Torture by phone

Well not quite but getting there. Wife bought a new Samsung phone yesterday and hands it to me to transfer the sim from her old one to the new one. After 15 minutes of fiddling I found where the sim is supposed to go but cannot see any way of it fitting. Ok ..... A younger friend told me to automatically transfer one to another via blue tooth and the network. Needless to say, after 3 hours or so of attempting to do that we are no closer to making this instrument of torture remotely functional. Worse still, we cannot turn off the stupid voice assistant who keeps telling us to do things we do not understand with buttons we cannot access or even see. :mad:

I know there are lots of folk here of a similar age. Is this something you delegate to kids or grand kids or do you get the guy in the store to set it all up for you?

I have the store personnel do it. It's their job.

arent these new fandangled electronic devices weve got just wonderful???

I finally, in complete trepidation, privately bought a Blackberry Key2, as no Canadian provider will sell me one. I want this phone because it is the only phone currently available with a physical keyboard, and the 'famous' Blackberry security. Then, I attempted to transfer it to a new service provider that said it wouldn't work on their network (the new provider bought out another company that did sell the Key2 to its customers. The new owners said their 'new software' wouldn't accept it). The experiment worked, and I'm typing this out on the Key2 and using the new provider's network.

Transferring data from the Blackberry OS to the modified Android OS was (and remains) a challenge. I am stil trying to figure out the way the new phone is integrating my Outlook messaging and Gmail messaging, and the now-combined Contacts lists (which used to be separately manageable). Because Android and Google are integrated beyond belief, even the Blackberry security options that you can use, if you want, are hobbled, as the phone disables some apps, without the permissions, or the apps start nagging the crap out of you to turn the permissions on.

Phones are no longer even remotely easy to use or own, and are your own personal data spy devoted to broadcasting your every move and action, whether you want them to, or not.

A college degree might make them understandable. They won't be your friend, ever.

Just watched this video, last night:

Youtube.com - Edward Snowden: How Your Cell Phone Spies on You

Don't watch this if you want to remain blissfully ignorant! Really.

I already knew a lot of this, but the history of how legal ownership of personal data came to be corporate and not private was eye-opening. That governments are completely complicit in data collection, and are not protecting consumers, is not a surprise.

Wife had lunch with a younger person today and came home with phone all sorted. :clap:

I think they should sell these things with a free pimply 17 year old with every purchase. ;)

:cheezy: That is why I still use my 12 year old Samsung flip phone.
I just want a phone. Got a PC & Tablet for all the other internet stuff!:thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by OldGuy59

Just watched this video, last night:

Youtube.com - Edward Snowden: How Your Cell Phone Spies on You

Don't watch this if you want to remain blissfully ignorant! Really.

I already knew a lot of this, but the history of how legal ownership of personal data came to be corporate and not private was eye-opening. That governments are completely complicit in data collection, and are not protecting consumers, is not a surprise.

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well i for one, welcome our new technocratic overlords! (thought bubble {now why did i say that? whats going on?})

I'm convinced that whoever writes code for these damn things is a sadist--over the weekend Google just pushed out a series of patches that completely killed the storage space on my phone even with me having dumped ever third-party app and spiked as much of the bloatware as I could root out long ago.

Between Google and Verizon... *insert "choke the living #### out of somebody" emoticon here*

To wrap up the thread: All that happens when WWI pilots try to handle modern XXI century phones.

Point of reference for me is my 10 yr old grandson!!! "what do you mean you don't understand Bamps " :lol:

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Originally Posted by tikkifriend

Point of reference for me is my 10 yr old grandson!!! "what do you mean you don't understand Bamps " :lol:

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HaHaHa! ;)

I can so relate to that one. My 6 year old grandson grabs my phone whenever he comes over and downloads games he wants through Google Play and he plays with them for hours! They know everything at that age. I guess it would be too late to enter one in the running for the US elections? :confused: