This post is a breakaway from my usual audio-related topics.
I have been toying with the idea of taking up one of those challenges where you switch to a dumb-phone for a fixed period, usually a week. Imagine what it would be like to not receive a notification for hours at a stretch! I carry a basic Nokia phone as my backup device buy never used it as my primary phone.
So the quest began.
Choosing a phone
I tried switching to a feature phone a few years ago. That phase lasted barely a few days because it couldn’t sync my contacts of about 2,000 entries. Besides, I don’t see myself as the kind of person who writes down phone numbers in a pocket diary and carry it around. Hence, I had one criteria – the dumb-phone should sync with my phone book. I also like the idea of knowing who’s calling me. In fact, not knowing who is on line is even considered rude today.
Most feature phones don’t automatically sync contacts, and these can manually accept only upto 200 contact entries. The only feature phone that fit my criteria of syncing contacts was the Punkt MP01.
But wait before you order it. The phone costs approximately USD 340, which is about INR 22,500! For a basic phone that does nothing but make calls and receive text messages, it seems like a satirical take on the situation. There’s no way I would put that kind of money down for a little experiment.
Finding the perfect dumb-phone was a failed mission.
Rahul Samuel 