![\"i-15da54d4572074bcb4443cf32c53a58b-onebar.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/467\/files\/2012\/04\/i-15da54d4572074bcb4443cf32c53a58b-onebar.jpg\")
My parents are in the Caribbean at the moment, and threatened to send me cell-phone pictures of white beaches and blue water. They were thwarted in this by the fact that I still have a cheap LG flip phone with no camera. Our calls from home are exclusively made using a landline phone.<\/p>\n
You can see the reason why in the picture at right. This was taken in our living room the other night, and as you can see, we get barely one bar worth of signal in the house. This is fairly typical– there are a few spots in the house where it rises to two bars, but an intermittent “no signal” is fairly common. On the rare occasions when an incoming call actually manages to make my phone ring, I have to go outside to take it, because the reception is so bad. Most of the time, it just goes to voice mail.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In fact, this is fairly typical of our whole neighborhood. I get no reception in the Niskayuna Co-Op, or at the gas station next door. And a series of spot checks while walking Emmy this morning never found anything above two bars.<\/p>\n
So that’s why I don’t have a fancier phone: in the places where I spend most of my time, it would be essentially useless to me. I’d still have to pay for landline service in the house, but I’d need to be shelling out more for a cell-phone plan to support a better phone. Unless a newer phone is somehow magically able to make good connections through crappy signal, it would be a waste of money.<\/p>\n
Also, if you see that smarmy guy from the Verizon commercials anywhere, punch him right in the face for me, will you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My parents are in the Caribbean at the moment, and threatened to send me cell-phone pictures of white beaches and blue water. They were thwarted in this by the fact that I still have a cheap LG flip phone with no camera. Our calls from home are exclusively made using a landline phone. You can… Continue reading Why I Don’t Have a Smart Phone<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}