Sunday, April 25, 2010

Ancient Phone

I am still using my absurd Nokia 3560 from 2003. In May, it will be 7 years.

I paid $150 for it, ostensibly to write apps for it, so I could learn 'mobile computing'. That didn't happen, and it might be just as well, since the mobile computing revolution didn't occur until a few 'device generations' later (it sure has exploded now).

My phone was one of the first to have a camera, and to allow access to the Web. Before the hugely popular uVerse, AT&T had an unpopular mobile program called mMode. (They are similar in name only: same marketing VP?)

Slowly, but surely, though AT&T is hacking the legs out from underneath me. I've received at least 2 letters saying that they won't support the phone anymore, and that I should upgrade and get a new contract. Yet the phone still makes calls and still does text-messaging (both are vital).

However, I could once email pics from the phone. I could browse the web (sort of). Both are now gone. The fat lady is warming up for this thing... It's almost over, but at least I got my money's worth.

Plus, I have some treasured pics and videos on there, seemingly with no way to move them. In some sense, my phone has become a curiosity in its own right. Imagine owning a tiny 'moving picture viewer' back in 1910. At parties, I am often showing photos or videos in that manner: people enjoy the pic, but are also enchanted/disturbed by the medium itself: "is that a phone?"

I can't say I love it, but I do love its quirkiness. I hope to keep it for a long time, if only to look wistfully at some of the pics and memories.

CC

2 comments:

Unknown said...

As a fellow 3650 owner, I am here to tell you that there's no reason to believe AT&T's demands for upgrade. That old Symbian device will keep on chugging for quite a while still.

You can install Opera on it for web browsing, and as long as AT&T operates its EDGE service, you should be able to move data through it. They just don't want to bother supporting it, but in practice anything that takes a SIM chip will work just fine on their network.

And, finally, you can extract all your photos from it by turning on bluetooth and pairing it with your Mac. Then, you can use Bluetooth File Exchange to pull the images down. Alternatively, you can select the images on the phone and send them to the Mac one by one with the built in Symbian photo library app.

M Easter said...

I forgot that Andy is a brother of the 3650 fraternity!

Thanks for the info! I had problems with bluetooth with my PC (which is why I gave up writing apps) but I hadn't even considered trying my Mac... very neat