static-site-pipeline/hugo/content/posts/2013-11-07-my-quest-for-a-new-phone.md

---
lastmod: "2021-09-12T22:47:44.0000000+01:00"
author: patrick
categories:
- uncategorized
comments: true
date: "2013-11-07T00:00:00Z"
aliases:
- /uncategorized/my-quest-for-a-new-phone/
- /my-quest-for-a-new-phone/
title: My quest for a new phone
---
*This post is unfinished, and may never be finished - I have decided that the Nexus 5 is sufficiently cheap, nice-looking and future-proof to outweigh the boredom of continuing the research here, especially given that such research by necessity has a very short lifespan. I am one of those people who hates shopping with a fiery passion.*

My current phone is a five-year-old [Nokia 1680]. It has recently developed a disturbing tendency to turn off when I'm not watching it.
This puts me in the market for a new phone. Having looked over the Internet for guides to which phone to buy, I've become lost in the swamp of information, so I am using this post to order my thoughts.

# My current phone usage

I use my phone pretty rarely. It has a camera, but I have only used it once ever (and that picture was so blurry that it doesn't really count). It has a colour screen, which I would happily forgo if it made the battery life better. The battery lasts about a week between charges at my current usage level. I have made about five calls on it in the past year, and sent a few hundred texts. The £20 of credit I gave it about four months ago is now down to £2.50, but I used it unusually often to make calls (four of the five calls I mentioned were in that period). The phone can connect to the Internet, but I have never used it thusly, because interacting with web pages would be too painful on that screen and with those buttons. My current tariff is pay-as-you-go, with Tesco Mobile, on a plan that doesn't seem to exist any more (4p per text, and some unspecified amount for calls).

# Projected phone usage

I have two main options available.

*   Buy a dumbphone
*   Buy a smartphone.

These options greatly affect the way I would use the phone. For a dumbphone, I would use it much as I use my current phone: for rare calls and for less-rare texts. For a smartphone, I would branch out considerably, into using it for calendar syncing, to-do lists, GPS/maps/directions, on-the-go information, computation and so forth. I would not use it for games (because they are simply a waste of time that I could be using to [become more awesome][2], and because they aren't fun anyway). I don't see myself using it as a camera, either. I will not be installing social media apps on a smartphone, because I hate it when people use them in front of me, and because I categorically do not want to become one of these people who incessantly posts about what food they had this morning. I reserve public self-broadcasting platforms for those things which I think could be important or interesting to many people (and I amend the "what-I-post" category in response to feedback), or which I'm proud of having created, and it's much harder to find/make these things on a phone screen than on a computer with keyboard and big screen.

# Requirements for a dumbphone

*   Cheap - I do not want to spend more than £50 on a dumbphone
*   Long battery life
*   No need for a camera or a colour screen - [eInk] sounds ideal
*   No need for Internet access

# Requirements for a smartphone

*   Calendar syncing (I could host a [CalDAV] server on this website, so interoperability should be easy)
*   To-do list syncing (I have switched to [Workflowy] for to-do lists, and that can be accessed in-browser, so it only needs a web browser)
*   Preferably maps/GPS
*   Smooth user experience (I want to feel like I'm controlling [JARVIS])
*   Cheaper is better -  I do not want to spend more than £400 on a smartphone
*   Preferably [libre][7] and more preferably secure/NSA-proof, although this is not paramount
*   At least a four-inch screen, preferably larger (up to a maximum of six inches)

# Dumbphone research

It would appear that very few purely eInk phones have ever been created. There are a few dual-screen [LCD and eInk phones][8], but they are primarily smartphones; what I want from eInk is more like a [Kindle] turned into a phone. The [eInk page on phones][10] demonstrates three phones, but they are either dual-screen or truly dreadful ([as in][11], only [two lines of text][12] can appear on the screen at once). It looks like eInk is a no-go.

I am reduced to looking for dumbphones without a camera, colour screen or Internet access.

# Smartphone research

## Operating system

There are two main OSs in use: [Android] and [iOS]. I say this because [Windows Phone] OS is ugly enough to flout the JARVIS requirement, and [Blackberry] phones… hmm. My cached thoughts on Blackberry phones run along the lines of "don't like them, uncool" more than anything else. I find myself generating excuses not to include them in this list, even though I don't actually know much about them. Better put them in.

### iOS

The only phone devices which run iOS are Apple's iPhones. With an education discount, the only model I can buy new within my £400 limit is the [iPhone 4S] (at £349). This model has access to [Siri] (the Apple personal assistant).

Apple offers a "[refurbished and clearance][19]" store, but they do not offer iPhones through this.

### Android

Android phones are very widely available. Because there is such a huge choice of phones already, I will make the simplifying assumption that I only want a phone which runs [Android 4.4 "KitKat"][KitKat] (the latest version of Android, as of this writing).

### Blackberry

It turns out that only two Blackberry phones have full-size touchscreens. The JARVIS criterion is failed for screens which are too small to fit reasonable amounts of text on, which leaves only the [Z30][21] and [Z10][22]. However, from what [I've seen][23], the Blackberry OS is kind of uglier than Android or iOS. For the sake of simplifying the discussion, I will go with my cached self and rule out Blackberry.

 [Nokia 1680]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1680_classic "Nokia 1680 Wikipedia page"
 [2]: http://lesswrong.com/lw/iri/how_to_become_a_1000_year_old_vampire/ "Thousand year old vampire LessWrong page"
 [eInk]: http://www.eink.com "eInk"
 [calDAV]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalDAV "CalDAV Wikipedia page"
 [Workflowy]: https://workflowy.com "Workflowy"
 [JARVIS]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D156TfHpE1Q "JARVIS Youtube video"
 [7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratis_versus_libre "Free-as-in-freedom Wikipedia page"
 [8]: http://gizmodo.com/5967746/this-dual-lcd-and-e-ink-phone-will-be-available-in-2013 "LCD/eInk phone example"
 [Kindle]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle "Amazon Kindle"
 [10]: http://web.archive.org/web/20130718152515/http://www.eink.com/customer_showcase_cell_phones.html "eInk phones showcase"
 [11]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone "Motofone eInk phone"
 [12]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motofone_f3#Display_technology "Motofone F3 Wikipedia page"
 [Android]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_OS "Android Wikipedia page"
 [iOS]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS "iOS Wikipedia page"
 [Windows Phone]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Phone_8 "Windows Phone Wikipedia page"
 [Blackberry]: http://uk.blackberry.com/smartphones.html "Blackberry phone"
 [iPhone 4S]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iphone_4s "iPhone 4S Wikipedia page"
 [Siri]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri "Siri Wikipedia page"
 [19]: http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/specialdeals "Apple Refurbished store"
 [KitKat]: https://www.android.com/kitkat/ "Android KitKat"
 [21]: http://uk.blackberry.com/smartphones/blackberry-z30.html "Blackberry Z30"
 [22]: http://uk.blackberry.com/smartphones/blackberry-z10 "Blackberry Z10"
 [23]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyjMVJ3ISDQ "Blackberry Z30 Youtube video"