New year, new decade, new (to me) phone....

Back in September 2018, I wrote about starting to use a basic smartphone. I called it my 'slightly intelligent' phone as it didn't actually do all that much. That was good, I thought, as I had resisted the idea of a smartphone for a long time. But being able to see photos of the grandchildren via Whatsapp was a big motivation to acquire one, and to start using it as a phone when my old phone (which was not at all intelligent) was becoming unusable.

I was surprised how much I liked it. It didn't have room to install much, but my son put an extra chip in it, and I was able to download an app for gmail, and Facebook 'Lite', and a few other things. When I travelled briefly to the UK a year ago, to see the family, I didn't take a computer; I was able to keep in touch with friends and Facebook via my phone.

What I liked most of all was being able to check email and Facebook updates quickly in the morning, before going out for a walk or having breakfast. Sometimes I'm anxious to hear from someone, or concerned about something, and in the past I would have turned my computer on - only to get distracted, possibly for hours. With the phone, I could check all I needed in about five minutes, and then get on with my day. I've reached the point where I don't usually turn my computer on until after lunch, meaning I get a lot more done in the mornings.

There were some disadvantages to such a basic phone, however. The main and most frustrating one was not having a camera on the front. Not that I wanted to take selfies; the problem was that trying to video chat with my grandchildren meant I had to stand in front of a long mirror in order for them to see me. We would try the computer, but the technology doesn't always work. So we would usually end up waiting for Richard, if he was out, so we could use his phone.

I was mildly disappointed that there was no way to instal a step-counter on the phone, and also found the poor quality of the photos on it a bit disturbing. I still have a camera and mostly use that. But when I go walking with my friend Sheila early in the morning, I don't usually take anything other than my house keys and phone.  There are a lot of flamingoes on the Salt Lake this year (over a thousand, we're told), but when I tried taking a photo with my old phone, the best of them looked like this:

If you click to enlarge it, you'll see that they just look like pink blobs.

Back in the summer, my family tried to persuade me to buy a better phone, and I did look at some options. But some were too big, and some were too heavy, and the ones that quite appealed (and which weren't horrendously expensive) had poor reviews.  So I decided not to bother.

However, Richard bought a new Android to replace the one he had been using for work which had become unreliable, switching itself off every couple of minutes.  He had hoped I might like one the same, but it was too big for my hands, and too heavy to feel comfortable.

In an idle moment I did some online research and learned that random turning off is a common feature of this kind of phone when the battery needs replacing; it swells slightly, and triggers the off button. I quite liked that phone - so we decided to order a replacement battery, to see if it could be made to work.

Our son brought it out with him when he came for a week over Christmas, and I agreed to try it. He moved my sim, and the extra memory chip, and put the new battery in.  It worked!  It was so much faster than my other phone! Installing the same apps was easy and quick!

Yes, it really is only 15 degrees here at present, down to about 9 overnight.  Not warm at all.

The phone is bigger but not much heavier than my old one, and it has a camera on the front as well as the back. It also let me instal a step-counter, which I hope will motivate me to do a bit more walking. I'm not doing very well so far; this morning it was raining at 6.00am so I didn't go out walking with my friend.

The pictures taken still aren't as good as my real camera, but they're a lot better than the other phone was.  Here's how the flamingoes looked on the 'new' phone when we walked early in the morning on New Year's Eve:

They're still not particularly clear in a photo this size, but much more obviously flamingoes if you click to enlarge the picture.

Within a couple of days, I was carrying the phone around with me everywhere. I'm still getting used to some of the functions, and am quite slow with it. I am not planning to use it for YouTube or even browsing, but I like the speed, and the quality, and the ease of use.

I passed my other phone to my friend, for her younger daughters to use when out and about. They have already done more with it than I ever managed to do.  No doubt there are far more features on my 'new' one than I am aware of, and I probably won't ever discover the majority.

But, as we start the 2020s (yes, I know, this is technically the last year of the previous decade, but still the first year of the 'twenties') I don't expect to return to using a non-smart phone.

Trying a (basic) smartphone...

I didn't even have a mobile phone until 2007. By then, almost everyone else in Cyprus had one, and landlines were starting to vanish. After a couple of occasions when I realised it would have been useful to have a mobile, I was persuaded to buy one. As simple as possible, just enabling me to make and receiving phone calls and text messages.

And yes, it was useful. Four years later, when its battery was almost worn out, it was much less expensive to buy a new phone than a new battery. I opted for a similar kind of phone, which had the addition of predictive text, and slightly better storage capacities. And it's done well.

It's been dropped a few times - hence, if you look closely, some missing plastic at the side of the keypad - but has continued to function. It fits nicely in the side pocket of my handbag. I have a camera for photos, and a computer for accessing the Internet, so I had no need for anything more advanced. 

I'm also extremely sensitive to vibrations and radiation, even harmless kinds, and when I've had to hold other people's iPhones, they have become uncomfortably 'tingly' within a minute or two. And I found the navigation and usage very confusing. No way did I want anything like that...

In the past six months or so, however, our family on the Logos Hope have been sending photos to Richard and other relatives via WhatsApp, which - for some reason - is one of the few things that works reasonably well on the ship's slow Internet connection. Each time I had to ask Richard to download them on his phone and forward them to my email address, so I could see them on my computer.  It was a bit frustrating to learn that WhatsApp can be used on a computer - but only when connected to a smartphone WhatsApp account.

