Is there a flip-phone made with full keyboard

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 11:25:17 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

On 5/16/19 10:58 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 May 2019 10:20:15 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 5/16/19 8:57 AM, trader4@optonline.net wrote:
On Wednesday, May 15, 2019 at 6:53:35 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 5/15/19 6:12 PM, Unlisted wrote:
Is there a flip-phone made with full keyboard?

I'm elderly.
I do NOT want a smartphone. In fact I tried one and hated it. I went
back to my easy to use flip phone. My only complaint is that I send a
lot of texts, and typing on the flip-phone is a pain. Literally, my
wrist gets sore from hitting keys 4 times just to get the letter "S".

There must be something made thats halfway between a smartphone and a
flipphone.

If I had my way, it would have a full keyboard, large screen, big
letters, but be without all the unnecessary crap on the smartphones.

Smartphones are for kids, not old people.


Seems an odd tradeoff to me, doing a lot of texts and suffering with a
flip-phone. What was so objectionable about an Android or iPhone?
Just because there are apps and features on it, doesn't mean you have
to use them. You could have someone set it up for you to remove as
many apps as possible, turn off notifications from those apps that
you can't remove, etc. But I bet if you gave it a fair shot, you'd find
you'd use things like maps, web browser and email. But if you don't use
the apps, it pretty much behaves like a phone with texting. And for texts
and even phone calls, the directory, call log, etc, it's a much better
than a flip-phone.


Touch-screen keyboards are very difficult for some seniors to use
accurately. My late father (passed last year at 91) like the idea of
smartphones and tablets and apps plenty but just didn't have the manual
dexterity to get most capacitive touch screen devices to do what he
wanted without accidentally bumping some other key or icon than he
intended, frustrating experience.

His favorite compromise device for about a year before he passed was the
Amazon Alexa; it had very good voice-to-text algorithm and could place
calls and look stuff up on the Internet just by talking to it

I have a brilliant idea: instead of texting, invent a phone that can
accept and reproduce voice messages!

I should patent that. It would save everyone so much time, and reduce
traffic deaths.


Texting is asynchronous and it's my (for the moment uncited,
un-substantiated hypothesis) that when at a distance humans naturally
prefer, psychologically, asynchronous half-duplex communication over
synchronous full-duplex.

The telegraph was slow. The telephone was an extremely popular
improvement but only because at the time it was the only faster option
than the telegraph. The instant wireless telegraph has replaced the
telephone to a large degree among younger people because they like it
better, psychologically, than the telephone.

The tech to make the video-phone as common as the telephone existed for
decades before Skype and the Internet became commonplace, it didn't
catch on because nobody really wanted it, to be always put "on the spot"
like that every time you wanted to have a conversation at a distance.

That last part was proven by Andy Grove at Intel. He poured a whole lot
of money down the video conferencing rat hole. At the time, you also
needed an ISDN line or better to support it, which few had and it was
another obstacle. The idea was you could have
a spreadsheet open on Excel and be discussing it and making changes
together via a video call on your PC. The only problem was, while
people were initially intrigued, for whatever reasons, like you say,
people just didn't want to be doing video calls, they didn't think it
added that much. The ProShare was an epic fail. I guess today with
apps like Facetime some people are at least doing some personal video calls,
but not me, that's for sure. I guess Andy should have paid more attention
to what people really wanted and were buying, cell phones.

 

[bitrex]

On 5/16/19 12:36 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 5/16/19 12:27 PM, Tom Del Rosso wrote:
bitrex wrote:

The tech to make the video-phone as common as the telephone existed
for decades before Skype and the Internet became commonplace, it
didn't catch on because nobody really wanted it, to be always put "on
the spot" like that every time you wanted to have a conversation at a
distance.

AT&T had salesmen 100 years ago whose job was to convince people to get
a phone.  One guy was very good at it so they asked him,

"What do you say to people?"

"I tell them they'll be able to talk to their neighbors in their bed
clothes."

(And I heard that from the engineer who designed the first video call.)




Or: "You know a lot of good-looking dames love to use the telephone, yeah?"

