Gimme a Dumb Phone!
Good afternoon Netizens...
Upon reading a genuinely-moving piece by the Spokesman's Shawn Vestal Saturday morning about life minus his Smart phone I suddenly felt vindicated, for I have resisted all efforts by anyone involved in convincing me I needed one of those devices. I have a Dumb phone in that it is a phone only and have relentlessly hung onto it for some of the same reasons that Shawn has mentioned in his piece. My Dumb Phone is a telephone, and although it does have most of the Internet features, they are disabled. I don't do text messaging because if I have something important to say, I will speak at length about what is on my mind.
Since I get paid for sitting in front of a computer for nearly seven days out of seven, I truly do not want a phone that would keep me in that nefarious place, trapped inexorably before an uncaring piece of electronic gadgetry that serves largely to distract me. Granted, I do love my work, do it gleefully and with a certain amount of skill, which if one is horribly honest about it, generally is tinged with a bit of luck. But do I need to spend my entire disposable time staring with bloodshot eyes into the mindless consciousness of the Universal All for the entire time?
Then there is the matter of the social networking, an ethos and way of life for which I have only limited use. Once again, I admit that most of the people who I have been befriended by on Facebook have little to no involvement in my day-to-day life. So why or how are they friends of mine? Oh, I suppose there are a few among them who I would consider to be my friend, but they are clearly in the minority, and most of my true friends I either would contact via a regular telephone call or ordinary e-mail. This would be yet another reason why I would not want nor need a Smart Phone, because I believe firmly that e-mail belongs on e-mail servers that are secure, and designed for that purpose, not only my telephone.
Last but not least, the new Smartphones are increasingly prone to malicious attacks as are traditional computers. There are thousands of attempted infections each day on mobile phones with the numbers of attempted infections doubling every few months; as many as 1 million people were hit by mobile malware in the first half of 2011. Google Inc. has removed about 100 malicious applications from its Android Market app store. One particularly harmful app was downloaded more than 260,000 times before it was removed. Android is the world's most popular smartphone operating software with more than 135 million users worldwide. Why would I want to expose myself to this kind of junk?
No, I think I'll stick with my Plain Jane Dumb Phone. Of course your results may differ.
Dave