In April, when I was in the UK, I remembered that my father had stopped using a basic smartphone which he found frustrating, and moved on to an iPhone. I asked my resident technical experts if it would be able to use WhatsApp, and learned that it could.  My father was delighted to pass it on to me, and when I got home I was equally delighted that, so long as I kept it charged and near my computer, I could get WhatsApp photos directly on my computer.

But in the meantime, my basic phone was starting to feel squidgy. In the UK, it refused to send messages to my son's phone. Every time I tried to send a text message to anyone, I had to keep re-typing because the space key wasn't working well.  I realised it was reaching the end of its useful life - I suppose seven years isn't too bad these days.

When we were on holiday in Panama in August, I had to use Richard's second (Android) phone (with a UK chip) to send text messages a couple of times, while he was driving. To my astonishment, it didn't make my hands tingle, and I found it surprisingly easy to use - at least, for sending messages. For the first time, the idea of actually using a smartphone began to seem less unreasonable.

I'm told it's still possible to buy non-smartphones, and I may still decide that's the best option. But in the meantime, I asked Richard if it would be possible to put my Cyprus sim chip in my father's old phone (which is on the Android system) so I could see how easy - or not - it is to use.

The only way I knew how to remove the chip from the phone was by dropping it. Happily, he knew a better method, and was able to snip it to the right size for the smartphone. Then we learned we needed to unlock it from Vodaphone UK, but since I'd had it for a few months, that simply required an email with some details. A day or two later, the unlock code was sent, and worked easily.

It 's a lot more complicated to send text messages than either of my basic phones, and I seem to have lost my phone contacts... all twenty of them. But there are only two or three people I tend to get in touch with via text messages, so those are now entered. Along with all my gmail contacts, which apparently imported themselves, but aren't much use as they mostly don't have phone numbers attached.

I suspect I'll stick with it, as other friends have done when given smartphones, at least for now.  Which, I suppose,  means that I've finally been dragged through the gate into the 21st century... 

Changing my mobile phone provider

It's seven years since I first had a mobile phone. Five years ago I wrote about topping it up annually, having to buy a €10 card, since the €5 cards only lasted for 30 days. Normal users of mobiles would think nothing of this, but at the time I struggled to spend as much as €10 in a year.

I eventually had to replace my original Sony phone; it still worked, but the battery life was almost non-existent. When I discovered that a basic Samsung phone in the UK would cost me £10 (unlocked) about three years ago it wasn't a difficult decision to make. Admittedly it took me a few days to get used to it, but I like the predictive text feature; it's light, and simple and - as with my first one - I can make phone calls and send texts.

Oh, and it tells me the time and occasionally acts as an alarm clock.

I have no wish for anything more advanced. I have continued with my pay-as-you-go contract from MTN and had no problems.

Last May, I was pleased to find that I could buy a €5 top-up card from MTN which would last me a year.  I had succeeded in getting my credit to less than €20 and wondered if I might actually succeed in running it down to nothing - after all, I send a minimum of three texts per week (when arranging morning walks) and often as many as ten. I just checked my call log, and it appears that I have made twenty actual phone calls in the past two months. Some of them as long as thirty seconds.

Last Summer, when Tim tried to top up his MTN pay-as-you-go phone, he was annoyed to find that a €10 card was only valid for 60 days. He thought it was because he bought it online - but then learned that they had changed their policies. A €20 top-up was the same - only valid for 60 days. Apparently they don't want light users any more. So, since we had a 'spare' contract (a long story) Tim took that over a few months ago.  Including the monthly charge (85c) he seems to spend about €2-3 per month - and he uses his mobile a lot more than I use mine.

The end of my last year's validity period was fast approaching. I went into an MTN shop to check that this really was the case - that I could no longer pay a small amount that would last a year. The girl in the shop confirmed it, and when I said I'd have to switch providers, she shrugged and nodded.

So it's a nice irony, really. Having moved our landline from CYTA to Cablenet last month, I'm about to move my mobile phone from MTN to CYTA. I double-checked, and their top-ups are far more reasonable: €5 last a year.

I knew I would have to buy a new Sim card, and thought that might cost me ten or fifteen euros... so when I popped into the CYTA shop last Friday, I was surprised to see this:

I told the cashier I would like a new pay-as-you go Sim, and she handed me the pack. Not only was it cheaper than I expected, it included €5 of credit. It's only valid for 90 days, but that's fine; I have 100 free texts included, too. 

Evidently I looked somewhat incompetent, as the cashier asked me (very nicely) if I knew how to activate the Sim. I told her that I didn't, but my son would help me. I'm sure she could have done it for me but I didn't actually want to start it until a couple of days before the end of my current validity period with MTN (which STILL has €12 on it, although I am trying hard to use it up).

I opened it up when I got home:

I assume everything is there. I will need to activate it (or, rather, have someone in the family activate it for me) within the next few days, because it occurs to me that my mobile number is used as a security measure for our online banking, and various other online services. In order to switch to a new number I will have to receive and validate a code on my current number.  Happily my original Sony phone is still usable (so long as it's plugged into the charger continually) so that seems like a good place to put my MTN Sim for the last few days of its life.