General Chat

I have had a little PPI claim when I was not expecting anything so I have been looking for the mobile phone of my dreams that fulfils all I ask of it.

Today I have picked it up from Argos.

It makes and receives calls and the same with texts, it has proper buttons and the snake game on it.

All this for £17.39.

It is a torch as well but I doubt I will ever use that.

What more could you ask of a phone? If I am lucky it will go "ring, ring" as well and not play music.

Much like mine, then, though 3 times more expensive! :-D
Though, mine doesn't have 'snakes' on it (my Nokia did), I have 2 games I can pay for - after 5 free goes (I only found that out tonight - when I wondered if I had any games!) :-D :-D
I have use the torch, when I couldn't find my torch :-D

Over the next two or three years 3G will be phased out. However 2G will remain.
Some service providers have already stopped new 3G activations.

:-D :-D :-D@ Sharron

I am lucky as I inherited my granddaughter's iPhone (4G) earlier this year. It is the second one she has passed to me. Previously I have been given phones from my children and OH when they bought the latest ones. It is a long time since I bought my own and I've only ever bought two, the first was well before I retired so probably the 1990s - and certainly it was nothing nothing swish (Days of Cable and Wireless and my first computer was the same).

Poor Gran is getting used to cast-offs but it's great and it saves my pennies.

:-D :-D :-D

What is a 3G?

I wonder if I will have used it by the time it is phased out and I have wasted all that money.

Don't suppose so.

Waste yer money, Sharron, you can't take it with you. :-0

5G(eneration) on the way so I'm just going to wait for the next cast-off. :-D

(what might have been called 1G, analog cellphones, has been switched off )
2G - second generation
3G - third generation
4G - fourth generation
5G - fifth generation

Current generation is 5G - which will overtake 4G by 2011. 4G and earlier phones cannot be upgraded to 5G.

Fewer than 10% of users are still on 3G. The service providers dislike 3G because it needs a lot of bandwidth compared to 4G/5G and is unprofitable. However 3G, which uses lower radio frequencies, is the best bet for rural areas as the distance between masts is fairly generous. 4G and especially 5G use much higher frequencies so such things as video on the go become possible. Along with that 5G requires a totally different mast strategy with "intelligent" access points fairly close together. If the row with Huwei is not resolved then UK/EU rollout of 5G will be delayed for a year and cost more.

Those who have 3G phones will find that they will still work for voice telephony (2G) but nothing else. It will not be possible to make new activations with 3G phones including used phones, bin ends etc. with most providers ceasing service by 2022 if not before. Sooner if 5G/Huwei is sorted out.

The end of 3G will also see the end of "burner phones" which often star in TV police dramas. Evading detection and identification with 5G is a very challenging thing to do. No SIM.

HF (high frequency) digital radio telephony is a great technology for communications in areas of high density population i.e. cities and especially Asian cities such as Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong, NYC, central London. It is the pits for rural areas though some ISPs, notably Virgin, are looking at various solutions. As ever who pays?

5G is far, far more than just an improvement on using WhatsApp. It will be embedded in all sorts of devices which are part of everyday life. Some will like it others will hate it nobody will be able to evade or ignore it.

Don't forget that the venerable BT phone system will be switched off by 2025 and replaced with a virtual network running over the internet. This has already happened in Australia.

Can't say I understand much of that but I only want to talk on my phone about once every year or so.

I knew you'd come up with the goods, Rollo. I wish you'd been around when I had homework to do ... but you probably weren't even born then, or you may have been just a young sprog. :-D

He would not have been able to look it up on Google then, he would have had to resort to the Arthur Mees like the rest of us.

Telecomnms is what I do for a living of sorts.
Very little of what you need to know can be Googled.

Did you make it up then?

"Things have developed so that almost no one understands science and technology. We might get away with it for a while but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

Carl Sagan

Of course, if it is not readily available information, you could state anything and nobody would could check on it's authenticity. As if.

I was lucky as well Joylouise, I was given my IPhone which is 4G by my daughter who wished to drag me kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

I don't use it now but I still have a Nokia on the shelf and also a small Samsung, which was just a phone I just used it for texts as with my hearing problem I have problems hearing people on the phone. I like it because it was small and fitted nicely into handbags etc.

so is my wifes' nokia 3220 going in the bin soon?

don't panic as I said you have two or three years for the "features" and it will make voice calls for ever and a day.
https://tinyurl.com/yyu85u2t

I think we're safe, Sharron - all we can do on ours is phone or text. :-D

....although you may not be able to play 'snake' in the future....

Thanks for that Rollo. I'm getting left behind as I have an old 3G PAYG which I aught to change soon as it is about 10 years old! I just wish there was more straightforward information available. It seems that updates of all kinds assume you have and understand the previous version, when in fact it is the version before that that you have and mostly understand.