Design your "app" so the dames love it. The men will follow. I guarantee it

Hello, my baby

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRWlbX92B3I>

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/05/2019 17:03, trader4@optonline.net wrote:

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 11:25:17 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 5/16/19 10:58 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 May 2019 10:20:15 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 5/16/19 8:57 AM, trader4@optonline.net wrote:
On Wednesday, May 15, 2019 at 6:53:35 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 5/15/19 6:12 PM, Unlisted wrote:
Is there a flip-phone made with full keyboard?

I'm elderly.
I do NOT want a smartphone. In fact I tried one and hated it. I went
back to my easy to use flip phone. My only complaint is that I send a
lot of texts, and typing on the flip-phone is a pain. Literally, my
wrist gets sore from hitting keys 4 times just to get the letter "S".

There must be something made thats halfway between a smartphone and a
flipphone.

If I had my way, it would have a full keyboard, large screen, big
letters, but be without all the unnecessary crap on the smartphones.

Smartphones are for kids, not old people.


Seems an odd tradeoff to me, doing a lot of texts and suffering with a
flip-phone. What was so objectionable about an Android or iPhone?
Just because there are apps and features on it, doesn't mean you have
to use them. You could have someone set it up for you to remove as
many apps as possible, turn off notifications from those apps that
you can't remove, etc. But I bet if you gave it a fair shot, you'd find
you'd use things like maps, web browser and email. But if you don't use
the apps, it pretty much behaves like a phone with texting. And for texts
and even phone calls, the directory, call log, etc, it's a much better
than a flip-phone.


Touch-screen keyboards are very difficult for some seniors to use
accurately. My late father (passed last year at 91) like the idea of
smartphones and tablets and apps plenty but just didn't have the manual
dexterity to get most capacitive touch screen devices to do what he
wanted without accidentally bumping some other key or icon than he
intended, frustrating experience.

His favorite compromise device for about a year before he passed was the
Amazon Alexa; it had very good voice-to-text algorithm and could place
calls and look stuff up on the Internet just by talking to it

I have a brilliant idea: instead of texting, invent a phone that can
accept and reproduce voice messages!

I should patent that. It would save everyone so much time, and reduce
traffic deaths.


Texting is asynchronous and it's my (for the moment uncited,
un-substantiated hypothesis) that when at a distance humans naturally
prefer, psychologically, asynchronous half-duplex communication over
synchronous full-duplex.

The telegraph was slow. The telephone was an extremely popular
improvement but only because at the time it was the only faster option
than the telegraph. The instant wireless telegraph has replaced the
telephone to a large degree among younger people because they like it
better, psychologically, than the telephone.

The tech to make the video-phone as common as the telephone existed for
decades before Skype and the Internet became commonplace, it didn't
catch on because nobody really wanted it, to be always put "on the spot"
like that every time you wanted to have a conversation at a distance.

That last part was proven by Andy Grove at Intel. He poured a whole lot
of money down the video conferencing rat hole. At the time, you also
needed an ISDN line or better to support it, which few had and it was

So did BT & NTT in the 1990's although it would work over ordinary POTS
and with a special codec chip you could actually watch NHK Sumo wresting
over a dialup line - it was obviously a bit jerky on fast moves but for
a talking head it was fine. I was at some of the field tests.

Big snag was the dedicated handsets for it (one at each end) were
ludicrously expensive at the time. It was intended to appeal to the
expat community wanting video calls home. It worked from a technical
point of view locally but struggled on satellite links. They never got
the price point anything like close to what the market would stand.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Martin Brown]

On 16/05/2019 17:38, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:25:05 -0400, legg <legg@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 07:56:21 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

Simple solution is don't text. It's a nasty habit.

It's dirt cheap, potentially unambiguous, less intrusive and
encourages brevity.

RL

What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

Text is good for quick info transfer like when & where to meet.
What to pick up on the way home. That sort of thing.

Important enough to send but not requiring an immediate response.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

torsdag den 16. maj 2019 kl. 19.05.37 UTC+2 skrev Martin Brown:

On 16/05/2019 17:38, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:25:05 -0400, legg <legg@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 07:56:21 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

Simple solution is don't text. It's a nasty habit.

It's dirt cheap, potentially unambiguous, less intrusive and
encourages brevity.

RL

What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

Text is good for quick info transfer like when & where to meet.
What to pick up on the way home. That sort of thing.

