[Comte De St. Germain]

Real talk the only reason I still have a smart phone is because I have legitimate need for social media usage at the moment, and because I want to be able to read books without carrying them en masse with me/play Final Fantasy VI on the go .

[JayR]

Motorola Razr flip with a pay-by-the-call SIM from Tru-Phone. No monthly bill. Mine rarely comes out of the drawer except for airport pickups. I'm accessible in front of my computer all day -- when I'm out and about, I prefer to be unreachable and undistracted.

[The Beast1]

[DJ-Matt]

I paid a $5 top up when RingPlus came on the scene recently and after all the upgrades I'm at 2000 minutes / 2000 texts / 2000 MB a month for free. Had to buy a Sprint SIM for my iPhone though.

[HermeticAlly]

As someone who spent years in Japan, I'm going to point out that contrary to the high-tech wonderland image Japan projects overseas, it's actually a frightfully low-tech country. Awful heating and cooling with no insulation, fax machines still used for everything, few people using/places accepting debit or credit cards, and so on. There are definitely perks, like being able to pay for bills, buy concert tickets, and do almost anything at your local convenience store, and I also really appreciated being able to pay cash-on-delivery while I was there (side note: Japanese couriers are fantastic, speed and service absolutely flatten the US post office or UPS.) But none of these are high-tech, they're just Japanese services that are different from American ones.

The iPhone was incredibly slow to catch on in Japan. They didn't really get popular until 2013 or so, before that most people I knew still used flip phones. I wouldn't be surprised if flip phones persist a great deal longer.

[Hannibal]

If you look around, you'll find certain things can be had cheaper.

A smart phone can be hooked up to Wifi. If you're smarter than your phone, you can figure out how to use VoIP and Google Hangouts to replace a phone plan, rendering your phone service utterly free. I have looked into this extensively, however I don't live in a huge metropolitan area so there are Wifi dead zones. The phone plan is there to mitigate this.

It's a bit cumbersome, but you can use a mobile hotspot like Freedom Pop to get your "service" anywhere.

For many of my phone calls, I use Google Voice. Unsurprisingly, my "pay as much as you use plan" doesn't rack up much more than 100 minutes a month. Get fucked, Verizon.

I pay $15 a month for my smart phone plan (it's Ting); the only thing my old flip phone had over the smart phone now is that it was more durable if I dropped it (which I never, ever did). I don't know why people have such a problem with dropping their phones, small hands maybe? Too much skin moisturizer? Not sure.

I'm not a huge fan of staring at a 1 inch by 1 inch screen, nor do I enjoy attempting to text on a 9 button "keyboard".

If I were going to "go back", it would be to something that had a flip out keyboard so at least I don't have to call everybody like a senior citizen.

[WarMachine]

I don't see the fuss over iPhones. I've had many, all company phones and I would never buy one. I actually want a Motorola Razr, which I think is a classic design to compliment my Smartphone, because sometimes I just don't want to carry something with so much information on it.

If anybody wants a decent smartphone with all the features required, you needn't pay anymore than £250 sterling, so maybe $350 US. Just check Amazon.

Any more and it's a vanity thing (Not meant to be of offence to those that do have expensive handsets - just a point of order)

[hv123]

Buy your smart phone outright and then you can get a very cheap contract, but with no obligation.

[Phoenix]

(05-04-2016 08:33 PM)HermeticAlly Wrote:  

I'm going to point out that contrary to the high-tech wonderland image Japan projects overseas, it's actually a frightfully low-tech country.

Here is a 'frightfully low-tech country':


Here is Japan:

Yes, that is a bicycle robot.

Here is a Japanese train:
http://www.livescience.com/37195-japan-b...train.html

Do American trains go at 310mph?

[WarMachine]

^^ This.

The biggest thing the West doesn't want to admit is that in the tech stakes Japan is at least a decade ahead.

Look at their car technology. When the classic Nissan R34 Skyline GT-R, journalists over here dismissed it as a "computer game" and "PlayStation steering", whilst bowing down to their German car-maker overlords.

Now, 10-15 years later nobody wants to admit, that the tech standards set by the Japanese such as Active Yaw control, active steering, torque vectoring and general car intelligence were all started by this and other cars of their time. These have been noted, changed and branded as a new thing by European car makers. Even ECU engine management tuning, they have lead the way. There have been 800bhp GT-R's for well over a decade. To have that for a 2.6 litre straight six engine was unheard of outside formal big money tuners or Racing.

The R35 GTR smashed the 997 911 Turbo at the 'Ring and left people in Stuttgart scratching their heads over how something so big, heavy and some £50,000 cheaper could be that quick.

Lets not forget their complete engineering excellence on the reliability of their automotive products - there is a reason in the US they are the best sellers in certain segments (Not so here in the UK, people love the German "brands")

Don't get me started on Shinkansen.

[Valentine]

Japan: home of the "infidelity" flip phone.

Hides texts, calls and emails from certain contacts with only a subtle change in the battery icon colour or size as an indicator. Then it requires pressing a combination of keys to access them.

This definitely made me consider getting a flip phone again, though for now I'm trying to replicate with other apps.

[etwsake]

I haven't seen a Japanese person under the age of 60 with a flip phone since 2013.

[redpillage]

I still use the same phone I had in the early nineties:

[Mercenary]

[HermeticAlly]

(05-05-2016 05:40 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

Here is Japan:

Yes, that is a bicycle robot.

Do American trains go at 310mph?

To clarify, I don't mean to suggest that Japan doesn't have high-tech stuff, or develop it; clearly, they do. My point is that said high tech is rarely a part of daily life, and to take it further, has stagnated since the 1980s heyday. Yeah, the trains and heated toilet seats are really nice, but those have been around for decades.

Will these concept robots actually become a part of daily life in the near future? Maybe. I'll eat my words if they do, but the fact that Japanese houses are complete garbage and less environmentally comfortable than American houses from the 1950s makes me less than optimistic.

If the high-tech benefits anyone, it's likely the large corporations than can use it to dump more of their workforce and replace them with automation - though given how miserable most Japanese jobs are, that could be a blessing in disguise.

[SamuelBRoberts]

You seem to be talking about some other country. Are you sure you're not thinking of like, Sri Lanka or something?

For any sane definition of the word Japan is an amazingly high-tech place. The fact that some of the houses are dumps doesn't change that.

[cascadecombo]

^ I like how we get these Japan "experts" who sound like they have no idea what's really going on. Must have been out in the inaka.

[Undercover]

I remember this one Flip-Phone my friend had. The damn thing was near undestroyable. He would throw it up in air, and just abuse it in high school. The phone clearly had 9 lives.

[King of Monkeys]

I've gone through 2 smartphones already and keep going back to my flip phone. She ain't perty, but she gets the job done.

[CJ_W]

(09-19-2016 05:58 PM)HermeticAlly Wrote:  

blah blah blah

Just stop dude. Spend some more time reading the forums and less time talking.

[Suits]

(09-24-2016 12:50 AM)CJ_W Wrote:  

(09-19-2016 05:58 PM)HermeticAlly Wrote:  

blah blah blah

Just stop dude. Spend some more time reading the forums and less time talking.

I don't see anything wrong with HermeticAlly's post. I think he raises a legitimate point.

If you disagree, why not explain why?