The AM Forum

Can you still buy a basic cell phone with a numerical key pad and mobile telephone functions?  I need to replace mine- classic Murphy's law - at Dayton I paid $15 for a new carrying case and the very next time I tried to use the phone (about an hour later), it had crapped out.  It was pretty much an obsolete unit, an old one that my daughter had left behind when she moved out of the house.  I put a new card in it and got it working with my present service, and it did fine until the other day.  Since cell phones are pretty much throw-away items, I suppose the only realistic solution is to buy a new one.

I am not interested in something laden with feature-creep, that includes a digital camera, QWERTY keyboard, MP3 player, internet capability and a  lot of other non-telephone related crap; I just want a basic phone that I can send and receive telephone calls with, that includes a simple LCD display, caller ID, and memory that holds frequently called numbers, speed dial and missed calls list. I don't even care about text messaging, since I never use the service. I haven't shopped for a new phone yet, but my wife tells me I probably won't find one without extra (and expensive) features I don't need.

And now, the broadcast industry is lobbying the FCC to make it mandatory for all new cell phones to include an FM radio!  Ibiquity even wants it to have ®HD capability.  Just more useless crap to make a phone even more expensive and contain more extra circuitry to suck battery power and eventually crap out. And I could just imagine the brilliant audio quality a cellphone radio would have. ::)

I first heard about this a year or so ago. See link below. They claim it would be crucial in cases of emergency. I thought the idea had died, but ran across an article in the current issue of a magazine that mentioned that the lobbying effort is still alive and well, but the FCC hasn't made up its mind yet.

Looks like the commercial broadcast industry, which is steadily losing listeners because of crappy program content, is desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel.

http://radio.about.com/od/tragicevents/a/aa013109a.htm

 

Don,

Life without a cell phone is mostly good.  But, if I had to get one, I'd get a Jitterbug.  You must not be a member of AARP, for the AARP magazine has ads for Jitterbug in every issue.  Here is your future:

http://www.jitterbug.com/Phones/

As Sergeant Friday would have said, "Just the phone ma'am." 

You open it.  Key pad.  You punch a number in.  It makes a call.  It rings.  You get a call.  that's it.  No cameras, texting, games, web, videos, none of that crap.

Rob

I've seen  those ads, but I believe they sell a wireless service, not just a phone.  We already have service through AT&T.  They give my wife a discount through her employer, so she switched over to them, although I liked our old provider better. I probably wouldn't have even subscribed just for myself, but she needs mobile phone service for her work, and it wasn't too much of a hassle to add an account for me on the plan. What I need is a phone like those Jitterbugs, that I could stick the AT&T card into and make it work with our service.  I still have my original phone, but it won't work with the AT&T card, and the jitterbug phone probably wouldn't either. Seems that each company uses its own proprietary technology that isn't compatible with anyone else's.

I usually just keep the phone in the car in case I have a car crap-out or get lost or something, particularly since it is extremely hard to find a working pay phone these days, even if I happened to be carrying pocket change to operate it.  I did pack my phone round with me at Dayton to keep in touch with Gary, who shared the ride with me, and to try to locate a couple of other people who said they planned to come.

Don

Dont know what you are asking for but since I work in competition sensitive areas at Raytheon getting a cell with no camera was a must.

I ended up with a Samsung "Knack" and love it.  It was either a 'freebee' or very low price $50. Works for me

al

Don, I was in the same situation - phone crapped out, and I just wanted a basic phone.  I use T-Mobile here, mainly because the coverage is good, and I get unlimited minutes for a fair rate.  But I did not want to sign up for another two-year contract just to get a replacement phone.

Most department stores carry the inexpensive pay-as-you-go phones.  I picked up a T-Mobile phone for under $30, inserted the SIM card, and never looked back.  Simple flip-phone, with the features you listed, no extra junk.

I am aware that AT&T has a pay-as-you-go called the Go-Phone.  Look into this product, should be inexpensive, and should work fine with your card.  (Even though it is a pay-as-you-go phone, putting in your card will enable the phone to use your existing account, and you can pitch the card that comes with the phone.)  It is true you need to stick with the same company for your phone to work.  This avenue might provide a simple solution for you.

