Cellular luddite

I freely admit I am a bit of a luddite when it comes to cell phones. I am not apologetic. I have worked in technology related fields for almost three decades, and I appreciate many of the new innovations. But that does not mean I need most of them.

My current cell phone is a Motorola V600. Has to be getting close to five years old now, and it does all I need at present, which is not much. And it fill all my requirements for a cell phone, which are a bit more stringent than most folks I know. Here is my list of requirments:

1. GSM – The world is GSM.  Outside of the U. S. CDMA technology deployments are sparse (even Darrel Issa’s [same man who brought California the gubernatorial recall in 2003] thinly veiled attempt to get the U.S. to build a CDMA network in Iraq because GSM was ‘French’ was widely ridiculed as creating a cellular island in a GSM sea).   If you want a phone that will travel the world it has to be GSM.   Even places where CDMA had a foothold are pulling back as Qualcomm twists arms for higher licensing fees.
2. Quad band – The U. S. always has to be different.  The world (outside of North America)  runs GSM on the 900 and 1800 MHz bands, the U. S. uses the 850 and 1900 MHz bands.   Canadians follow the U. S. for obvious reasons.  For a GSM phone to really work around the world it must be quad band.
3. Unlocked – Locking a phone to particular carriers network is crazy.  It came about due the carriers subsidizing the phones and wanting to make sure that the customer used their network, only.   But it locks the customer to unreasonable, in my opinion, restrictions.  If I take my phone to Europe, and stay locked to my U. S. provider’s network, I can expect to pay exorbitant fees for all incoming and outgoing phone calls.  Last time we were in Europe the cost was $2.00/minute.  That call had better be important if I am paying $0.03333/second of connect time!  It is so easy, and much cheaper, to have an alternative SIM on another carrier and pay as I go.  And many of them have free incoming calling plans.  We have travelled with TeleItalia, Orange, and Amena SIMs in the past, now I have a more ride-ranging pay-as-I-go SIM that is UK based.   And the very worst case scenario is being locked to AT&T’s network.  By far the worst customer service outfit in the world, hands down.   And I won’t even go into their political contributions.
4. Batteries that can be replaced by the customer – too crazy to put something that will die inside a device and then tell the consumer they cannot open the device to replace it.  I always travel with a spare battery for my phone … just in case.  Try to find and Apple store in the Alps to get your iPhone battery replaced.

The is an even longer list of features I do not need.  A camera is ’so-what’ feature I can take or leave.  MP3 player?  Forget it.  Corporate e-mail connectivity?  A minus in my book.   I can connect to ‘open’ IMAP4/POP3 mail servers from my old Motorola if/when I want to, but the ‘open’ generally obviates corporate systems.  And that is fine with me.  The 4 GPS’s I own are all better than any in even the newest cell phones.  Web browsing is sometimes useful, but it is not a make or break for me, and the old Motorola can even do some of that.

So you will not find me out looking for that new whiz-bang phone anytime soon.   I am comfortable with my luddite status.