Important enough to send but not requiring an immediate response.

and when in doubt you can go back and check that text from a week ago
to see what time it was you agreed to meet

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 16 May 2019 09:38:13 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

>What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

The success of any technical innovation is determined by the ways it
can be abused and misused. I would say that SMS messaging is quite
successful.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

I don't like texting because it takes too much work to send a reply or
message on a 12 button dumb-phone keypad. If I must send a text
message, it will usually be through one of the email -> SMS message
gateways:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway>

To keep things sane, I tell people that if they want an immediate
response from me, and for some reason voice is not an option (such as
a lousy signal or a high background noise area), then feel free to
send me a text message. However, if the reply can be delayed, or the
message is an image, photo, PDF, or document, which are unreadable on
a dumb-phones tiny screen, I prefer email. It seems to work for me
and limits my text messages to maybe one or two per week.

Drive: The worst abusers of SMS messaging originate from users who
have discovered that they can use a smartphone speech to text feature
to compose a message, and then don't bother cleaning up the result.
Decoding the resulting gibberish is possible, but does take some
effort. Text to speech messages that have been processed by a
spelling checker are worse. The spelling is all correct, but the
message makes no sense. Can't win.



--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Mike Coon]

In article <1mepdepcgfsc3o2up7cv4hvrr27se6m9v4@4ax.com>,
jeffl@cruzio.com says...

I'm 71 and have never bothered to grow up.

I'm pushing 76 and starting to understand the concept of "second
childhood" when the number of teeth, head hairs (but not nose or ears)
and brain cells decrease again...

Mike.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:27:16 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
<fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

bitrex wrote:

The tech to make the video-phone as common as the telephone existed
for decades before Skype and the Internet became commonplace, it
didn't catch on because nobody really wanted it, to be always put "on
the spot" like that every time you wanted to have a conversation at a
distance.

Ever see what video looks like crammed into a 3KHz wide POTS pipe? I
suspect that the very high cost, lack of video quality, garbled audio
due to compression, lack of color video, and the requirement for at
least a DS0 (56Kbits/sec) or ISDN data connection to make it work,
might have assisted in the initial failure of the video-phone.

"Debut of the First Picturephone (1970) - AT&T Archives"
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMnlKMFD8M> (5:15)
Around the launch, the Bell System projected that by
1975 there would be a hundred thousand Picturephones
in the national network. But the huge costs drove away
businesses customers, and by July 1974, the Pittsburgh
market had only 5 subscribed Picturephones on the network.
Nationwide, there were merely hundreds, primarily located
in Chicago, which had followed the 1970 Pittsburgh launch.

AT&T had salesmen 100 years ago whose job was to convince people to get
a phone. One guy was very good at it so they asked him,

"What do you say to people?"

"I tell them they'll be able to talk to their neighbors in their bed
clothes."

(And I heard that from the engineer who designed the first video call.)

Yep. There's a bit more to the story. Up until about 1800, people
slept in two or more periods, usually called first and second sleep.
Lots of stuff on the web explaining how it worked:
<https://www.google.com/search?q=second+sleep>
That worked quite well for those who worked at home, such as in
agrarian communities. The practice fell out of favor as the world
slowly industrialized where it was impractical to return home half way
through the work day. In the US, the industrial north-east abandoned
the practice in favor of a single 8 hour sleep, while the rural areas
continued the practice up through about WWI (1918). The time spent
between two 4 hr sleep periods was spent socializing sometimes by
visiting the neighbors. These visits were somewhat dangerous as cheap
portable electric lightning hadn't been invented and portable gas
lighting was dangerous. What the telephone offered to rural customers
was a way to visit the neighbors between first and second sleep
without the hazards of walking in the dark.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 3:16:44 PM UTC-4, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 09:38:13 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

The success of any technical innovation is determined by the ways it
can be abused and misused. I would say that SMS messaging is quite
successful.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

I don't like texting because it takes too much work to send a reply or
message on a 12 button dumb-phone keypad. If I must send a text
message, it will usually be through one of the email -> SMS message
gateways:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway

To keep things sane, I tell people that if they want an immediate
response from me, and for some reason voice is not an option (such as
a lousy signal or a high background noise area), then feel free to
send me a text message. However, if the reply can be delayed, or the
message is an image, photo, PDF, or document, which are unreadable on
a dumb-phones tiny screen, I prefer email. It seems to work for me
and limits my text messages to maybe one or two per week.

