake, donut, eclair, froyo, gingerbread, honeycomb, ice cream sandwich, jelly bean, kit kat, jelly bean, lollipop, marshmallow, nougat, oreo, pie and then they got boring and started with Android 10)

There's a billion themes, colors, wallpapers and icons available and I spent more than a few hours trying things until I got something I was happy with. Got some cool images and minimalist icons and I'm going to stick with this for a while because I think it is cool!

Lock Screen (left)  Home Screen (right)



Neat huh? 

[Freija]

Well good! The TV I had on my wish list didn't get any cheaper for Black Friday so I am glad the call to go with the phone was a good one.

I forgot to mention I popped the sim card out of the old phone and into the new without a hitch and was instantly back on the mobile network and even got a few calls. I'm always on WiFi except for those rare times I venture out of the compound and was surprised the old phone was still receiving emails and notifications and could get online without a sim card.

I'm going to keep using my old phone as a music player when riding my bicycle or skating connected to my Bluetooth around-the-neck speakers. I'm too weird about using earphones or buds in situations where outside sounds might be important.



For music, I'm using the awesome Poweramp. So many options, 10-band EQ and more than you could ever want. This is my most highest rated app ever. On the new phone, it even fixed some of the album art that was messed up or missing.



Ok, I'll shut up about my phone now!

For actual Black Friday purchases, I bought some leggings and one other thing totaling about $50. Now I'm off to do that onsite job I couldn't yesterday. Sounds like a server with a failed drive in the RAID array? Yum.

[EndtheMadnessNow]

The first smartphone was released Nov 23, 1994 to the peasants who could afford it. The IBM Simon was first introduced on Nov 23, 1992 at COMDEX in Las Vegas. IBM debuted a prototype device, code named "Sweetspot"...Although the term "smartphone" was not coined until 1995, because of Simon's features and capabilities, it has been retrospectively referred to as the first smartphone.



It would cost $2,280 in today’s prices. Simon says you must buy the new improved smartphone for only $1000 and be happy.



The design engineers were known as "Simoneers" and 30 years later 'Simon' has become very advanced "AI". Now we just marvel at the technology and do what Simon says.

[quintessentone]

I don't think about buying a new phone until the existing one starts heating up so bad that I complain to my daughter, then I turn it off to cool off then it's okay again for a little while, but then she forces me to buy another one. But it's the best deal I can find because I don't seem to have very good luck with phones so no way I'm spending a lot of money on one. lol

[stilhuman]

i guess im really in the dark ages. i just have a home phone, i can walk it around the house though.

[BIAD]

i guess im really in the dark ages. i just have a home phone, i can walk it around the house though.

I don't feel alone anymore!