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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.

  • in reply to Cinnabar_wing

    Thanks folks, my nearest support people are in Manchester so not so easy to reach if something goes wrong.

    I wondered about having a smart phone just for banking apps, mine and Mums as all our banks are shutting down and those that remain don't seem to do anything. It wouldn't leave the house, we'd continue to use our old phone for normal stuff. But I'm afraid I'd forget how to use the different apps, passwords etc, Mum can't use the doro clam shell stupid phone we've got now, so her money would be safe, mostly from her.

    We have a landline if people need us and mobiles aren't working, I think most people would just assume that I was somewhere with no signal if they couldn't get hold of me, mind you the signal in Manchester's pretty bad too.

    I don't want something that's going to sync up or try and sync up with every other device in the house, I think that was what went wrong a few weeks ago when nearly all my stuff disapeared.

  • This may or may not be useful… 

    I am somewhat competent at IT but probably slightly below average for someone from the UK of my age (mid 40s) - mainly because I am unmotivated to learn because it doesn’t catch my interest to learn more about IT. I need it a bit for work but mostly my job is person rather than computer based. 

    Typically I just want to get the thing I need to done without too much flapping around.

    I used to use android phones and computers but I have switched everything over to apple gradually because when I got my first apple devise I felt it was easier to use. If there was something I didn’t know how to do, it felt maybe 40% easier to work out how to do it myself  in apple devises as opposed to android. 

    With PCs and android smart phones I realise I always had this feeling there were things lurking in the background that I didn’t understand. Of course there are, by design, lots of things lurking in Apple devises and any computer that I don’t understand, in the hardware and the software - but something about the Apple user interface makes me blissfully unaware of this  - like a really good show at the theatre where you never notice the light effects but still they enrich your experience of the play without you thinking about it -  this never happens to me, I constantly notice the lights moving and changing - but apple devises for me are like a really good theatre show I can watch with the illusion it’s seamless and effortlessly functional. But I suppose other people’s experiences will vary considerably. 

    I may be remembering wrong and perhaps they have changed but I feel like android phones had 100s of menus of settings and options that I felt may need attention and learning about but which I didn’t have the energy to learn about and they were not ordered intuitively for me. I don’t have that feeling anymore, with Apple, that there is something “lurking”. 

    The advise on the apple website (you can search for a thing you want to do on apple phone) is, I find, easy to use. I also sometimes take my phone or computer to the Apple Store and the staff there are various levels of overjoyed and delighted to be asked to help. Having said that it is a bit of a cult or something…. But I am a signed up Apple cult member I’m afraid. 

    Disclaimer; No AI was used in any capacity in the writing of this post. Furthermore no humans (or AI) were harmed or exploited in the construction of this post. Please excuse grammar and readability errors as I am not a massive data glob. 

    P.S. I’m working on a new email footer and disclaimer to denote that I don’t use AI - just trying it out here …. Ho ho 

  • in reply to Cinnabar_wing

    That's good advice from   as a family member can guide you click by click if you have the same device.

  • Do you know anyone else in real life with a smart phone? The best advice is getting something that someone can help you with -if family have apple phones, or android, get the same. 

    I think for you, it's not so much getting the best of anything, but the fact it works like theirs. Nothing worse than family trying to call you and it not working as you have a completely different system!

    (Or if people here will be your tech support on how to use it, go with that!)

  • I would be very happy to give you any help I can but I’m out of touch with smartphones other than Apple’s iPhone. If you decided on an iPhone I would be happy to help. I would have to ask you to be gentle with me too though.

    iPhone’s are more ‘intuitive’ (simpler and more straightforward) than other types of smartphone. They are considered more secure from malicious attacks and they continue to update old old iPhones for longer than some other types.

    I’m on my way out now but I can suggest some things for you to consider and reject/accept tomorrow if it would help. Perhaps somebody more knowledgeable than I will help in the meantime.