Drive: The worst abusers of SMS messaging originate from users who
have discovered that they can use a smartphone speech to text feature
to compose a message, and then don't bother cleaning up the result.
Decoding the resulting gibberish is possible, but does take some
effort. Text to speech messages that have been processed by a
spelling checker are worse. The spelling is all correct, but the
message makes no sense. Can't win.

That's just crappy technology. My google phone does great with the voice to text, better than my Tesla. I just wish I could use the phone voice commands in the car.

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 2:02:27 PM UTC-4, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:

torsdag den 16. maj 2019 kl. 19.05.37 UTC+2 skrev Martin Brown:
On 16/05/2019 17:38, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:25:05 -0400, legg <legg@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 07:56:21 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

Simple solution is don't text. It's a nasty habit.

It's dirt cheap, potentially unambiguous, less intrusive and
encourages brevity.

RL

What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

Text is good for quick info transfer like when & where to meet.
What to pick up on the way home. That sort of thing.

Important enough to send but not requiring an immediate response.


and when in doubt you can go back and check that text from a week ago
to see what time it was you agreed to meet

That's the kind of thing I prefer email for since it provides a permanent record. Great for business. Texts are harder to search, organize and archive.

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 1:05:37 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 16/05/2019 17:38, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:25:05 -0400, legg <legg@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 07:56:21 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

Simple solution is don't text. It's a nasty habit.

It's dirt cheap, potentially unambiguous, less intrusive and
encourages brevity.

RL

What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

Text is good for quick info transfer like when & where to meet.
What to pick up on the way home. That sort of thing.

Important enough to send but not requiring an immediate response.

It's not just what you are saying that determines the utility of the text, it's the need to have an exchange. Voice mail is more clumsy than a text and the person has to answer to have a phone call. With a text you can speak it into the phone, hit send and boom, you are done. So much easier than a phone call.

--

Rick C.

--+ Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 12:57:58 PM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 16/05/2019 17:03, trader4@optonline.net wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 11:25:17 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 5/16/19 10:58 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 May 2019 10:20:15 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 5/16/19 8:57 AM, trader4@optonline.net wrote:
On Wednesday, May 15, 2019 at 6:53:35 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 5/15/19 6:12 PM, Unlisted wrote:
Is there a flip-phone made with full keyboard?

I'm elderly.
I do NOT want a smartphone. In fact I tried one and hated it. I went
back to my easy to use flip phone. My only complaint is that I send a
lot of texts, and typing on the flip-phone is a pain. Literally, my
wrist gets sore from hitting keys 4 times just to get the letter "S".

There must be something made thats halfway between a smartphone and a
flipphone.

If I had my way, it would have a full keyboard, large screen, big
letters, but be without all the unnecessary crap on the smartphones.

Smartphones are for kids, not old people.


Seems an odd tradeoff to me, doing a lot of texts and suffering with a
flip-phone. What was so objectionable about an Android or iPhone?
Just because there are apps and features on it, doesn't mean you have
to use them. You could have someone set it up for you to remove as
many apps as possible, turn off notifications from those apps that
you can't remove, etc. But I bet if you gave it a fair shot, you'd find
you'd use things like maps, web browser and email. But if you don't use
the apps, it pretty much behaves like a phone with texting. And for texts
and even phone calls, the directory, call log, etc, it's a much better
than a flip-phone.


Touch-screen keyboards are very difficult for some seniors to use
accurately. My late father (passed last year at 91) like the idea of
smartphones and tablets and apps plenty but just didn't have the manual
dexterity to get most capacitive touch screen devices to do what he
wanted without accidentally bumping some other key or icon than he
intended, frustrating experience.

His favorite compromise device for about a year before he passed was the
Amazon Alexa; it had very good voice-to-text algorithm and could place
calls and look stuff up on the Internet just by talking to it

I have a brilliant idea: instead of texting, invent a phone that can
accept and reproduce voice messages!

I should patent that. It would save everyone so much time, and reduce
traffic deaths.


Texting is asynchronous and it's my (for the moment uncited,
un-substantiated hypothesis) that when at a distance humans naturally
prefer, psychologically, asynchronous half-duplex communication over
synchronous full-duplex.