Rick

the jitterbug is what you want don. I have one, very satisfied. no stupid BS i dont want. nice big phone buttons ana operators at no charge if you need one.

I just saw on 60 Minutes that the guy who invented the first cell phone for Motorola also created the Jitterbug.    He did it to bring a basic cell phone back into the cell phone market.    From what I understand, it actually has a dial tone if you are in a service area.   That is what I am getting whenever my present basic phone's battery dies out.

They sell them at Wal-of-China Mart.  I did a web search and the only ones displayed on the site had a tiny QWERTY keyboard instead of a simple number pad.  To dial a number you have to punch one of the 10 letter keys that double as a number.  I have skinny hands and fingers, and still find it hard to press just one button on those miniature typewriter keyboards without using some kind of tool like a pencil rubber. I don't even use a QWERTY keyboard with my computer. Next time I pass by China Mart I will check to see what they actually have in stock.

My wife's phone with the first company had a GPS feature as well.  She thought that was nice - she had been thinking of purchasing a dedicated GPS unit to use in her car. Now, she wouldn't have to buy one.  But the dedicated GPS units are easy to use without distracting the driver too much, since they are designed just for that purpose.  Her phone unit required navigating through multiple menus to bring up the GPS function.  Using that thing while operating a car would be about equally distracting to trying to text-while-driving.

The main point I was trying to make with my initial message was not so much my own dilemma in finding a replacement phone, but the fact that the BC industry is now urging the FCC to force all manufacturers to include one more unrelated feature - an FM radio - in every phone they manufacture. To me, a digital camera, a cell phone and a broadcast radio are three totally different devices and I don't necessarily want them all combined in one unit.  I resent the idea of being forced to buy a combination of all three just to get basic mobile phone service.

I read somewhere that when the Jitterbug was in product development the guy in charge envisioned a basic phone that would appeal to people who had not yet gotten one (i.e. people like me).  He reportedly had to continually battle young engineers who could not conceive of anyone not wanting a zillion gadgets and features cram packed into the phone which they of course, wanted to make as teeny as possible.   He had to continually say, No, I want it BIG, I want it to do one thing, make and receive phone calls--that's it.  They thought he was nuts.

This is, IMHO, one of the big consumer product problems these days--everything electronic is designed by 22 year olds with other 22 year olds in mind.

Anyway, now I really feel old -- you guys want cell phones without gadgets and to me, the Cell Phone is a gadget.

Nooooo!

Don't get *any* phone on AT&T. They are awful, even for basic phone calls.

I had a Motorola flip-phone on T-Mobile and it performed very well, almost everywhere. My employer got a package deal on AT&T and I switched to them and a Blackberry.

Everywhere my old phone worked without issue, the AT&T phone drops calls, or calls don't go through, or the audio is wretched. Go around a hill and the AT&T phone will drop a call.

The only places where AT&T seems to work OK is in the heart of the big metro areas, get out to the sticks and kiss reliable coverage goodbye. Consumer Reports has rated the carriers, as has a number of web sites.

I have a samsung Knack also very nice simple basic phone. I also dont need or want a phone, camera, computer, radio, sprinkler, garden hose, trash can,ect
the more stuff they stuff inside the better chance it's gonna break.

Wayne
KB3RRX

SAMSUNG KNACK
(http://www.mobilewhack.com/wp-content/pics/2010/02/samsung-knack-280x280.jpg)


JITTERBUG
(http://www.xconomy.com/wordpress/wp-content/images/2009/11/Jitterbug-Phone.jpg)

The Kyocera TNT is about as simple and cheap as they come. $9.95 at Target. AND you avoid the "addled Senior Citizen" stigma associated with the JitterBug !  ;D


(http://z.about.com/d/cellphones/1/0/Z/0/-/-/kyoceratnt_virginmobile2.jpg)

We already have AT&T service.  My wife changed over because her employer gives a substantial discount with AT&T, making it a little cheaper than our former service with Verizon (which I liked better).  It only costs a few bucks a month more to add me to the account, and it's on her dime, so I can't complain.  My biggest gripe with AT&T so far is the constant pile of (paper) junk mail they keep sending trying to convince us to go with their U-Verse "bundle". After reading all the RFI reports, that's the last thing I would ever do, and I told my wife she better not dare sign up for U-Verse.

