Hacker News Reader

Comment by singpolyma3 | Hacker News Reader

> Verdict: PinePhone is a great mobile Linux device. I would use it as my daily driver, and probably iron out some issues I ran into, but for me, it failed at... being a phone. I had repeated, unpredictable problems both placing and receiving calls, and I could not resolve them. See below for details.

Sounds like exactly what I want. It has been well over a decade since I used my cell radio for anything but data.

View on HN

For me, it is almost exclusively used for some sort of an emergency, the last being a couple weeks ago, where I had to call in for roadside service with a rental. You're not getting through to customer service from the web. Most of my received calls are also some sort of emergency.

I suppose if you have some reliable VoIP setup, it might work.

Regardless, it's shoddy, dumb, and shouldn't be celebrated.

I've put a fair amount of thought into the decision to not carry a phone everywhere I go and this beast always rears its head. Obviously, there was a time when people didn't have phones but society's more or less moved on; people generally expect others to have one and social services reflect that.

Anyway, I think reading this comment kinda gave me my answer: be selective about when I take my phone. Kinda the inverse of the murderer not taking their phone when they go to hide the body (I'm not planning to murder anyone); I just don't take my phone unless I plan on being in a situation where there will not be a good alternative to having my own means of communication, e.g., a road trip or vacation. Traveling within my city of residence will likely be feasible, especially if I try to do so primarily with a vehicle smaller than a car.

But yeah, if one has this idea, keep in mind that people started taking their phones everywhere because they're useful in many situations.

I had a Palm PDA and have kept using smartphones for productivity apps, calendring, musical, photos as of the beter part of a decade. The fact that it van place and receiver calls really doesnt matter to me, but PDAs dont exist anymore, and so, why not installatie a basic sim?

My 'phone' has been really useful to me so I take it basically always with me, unless I specifically know I don't need it (such as going for a swim). I don't take calls if I don't feel like it, but very few people call me.

Do you not use you phone for other things than communication?

I do use my phone for other things but I could use a "mobile Linux device" just the same and without the snooping from cell towers, which is my primary concern (for trivial, self-inflicted reasons to be fair). In practical terms, my phone stays in my pocket until I'm home anyway. To disincentivize me from using it outside my home, I turn off mobile data, which has made it obvious to me that I never use it in public and only carry it around for fear of some emergent situation which would otherwise be trivialized by the ability to communicate over a long distance.

Also, something weird happened when I regained the ability to avoid looking at a device in my hands: I started to see that everyone is addicted to their phone. Used to be that any time I had to wait for any length of time, my first instinct was to pull out my phone. Now I just look around and see everyone else do that. The decision to leave my phone at home (with exceptions) is an extension of that change in my habits.

the primary feature of my phone is to be an audio player, and to research stuff online when i need that on the go (look at maps, search for specific shops, etc), also the shopping list, and taking pictures.

messaging is there too, but my phone is always on silent, so like you i mainly use it for urgent stuff.

I would say my Sony Clie was peak technology symbiosis. Offline, so mindless consumption wasn't possible, but it was filled with books that were carefully selected. Physical writing interface, that tickled that physical part of the brain. I wrote and read more, with quality, than any other time in my life.

When people didn't carry a phone with them there were pay phones all over that mostly worked. Not nearly as convenient as a phone in your pocket and in rural areas hard to find, but could count on one at every gas station, fast food restaurant, and other such places: so they were common. Today they are hard to find at all (and probably don't work if you see one). Thus if you don't have a phone with you, you will run into a worse time than in the past. (OTOH, most people didn't use a pay phone ever - they were expensive)

You can easily configure an Android phone so that it doesn't make calls, but it's insane to have a phone that can't make calls.

Until you have to call 911 or equivalent and it doesn’t work

You can flag down someone to call 911 if it is an emergency. Most people will be happy to help once you get their attention. of course if it really is an emergency seconds count and flagging down someone may cost a minute.

911 is a free call, no sim needed. So if that is your only concern a phone that you don't pay for may be fine.

If you're at the point where you're flagging down a stranger to call 911 in an emergency, why not just fully "cut the cord" (no pun intended) and stop carrying a phone at all?

Flagging someone down to call for you isn't a workable solution. For one, you could easily be nowhere near a city and need to call from the middle of nowhere. For people in the US (and I'm sure elsewhere), the cities are car centric and you could easily be nowhere near anybody out walking around.

A regular phone without a sim could work though

The places so remote you cannot flag someone down are also so remote that you don't have cell service. Most roads that look untraveled still get a fair amount of traffic and so someone will be along soon.

This is absolutely not true for a vast part of the PNW. For example, with Verizon, I've bailed myself out of several situations where the alternative would be - wait (nobody showed up in the time we were waiting for help when we called, so hours more at least) or walk 20+ miles.

I've also been in a situation where if we did not have a sat phone in our group, someone very well may have died from heat stroke/way to many sunburns.

Choosing to not take a phone on remote/hiking situations is ridiculous.

Totally agree

And now actually, I don’t even need service with satellite SOS.

That's assuming someone stops. A while ago I was driving down a road like you describe in the rural pnw and stopped for a person attempting to flag down traffic. They'd gotten their vehicle locked behind a DNR gate and their phone was dead. They were ridiculously grateful because they'd been trying to flag someone down for over an hour and had been ignored by dozens of vehicles, and they didn't even look sketchy or anything. Goes back to the societal assumption that everyone has a working phone: "if there's cell service, why don't they just call someone?"

> The places so remote you cannot flag someone down are also so remote that you don't have cell service.

What an absurd claim.

You haven't talked on your phone in 10 years?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com