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I'm thinking I may have to get a smart phone

TheCatWoman

Please be gentle with me and try and explain in the language you'd use to someone who'd come 100 years into the future.

What would you recomend as a starter smart phone for someone like me who can crash a digital egg timer?

I know there are two types, apple and android and apple is more expensive although some find them easier to use.

I did have a smart phone once for a few weeks, but couldn't get on with it, I don't think it was set right as the screen kept going black whilst I was looking for things like settings and I never worked out how to answe a call on it as the screen was black and gave me no hints at all and it's connectivity was so bad I only had to be a couple of hundred yards away from the A55 for it to be useless. That was a few years ago now and I think conectivity has improved.

If I'm honest I don't want one for myself, but because it's becoming so hard not to have one now, I don't think I'd want it to do much, just calls texts and maybe whatsapp and a satnav. Later I suppose I'll have to have a banking and car park app too, but I think thats about it. I know previously when I asked a friend for help she freaked out because there was so little on it.

Apart from emails, a little shopping and here I don't really used the internet for anything else, I have a kindle and thats my lot, I don't even stream tv or music, to be honest I wouldn't know where to begin with either of them. I'm quite happy for it to be second hand, given the price of the things and how much I'd use one I don't think I could justify the cost of a new one. I'm not fussed about cameras or anything like that.

Thanks in advance for any help, but I'll understand if nobody wants to give any because I'm such a klutz and my understanding is so low, people often ask me "helpful questions" and they go right over my head. I may chicken out again, if it gets too technical or people get cross.

Parents

  • I have a cheap Motorola g06 which I got last year (£70) as well as a Sony Xperia which I got second hand.

    The Motorola and Sony ones just tend to come with "stock" Android, with no "rubbish" added in, so they are quite easy to get started with. You will have to take some time to set them up and learn how to operate them as it may not be obvious if you are not familiar with it.

    e.g. - 

    To make a phone call, you have to press the phone button, then press the keypad button, before you can dial.

    They will try and get you to set up a finger print or PIN number which it will ask for every time you press the button to wake it up. You may want to do this for security, but if not, you can switch it off and then its much less hassle.

    There is some odd combination of buttons you have to press to switch the phone off, but you can change this so its just a case of "hold down the big button on the side for a few seconds".

    You can change things like the font size, colour scheme, ring tone, etc, to suit your preferences.

    With Android you can get apps from where-ever you like (with Apple you are forced to use their App Store). I use F-Droid, which is mostly open source software which does what it says on the tin and doesn't require you to sign your life away to Google in order to use it.

    The Motorola g06 is very low end hardware wise, but I just have it set up as a telephone, music player and web browser, and it does these very well. The sound quality on phone calls is very good. If you switch off mobile data and close any apps, and just leave it switched on but not doing anything, the battery will last well over two weeks.

    I've found the key really is to set them up in a way that you find usable, then to not get overwhelmed by apps. e.g. If you just want it as a music player, its probably no good having it full of supermarket apps, taxi apps, delivery apps and goodness knows what else. Just stick to what you need.

  • in reply to mp500

    Forgot to mention, the Motorolas don't come with a user guide (just a little quick start guide), but you can download a very extensive printable PDF manual from their website.

  • in reply to mp500

    I'm not very good at reading the destructions tha come with stuff, I rarely understand them and they always seem to want you to do stuff like facebook as a first option.

    I'll see where we get to with it all, I don't know when the kids are coming down and if they'll be here long enough to show me what to do. One of the probem I have is certain types of information get transfered straight to my long term memory without ever staying in my short term memory, so there are no synaptic links, therefore although I know I've done C&P loads of times, I still can't remember how to do it and every time is like the first, repition dosen't seem to help either, much to the frustration of everyone around me, they rarely seem to think it's frustrating for me and htat I'm not doing it on purpose.

    Does anything come with destructions these days? Everything's supposed to be intuitive, which it might be if you've had every model since the begining which I didn't because of living somewhere with no signal for 9 years, right through the time smart phones were coming out.

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  • in reply to mp500

    I'm not very good at reading the destructions tha come with stuff, I rarely understand them and they always seem to want you to do stuff like facebook as a first option.

    I'll see where we get to with it all, I don't know when the kids are coming down and if they'll be here long enough to show me what to do. One of the probem I have is certain types of information get transfered straight to my long term memory without ever staying in my short term memory, so there are no synaptic links, therefore although I know I've done C&P loads of times, I still can't remember how to do it and every time is like the first, repition dosen't seem to help either, much to the frustration of everyone around me, they rarely seem to think it's frustrating for me and htat I'm not doing it on purpose.

    Does anything come with destructions these days? Everything's supposed to be intuitive, which it might be if you've had every model since the begining which I didn't because of living somewhere with no signal for 9 years, right through the time smart phones were coming out.

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