I am trying to find a simple no-crap-added phone to use with the AT&T service as it is. My daughter's old phone was a bare-bones Nokia unit made for use with Cingular, and it worked just fine with the AT&T card until it crapped out.  My old Verizon phone won't work with the AT&T card.

I am required by my employer to select a business phone from only the AT&T website. I picked the Garmin Nuvifone because it has a built in GPS and that alone is a useful tool besides a phone, and Garmin's products have good maps. By the time the "approval e-mail" has gone through, I find:

1.) the nuvifone is no linger listed
2.) anything that is not a 3G featurephone is a flip-open or slide-open design that's hard to handle (big fingers, micro telephone appliance)
3.) although I can get a 3G+++ super pimpa featurefone, they will not pay for a "data" connection, so there is no use wasting company $ on the extras of anything other than a basic phone.

What a mess. I guess I can wait a week and see what else is offered, the rotation is endless.

I can always get my own cellphone, and pay for it myself, but they won't reimburse it, probably will not alow it to be used for biz., and I personally don't need to have a cellphone and I don't want to carry two phones like the pimpa-deala down on the streetcorner.

They want HD radio in every phone because then they can claim saturation and start phasing out analog.

The multi-phones are just battery eaters that you have to recharge every other day. Basic is the best, some going a week or more without recharge.

ironic...
I want a phone with minimal voice service, I have ATT and have already dropped my voice minutes to 400 a month, I would go less but they dont allow it.
got an iphone now, first gen, just waiting to see what they are going to do with the next version.
either that or a new droid phone

Actually the old bag cell phones were not that bad.  Small market broadcasters even used them to run remotes when covering high school football games on Friday night.  Some of you all might not know it, but Friday night high school football games were manna from heaven for small town AMs.  And if you were on a tight budget, a bag phone, patch into it from a small board and a couple of mics were all you needed to get an audio feed back to the station.   When the cell phone companies suddenly started shutting down analog, some of these stations had to scramble to find another way because audio quality went to hell on digital cell phone calls.

The bag phones ran higher power.     With an external mag mount antenna their range in rural areas were much greater that the small hand-held phones.    Even with more cell sites, there are still a lot of dead spaces in the country.

yep.  I used to keep my wifes cell on the analog setting.  Instead of a drop out, you got a week signal with a bit of static, but you could still be understood.  With the digicrap, it just quits when the signal strength drops.   

The phone companies touted the transition as a great modernization for customers, when infact, the audio quality dropped into the toilet and the droped call effect got worse.  The real reason was bandwidth. They could fit 5 digital calls in the bandwidth of one analog call, which translates into more money for them.
Now we've had Cell phones for so long, no one remembers having a call with someone who sounded like they were right there with you, although a bit tinny.   I still have a land line phone in the kitchen on the wall.  A bit old fashioned, but at least I can always find it when it rings, the battery doesn't die or need recharging, and I can't get a ticket for using it while driving (er well maybe). 

I took the rotary dial wall phone from my parents house, and that one hangs in my work shop.  The kids think it's cool as hell, until they have to dial a 1+area code+number a few times ;)  .

All i have is landline.   I get cell phone calls that sound so bad I tell caller to get back to me on a real phone.  If I want to sound good I have a WE Model 302.

I think Don wants a cellphome that he plugs his SIM card into and it becomes an AT&T phone with whatever was saved in it before his last phonee broke.

Fred

Another advantage to the digital system is that the signal is automatically encrypted, at least to a certain degree.  With the old analogue phones anyone could eavesdrop on conversations with a simple scanner or FM  receiver (or even an old UHF TV set) that covered the frequency range. The best the companies could offer the customer was the illusion of privacy with that joke of a law (most likely unconstitutional), that made it "illegal" for those with receivers to listen in - yeah, right ::)!