The telegraph was slow. The telephone was an extremely popular
improvement but only because at the time it was the only faster option
than the telegraph. The instant wireless telegraph has replaced the
telephone to a large degree among younger people because they like it
better, psychologically, than the telephone.

The tech to make the video-phone as common as the telephone existed for
decades before Skype and the Internet became commonplace, it didn't
catch on because nobody really wanted it, to be always put "on the spot"
like that every time you wanted to have a conversation at a distance.

That last part was proven by Andy Grove at Intel. He poured a whole lot
of money down the video conferencing rat hole. At the time, you also
needed an ISDN line or better to support it, which few had and it was

So did BT & NTT in the 1990's although it would work over ordinary POTS
and with a special codec chip you could actually watch NHK Sumo wresting
over a dialup line - it was obviously a bit jerky on fast moves but for
a talking head it was fine. I was at some of the field tests.

Big snag was the dedicated handsets for it (one at each end) were
ludicrously expensive at the time. It was intended to appeal to the
expat community wanting video calls home. It worked from a technical
point of view locally but struggled on satellite links. They never got
the price point anything like close to what the market would stand.

It would have never worked on my phone line in the 90's. I couldn't even get fast dialup. Seems in the 70's instead of digging up the street to add copper pairs, the phone company used multiplexers to turn three pairs into 10 or so. This prevents faster modems from ever working and most likely the video you are talking about. Seems the phone company's high tech solution wasn't compatible with the new high tech.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 12:38:21 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:25:05 -0400, legg <legg@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 07:56:21 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

On Wed, 15 May 2019 17:12:37 -0500, Unlisted <unlisted@nomail.com
wrote:

Is there a flip-phone made with full keyboard?

I'm elderly.
I do NOT want a smartphone. In fact I tried one and hated it. I went
back to my easy to use flip phone. My only complaint is that I send a
lot of texts, and typing on the flip-phone is a pain. Literally, my
wrist gets sore from hitting keys 4 times just to get the letter "S".

There must be something made thats halfway between a smartphone and a
flipphone.

If I had my way, it would have a full keyboard, large screen, big
letters, but be without all the unnecessary crap on the smartphones.

Smartphones are for kids, not old people.

I have a flip phone. It makes calls and gets calls, average about one
per day.

Simple solution is don't text. It's a nasty habit.

It's dirt cheap, potentially unambiguous, less intrusive and
encourages brevity.

RL

What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

I can see clear evidence that JL does not believe in evolution. Not only that, he doesn't participate either.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 12:03:21 PM UTC-4, tra...@optonline.net wrote:

That last part was proven by Andy Grove at Intel. He poured a whole lot
of money down the video conferencing rat hole. At the time, you also
needed an ISDN line or better to support it, which few had and it was
another obstacle. The idea was you could have
a spreadsheet open on Excel and be discussing it and making changes
together via a video call on your PC. The only problem was, while
people were initially intrigued, for whatever reasons, like you say,
people just didn't want to be doing video calls, they didn't think it
added that much. The ProShare was an epic fail. I guess today with
apps like Facetime some people are at least doing some personal video calls,
but not me, that's for sure. I guess Andy should have paid more attention
to what people really wanted and were buying, cell phones.

People love talking face to face. But that's still a far cry from a video phone. That's why it's not popular, it's not a lot better than a phone call. The times I've seen it used is when calling people you don't see very often or when calling groups like families with kids. Even then it's a poor substitute for visiting.

--

Rick C.

+- Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 11:25:17 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:

Texting is asynchronous and it's my (for the moment uncited,
un-substantiated hypothesis) that when at a distance humans naturally
prefer, psychologically, asynchronous half-duplex communication over
synchronous full-duplex.

The telegraph was slow. The telephone was an extremely popular
improvement but only because at the time it was the only faster option
than the telegraph. The instant wireless telegraph has replaced the
telephone to a large degree among younger people because they like it
better, psychologically, than the telephone.

The tech to make the video-phone as common as the telephone existed for
decades before Skype and the Internet became commonplace, it didn't
catch on because nobody really wanted it, to be always put "on the spot"
like that every time you wanted to have a conversation at a distance.

I don't think your idea of preference is completely accurate. In reality there is a purpose for both phone and text. I have a much younger friend (in the age group where you say they prefer text). He calls during his commute because he just wants to talk for entertainment. If he were on a train he wouldn't be texting, he'd sell be calling.

--

Rick C.

-- Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 11:07:11 AM UTC-4, tra...@optonline.net wrote:

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 10:56:29 AM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 15 May 2019 17:12:37 -0500, Unlisted <unlisted@nomail.com
wrote:

Is there a flip-phone made with full keyboard?

I'm elderly.
I do NOT want a smartphone. In fact I tried one and hated it. I went
back to my easy to use flip phone. My only complaint is that I send a
lot of texts, and typing on the flip-phone is a pain. Literally, my
wrist gets sore from hitting keys 4 times just to get the letter "S".

There must be something made thats halfway between a smartphone and a
flipphone.

If I had my way, it would have a full keyboard, large screen, big
letters, but be without all the unnecessary crap on the smartphones.

Smartphones are for kids, not old people.

I have a flip phone. It makes calls and gets calls, average about one
per day.

Simple solution is don't text. It's a nasty habit.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

lunatic fringe electronics

If someone wants to give you an address or just say they will be 15 mins
late, seems to me a text is way better. Also, if it's something where
there is benefit to it being documented, you have evidence of what you
asked and their reply. And texts arrive while you're driving, I can
then see it at any time by just picking up the phone and looking, like
when a light. Can't do that with a phone call. I can sent the same
text to a group of people. You can certainly abuse
texts to the point they get annoying, but used properly, I find them
very valuable.

Uh, I can take phone calls while I drive. I can also retrieve phone messages although I haven't had to. It is texts I can't do while I drive. The smart phone requires button presses to send the text even if I can get Google to write it for me and the phone interface in the car isn't listening in a way I can even talk to the phone. Maybe Apple has a better phone interface, don't know.

The smart phone is much better in the car than the flip phone. Literally, the only reason I keep the flip is because it is on a provider with better coverage.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

fredag den 17. maj 2019 kl. 00.22.17 UTC+2 skrev Rick C:

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 2:02:27 PM UTC-4, Lasse Langwadt Christensen wrote:
torsdag den 16. maj 2019 kl. 19.05.37 UTC+2 skrev Martin Brown:
On 16/05/2019 17:38, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:25:05 -0400, legg <legg@nospam.magma.ca> wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 07:56:21 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highlandtechnology.com> wrote:

Simple solution is don't text. It's a nasty habit.

It's dirt cheap, potentially unambiguous, less intrusive and
encourages brevity.

RL

What it seems to encourage is 24/7 social chat.

Email is better than texting, or phone calls, or meetings for
resolving and documenting technical stuff.

Text is good for quick info transfer like when & where to meet.
What to pick up on the way home. That sort of thing.

Important enough to send but not requiring an immediate response.


and when in doubt you can go back and check that text from a week ago
to see what time it was you agreed to meet

That's the kind of thing I prefer email for since it provides a permanent record. Great for business. Texts are harder to search, organize and archive.

I'm not talking business meetings, more like meet at the pub before a
game/concert/whatever, Joe's having a barbecue, John needs help moving
something heavy

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 5/16/19 9:52 AM, trader4@optonline.net wrote:

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 9:12:01 AM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 8:57:17 AM UTC-4, tra...@optonline.net wrote:
On Wednesday, May 15, 2019 at 6:53:35 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
On 5/15/19 6:12 PM, Unlisted wrote:
Is there a flip-phone made with full keyboard?

I'm elderly.
I do NOT want a smartphone. In fact I tried one and hated it. I went
back to my easy to use flip phone. My only complaint is that I send a
lot of texts, and typing on the flip-phone is a pain. Literally, my
wrist gets sore from hitting keys 4 times just to get the letter "S".

There must be something made thats halfway between a smartphone and a
flipphone.

If I had my way, it would have a full keyboard, large screen, big
letters, but be without all the unnecessary crap on the smartphones..

Smartphones are for kids, not old people.


