{"id":3158,"date":"2021-02-22T22:11:05","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T06:11:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=3158"},"modified":"2021-02-22T22:11:06","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T06:11:06","slug":"first-impressions-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=3158","title":{"rendered":"first impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

…the truly ironic thing is that the only thing it really needs that it doesn\u2019t have, at this point, is WhatsApp. Just because managing a group chat is so much easier without SMS, and for better or worse, WhatsApp \u2013 not Signal, not iMessage, not Facebook Messenger, certainly not any Google product \u2013 has become the de factouniversal mobile messaging solution. Cross-platform, international, and it would be nice \u2013 but not utterly essential, thanks to the cunning use of Google Voice in a pinch. And then there\u2019s Instagram\u2026but then that\u2019s opening the door to everything else too. The ironic thing is that Facebook owns both WhatsApp and Instagram, has largely left them alone, has managed not to screw them up \u2013 but it\u2019s Facebook that has a built-in icon on the 3310, not its superior subsidiaries.<\/em><\/p>\n

Honestly, this is all driven by the Irish experience. What apps did I legit <\/span><\/em>need<\/em>in Ireland? Maps, certainly, but that\u2019s fair enough when you\u2019re in a new town every night. WhatsApp to communicate with the traveling party. Instagram for people back in America to see how things were going. And really, that was about it. Almost no place took Apple Pay. There was precious little to be gained by checking email or RSS, it was just as easy to walk out and stick up your arm for a cab as to use any sort of ride-hailing app, and while using Swarm to check in was handy to create a record of where I\u2019d been, it was a little superfluous with the pictures being tagged.<\/em><\/p>\n

The moral of this story is simple: if you\u2019re not really going anywhere and not socializing, then what is the point in having a device on you that\u2019s just going to steamroll you with all the stuff you\u2019re trying to get away from? <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

-oct 25, 2017<\/p>\n

Well, they only went and did it. The Nokia 6300 4G patches most of the holes in the 3310 3G. LTE, for more future-proofing three years on. An actual app framework that includes Google Maps and WhatsApp clients. The ability to tether a device or use the phone as a WiFi hotspot. The principal drawbacks are a camera reduced to VGA, not even 2MP, barely suitable for snapping a QR code – and of course the fact that the Highway 101 Axis of Evil is one of the things you’re trying to get away from.<\/p>\n

But it’s not utterly without use. There’s a very good Wikipedia app, for one thing, and a more serviceable media player. You might even use it for lo-fi relaxation videos on YouTube, and since it’s based on KaiOS with its roots in Firefox, it kicks the shit out of the proxy browser solution that was largely unchanged in the past dozen years when the 3310 landed. If you were dropped in Ireland with this one – assuming the LTE bands cover Europe, which is doubtful – you might not post on Insta, but you could navigate the streets and the group chat equally well.<\/p>\n

But this isn’t a phone for going abroad. This is a phone for use as a wireless hotspot on the train to Santa Barbara – assuming I can make it work reliably. Between the eccentricities of an MVNO and the virtually nonexistent documentation on the device itself, it’s been hard to sustain a connection more than a couple of minutes. There might be some experimentation with that throughout the week, but on the face of it, you might as well order temp service on the eSIM in the iPhone and call it square – or better yet, in my case, maybe just try to work on the iPhone full stop.<\/p>\n

Because the iPhone really is my whole life right now, the only device with all the email accounts, all the calendars, all the Slack instances and chat apps and the like. Not a single byte of code on it from Google, Facebook, or Amazon, either, and it’s my device free and clear. And I’m even blogging on it right now. There’s no doubt this would be the travel phone abroad, when abroad is real again.<\/p>\n

I guess the Nokia is an artifact of another life, same as ever: the dream phone from the autumn of 2006. Something to call Zachary’s from to order the pizza as Marshawn Lynch gives way to Justin Forsett running over PAC-10 foes, something to carry up to O’Neill’s or down to O’Flaherty’s as the quest for a new pub begins, something to check LiveJournal on in a pinch, something for the era when there were things to do in the wider world besides get groceries and collect takeout.<\/p>\n

Maybe I’m just trying to will that world back out of the black hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…the truly ironic thing is that the only thing it really needs that it doesn\u2019t have, at this point, is WhatsApp. Just because managing a group chat is so much easier without SMS, and for better or worse, WhatsApp \u2013 not Signal, not iMessage, not Facebook Messenger, certainly not any Google product \u2013 has become … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “first impressions”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}