True that Don.

I'd forgotten about that aspect.  But then We have a couple cordless phones here that are used quite a bit.  I can hear them on my lil all bander just fine. I wonder how many folks use cordless now anyway?  Or baby monitors etc.

I bet there is a hack for the Cell phone modulation somewhere.

Most cordless are 800 mHz digital now, or 1.6 gHz.

A far cry from the old 160m base unit transmitters and 49 mHz TX in the portable units.

My cordless phone is a 2.4 GHz analog motorola.   Probably one of the last analog ones.  I don't think you can even get a 900 MHz cordless phone now.  And I think they go higher than 2.4 GHz.  I think they are all digital spread spectrum now.

I had a UHF tv in grad. school in Nashville back in the late 1980s that picked up cell phone calls on the higher channels.   It was very weird and iffy to pull in a phone call but my roommate and I messed around with it a little bit for the sheer novelty before getting bored and going back to real TV. 

I have a 900 mHz spread spectrum cordless phone in the shack.  The one we have in the house is a newer 5.8 gig unit.  The old one has several times the range of the newer one.  I can take it with me all the way to the road about 100' in front of the house when checking mail or picking up the newspaper, and never lose  the signal.  With the newer one I can hardly even make it outside the house before the signal drops out.  Even inside the house when I use it upstairs and move to a position where there is metal roof between me and the base unit, I lose the connection.

Interesting. I wonder how I was picking up our new cordless phone on an HF-VHF portable reciever?  Granted I was in the same room as the base and the phone was elsewhere.   I have gotten into the phone on some occasions while operating, but not since I changed the crappy dipole for an h-loop.

Might be cool to check it out with a spectrum analyzer and see what's what.

Some of those old 900 Mhz cordless phones were kick ass. My neighbor used to have one that let him run his lawnmower 3000 feet from the house down the runway to his mailbox out by the road and stay connected the whole time. The 2.4 Ghz unit he got to replace it was junk in comparison. We used a brand called EnGenius that makes 900 mhz long range phones for some of our apps around the school.

Here on campus, we have a major issue with 2.4 and 5.8 Ghz cordless phones bought by individuals and departments messing with the WiFi installations across campus. I'm in the middle of purging a building now of those phones. Some of them frequency hop and basically take up the entire ISM band whenever they are in use, or if the phone line tied to them is active ,like someone is on the paralleled extension, even if the handset is not in use. Every WiFi connection for 100 feet goes off line when they are on. Nasty! Fortunately the DECT6.0 standard puts them on 1.9 Ghz in their own playground. But convincing people to switch or not buy the wrong (cheap) ones in the first place is a never ending process.

Me, I like the phones with features. I have an HTC Ozone now which is ok, but doesn't run the windows mobile apps like they told me it would. That's one of the maddening things about buying a cell phone to me. You have to get information from reviews, the salesdroids in the store will tell you anything it takes to get you to buy the phone. "Yes it does that. Yes you can transfer your contacts easily" etc. And then you get it home and half of that turns out not to be so. In the case of the Ozone transferring contact from my Palm was so maddening I never did do it. And it won't run any of my old windows mobile apps like the PSK31 app. I swear I never have an interaction with the Verizon store that doesn't leave me storming out cussing under my breath.  >:(

Might go with an Android based phone next time or maybe an IPhone if they ever get on the Verizon network. But I always evaluate the RF performance of the phone first by reviews and even some testing when I first get them. I operate in some fringe areas and a substandard phone will not cut it. That's also the reason I stay with Verizon, nobody else has rural coverage like they do. I too miss the bag analog phones for some applications.

Here at Telos, where we make the hybrids that most broadcasters use, for the last year or two, we have been getting several calls per week (and increasing) complaining that the on-air quality is very poor.   When I explain that many of those calls are from cell phones, the customer asks "Can't your products clean up the audio?".

I got a call from a producer at a network based in LA that had complaints from a nationally syndicated personality complaining that one of the calls that "sounded bad" was from a cell phone from a listener driving down an LA freeway!  "Can't your products clean up the audio?".