Seems an odd tradeoff to me, doing a lot of texts and suffering with a
flip-phone. What was so objectionable about an Android or iPhone?
Just because there are apps and features on it, doesn't mean you have
to use them. You could have someone set it up for you to remove as
many apps as possible, turn off notifications from those apps that
you can't remove, etc. But I bet if you gave it a fair shot, you'd find
you'd use things like maps, web browser and email. But if you don't use
the apps, it pretty much behaves like a phone with texting. And for texts
and even phone calls, the directory, call log, etc, it's a much better
than a flip-phone.

I have to admit I was a cell phone Ludite for a long time. I finally got one so I could have a phone that actually works when I'm at a home that has no cell service but has Internet access. A Google phone only costs me about $27 a month and I'm paying $15 a month for the phone (two years I think) and insurance. The phone is such an improvement over the flip phone. It takes some getting used to not having keys and there is a learning curve, but no worse than updating your windows version. Then there are the many improvements over a flip phone without adding apps. Texts are actually readable, voice commands (maybe that's an app) and being able to use wifi for phone calls! I would get rid of the flip phone, but it has better coverage so I'll keep it a while to see what Google does going forward.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 5,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

I agree. Main apps I use on my Android are web browser, news, maps, mail
and text. The alarm clock and calendar too, but less. And then there
are plenty of other apps I put on there that I use even less frequently.
Visual voicemail is cool too, where you can see a list of voicemails
waiting and pic which, if any, you want to listen to. You don't have
to wade through 3 to get to the one you really want. I use hotspot to
connect my notebook sometimes too.
But just some of that core set, I'd think most people would like if they
gave it a fair shot. Part of that could be having someone get it set up
and configured for you.

I've been sticking with the Blackberry Classic for the past 4-1/2 years.
I have a couple of spares, so as long as T-Mobile supports it, I
should be in good shape.

My hands are much too large to type on a virtual keyboard.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[bitrex]

On 5/16/19 3:52 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Thu, 16 May 2019 12:27:16 -0400, "Tom Del Rosso"
fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

bitrex wrote:

The tech to make the video-phone as common as the telephone existed
for decades before Skype and the Internet became commonplace, it
didn't catch on because nobody really wanted it, to be always put "on
the spot" like that every time you wanted to have a conversation at a
distance.

Ever see what video looks like crammed into a 3KHz wide POTS pipe? I
suspect that the very high cost, lack of video quality, garbled audio
due to compression, lack of color video, and the requirement for at
least a DS0 (56Kbits/sec) or ISDN data connection to make it work,
might have assisted in the initial failure of the video-phone.

"Debut of the First Picturephone (1970) - AT&T Archives"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMnlKMFD8M> (5:15)
Around the launch, the Bell System projected that by
1975 there would be a hundred thousand Picturephones
in the national network. But the huge costs drove away
businesses customers, and by July 1974, the Pittsburgh
market had only 5 subscribed Picturephones on the network.
Nationwide, there were merely hundreds, primarily located
in Chicago, which had followed the 1970 Pittsburgh launch.

Ya but the telephone wasn't cheap when it was first introduced, and the
quality of early telephones wasn't good either (you had to shout!) But
they still sold a lot and the tech rapidly improved.

I guess you can view it as either a technology failure or a market
failure. The technology surely existed in 1985 to make a lil desktop
home video-phone with a CRT that had good video quality, maybe even run
dedicated cable for them, and if the demand had been there it probably
would have happened. My contention is that the demand for such a product
wasn't anywhere near as high as for the telephone or the telegraph,
originally. So it had to wait until the infrastructure caught up instead
of the reverse.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

On Thu, 16 May 2019 22:39:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

I've been sticking with the Blackberry Classic for the past 4-1/2 years.
I have a couple of spares, so as long as T-Mobile supports it, I
should be in good shape.
My hands are much too large to type on a virtual keyboard.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs

That's a common problem. I suggest you try a finger stylus:
<https://www.google.com/search?q=finger+stylus&tbm=isch>
or maybe one of the pen type styluses. There are different types for
capacitive and conductive screens. I use a stylus with a rubber tip
when I need to type more than a few characters:
<https://www.ebay.com/itm/233098413382>

Like any good idea, there's always someone who takes it to an extreme:
"Finger-Nose touchscreen stylus looks silly, but is actually pretty
practical"
<https://www.geek.com/gadgets/finger-nose-touchscreen-stylus-looks-silly-but-is-actually-pretty-practical-1357423/>
Sigh...

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558