My first phone was a dumb phone
I had my first phone when I was in 6th grade (elementary school), in those years (around 2012) a kid having their own cellphone was common but noy very common, at least not everyone had one in my group. It's crazy how kids nowadays have a cellphone so young, they don't even start talking when some parents lend their phones or a tablet to them and I don't think that's good. Giving that kind of stimulus at such short age can't do good, but I won't get in that topic here. Today I was thinking about my first phone and I wanted to talk about that.
Smartphones already existed in 2012, it were popular, but as a child in elementary school my parents didn't consider that I need it one. I needed a phone to communicate with them: call and send messages, nothing more, nothing less, so they bought me a dumb phone. I really didn't care, we had a PC at home and I could use internet, game and listen to music there. Later they got me a tablet, but I only used it at home for reading or watching YouTube, I didn't play much, I've never been a gamer.
For me, my small and basic phone was enough, it served its purpose.
When I moved to middle school I started to use my phone more. Sometimes I had free time because some teacher wouldn't show up so I'll be alone in a bench just waiting for the time to pass, I'd do the same at the end of school waiting for my parents to go pick me up. Those times would eventually bore me so I decided to download some music, pass the music to a SD card laying around at home and put it on my phone. My phone then acted also as my mp3 player. It was simple but a tedious process and honestly? I was just happy I could listen to music. The battery would last quite a while, it's impressive now that I think how much I listened music on it.
I think it was in second year of middle school were WhatsApp started to be really popular here, all kids around me had it and our classroom had a group for news and stuff. At the time I only had a Facebook account (that I barely used it) and because I had a dumb phone I didn't even consider to have WhatsApp, but I needed it to join to the group. My solution was to use it on my tablet. Again, I didn't have any problems with that because I didn't need to check it all the time. In a way, my phone kept me away from social media.
In the same year I fell in love with literature and like with music I started to use my phone for that. I couldn't use internet at all there but it had a e-book reader, it was a very simple app and it was a tiny screen but it didn't stopped me to read books there. I had to use a very specific old format for e-books but it worked, it was my other kind of entertainment on breaks at school.
At some point I felt that everyone was moving up in technology, I was stuck in time but I was fine because with that phone I could do everything that I needed at the time: listen to music, read, call and send messages. It didn't bother me, I never thought in replacing it even though It wasn't the most convenient thing.
I used this phone for 5 years but like all tech, it stopped working, one day just stop turning on. It was sad of course, I was used to use it every day and change it felt uncomfortable. Because I was in my second year of high school my parents now bought me a smartphone but nothing changed much, I didn't really used my phone more than before. I had a better camera, I could use internet and download apps, but I used my phone for the same things: music, calls and texts. I did moved WhatsApp to my phone instead of using it on my tablet and also started to use Spotify. When I was at home I left my phone forgotten and used the PC as always, maybe it was an habit I developed thanks to my dumb phone?
Till this day I don't use my phone much, I have some games but I don't game often, I have WhatsApp but I only used it for when I was in school and in rare occasions to message family. I have a pretty good smartphone now, I got it after my high school one died and the only purpose I bought one with good specifications was for development (I wanted to learn mobile dev). Also, a smartphone nowadays makes me feel a little bit more safe because I can share my location to my parents for example, although it's a bless and a curse as all the data that recollected can be use for a bad purpose. If I could find a better security alternative I'd change to a dumb phone right away.
It's nice to have a good quality camera, but I'll prefer to have a real camera. It's nice that I can watch a movie or YouTube there but I prefer do that on my TV or laptop. It's nice that I can send a sticker on WhatsApp but I can send a emoji like this (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶) text through SMS too.
My smartphone is all in one, but really all I needed was three in one like my dumb phone used to be.
Thanks for reading (●'◡'●)
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