Many times, the audio quality/distortion/noise is so bad that you can't recognize who is calling.  And whoever came up with the idea to include the "comfort tone" (that whooshing noise that occasionally appears when you are listening to the incoming call), needs to be forcefully reprogrammed.

And, lately, I have been experiencing the majority of cell phone calls in half duplex.   The old analog desktop speakerphone boxes from decades ago were much better than the service being foisted on us now.   If it wasn't for being required to have a fancy phone for work, I'd not have anything but a copper wired home phone.  The radios would give me all the communication I need to do wireless.

73
Ted  W8IXY



 

That's what is wrong with my cell phone. I can hear the correspondent perfectly, but all he hears from my end is a whooshing noise that roughly keeps time with my voice.  The first time it happened, the person I called though I was pranking with him.  Then when I got home I called my landline number and heard what it sounded like.

Yep, I had a 900 MHz Uniden analog phone I loved because the handset was like a real handset.  It had an ear cup and was comfortable to use.

That phone could get out.  I had the base just sitting in my house where the phone line terminates but a few times I took the handset out in my car and drove around to see how far I could go before loosing dial tone.  I found I could get all the way to the other end of the Fox River bridge with it and still hear my base.  That's probably at least a half mile from my house.  I finally had to quit using it when I could no longer get the replacement battery.   I briefly considered doing a mod to the base and connecting it to a feedline to a discone antenna outside but since I had no need for it I didn't.

There are these high powered cordless phones made overseas that operate down around 100 to 200 MHz and the base transmits with around 50 watts and they are supposed to have about 30 mile range.  Illegal in the U.S. obviously.

Don, We have 2 cell phones from AT&T that are pay as you go.They don't have have anything but phone/text.Works great for us.....Lee,N2UDF.

Ted,  I'm waiting for some host to tell listeners to not call if they are on a cell phone but it ain't gonna happen.   As I said somewhere else, I only have a copper land line partly for what has become quality audio (my how the bar has fallen).  I listen to a car repair show and some listeners are so compressed and shrill that it is painful to listen to them. 

Rob

Sounds like a Go-Phone.  I was told that all I would have to do would be to replace the card that came with the phone with the one that's in my phone now and it will work.  I haven't checked them out yet, but I want one with a numerical key pad, not one of those miniature typewriter keyboards, and the only ones I saw displayed on the website were the latter. Next time I get to Wal 'o China-Mart or similar store, I'll see what they have. It isn't an urgent issue with me.  I mostly use the phone in the car, and I think I have taken a grand total of two excursions in the car since I got back from Dayton.

Ted,  I'm waiting for some host to tell listeners to not call if they are on a cell phone but it ain't gonna happen.   As I said somewhere else, I only have a copper land line partly for what has become quality audio (my how the bar has fallen).  I listen to a car repair show and some listeners are so compressed and shrill that it is painful to listen to them.

Rob


Hi Rob,

What happens at many networks, is that when the calls are screened, the producer doesn't accept sub standard sounding calls.  I get calls from radio stations asking why the networks all seem to have higher quality calls than their station does.  Both the network and the individual stations use exactly the same equipment, but its hard for them to comprehend why the hybrids can't "compensate" for sub standard sounding calls.

Few stations have competent engineers any more (if they have an engineer at all), and the PD and/or GM gets on and wonders why his station's calls don't sound as good as calls to Dr. Laura.   

You can ride in a Rolls Royce or a Bentley, but if the road you travel is rougher than a newly plowed cornfield, the ride is still going to be bumpy.

THE PROMISE OF DIGITAL!

73
Ted  W8IXY

" THE PROMISE OF DIGITAL! "

We don't care, We dont have to. We're The a phone company.

I have used, with reasonable success, ATT cellphones on T-Mobile. They require that the phones be unlocked. Motorola's charge a fee for this. But then the unlocked phones can be used on any service that has the same specs and ATT & T-Mobile are the same digital flavors.

Finally getting a new cellphone for work. I ordered the most basic one with the largest keys. No annoyances and no fruity rings, I hope.