The grumpy thread

[michiel]

Those huge megabucks campers (and caravans) are beyond me too... if you want the comfort of home, why not stay home!?

[Guest]

I've always had an uneasy relationship with mobile phones - I cracked it when I figured out that the best thing to do is only reveal to an absolute tiny minority of people that you have one - that has worked great. Anyway, it has become fairly important lately that I have one.

 

 

So a few weeks back my old Sony Z7 finally knackered itself up due to an aerial-related incident which resulted in me having to craft a new one out of a big paperclip and loads of rubber-bands (bit like a coathanger aerial on an old motor), which worked well enough that I could bash out texts on it, but ultimately wasn't fit for making phone calls on anymore. Plus it was beginning to crash quite often so I think it was on its last legs anyway.

 

 

In the meantime, I've been kindly lent a Samsung U600. To give it some credit, it's a neat device - lots of features, means I can take a picture of some rubbish old car and set it as the wallpaper. All very slick. Not a single non-musical ringtone though - where's my ring ring, eh? Poor. And the ergonomics aren't great, it's a very fiddly thing, I'm constantly nearly phoning people up by accident. Awkward.

 

So the ultimate conclusion is that these "new" phones can still shove it, I want a jogdial-based old Sony as they're the height of ergonomics and usability, plus I can continue playing Blackjack against that bloke with the waistcoat/bow-tie combo who goes "BET". Preferably a flip one. I don't mind the non-flip ones, but I like the meaty snap noise when you flip them shut to end a call, feels like the caller has been crushed to death inside the phone. Which is good if you've just called a motor factors and they're being a bit unhelpful.

 

So I go on eBay to have a look thinking it'll be no bother - just need another unlocked Z7 with no accessories, there'll be a dozen of them up there on Buy It Now for a tenner surely. Doesn't work like that, there's an auction one (can't be bothered) and some profiteering sod selling a new one for £89. Sod that. So I go down to the older Z5 with the stubby aerial, what a load of old rubbish - broken ones, more lousy auctions, ones locked to a network, brand new ones for nearly a ton. What's going on - is there an underground movement of people like me or something? Is there a hidden demand?

 

The big conclusion is that I'm either going to have to bite the bullet and pay nearly a ton for an 8-year-old phone, or mess around on auctions for ages to get some phone which is probably network-locked leading to me having to obtain data cables and long-defunct software from some Lithuanian website just to get back where I was at the start.

 

It's like the Autoshite equivalent of phone ownership. Painful, expensive and ultimately confusing to onlookers.

[pogweasel]

I am not 'mad' for phones TBH.

 

The best ones evAr are:

I had one of these when they first came out, well 'flash' at the time. But they were bloody indestructble, if you left your phone and your pint on the table and went for a piss, you could guarantee that by the time you got back from the bog your phone would now be talking in 'Suomi', and would be gently bobbing in your glass of 'Dragon Slayer', but fish it out, wipe it off and reset to english and off you go again.

 

These ones I liked:

Because every early '00s repmobile was wired for one, very handy, and again very sturdy. No real gimmicks or owt. Mine lasted for years.

 

Now I have one of these:

which is fairly idiot-proof, and comes with a totally hopeless 'camera' on it. I dropped mine in a river recently and it still works fine. Also useful as I can hook it up to drive our GPS equipment (£25000, not tom tom!!)

 

Also have one of these:

Which is flimsy and fiddly but has a good camera thingy on it, so quite useful in that respect. And has a massive memory, which is nice. Still a bit more poncey than I'd like, but it was forty quid, so I'll live with it.

[Milford Cubicle]

 

I have one of these, a Nokia 1208, I think it's the cheapest most basic phone you can buy.

It's EXCELLENT. Bombproof and the battery lasts all week.

[Pete-M]

I've got one of these;

 

 

Sony Ericsson K750i. It's ace. Battery lasts bloody ages on it, camera works (not brilliant, but it'll do for quick snaps), has a 'ring ring' ring, and it's lasted a couple of years without anything going wrong with it.

 

I'm trying to find one of these for the Audi hands free kit. Even though I despise Nokias.

 

[seth]

Worringly my phone history may be identical to yours Pog. Not that I take much interest in such matters as she deals with all that kind of electronic gizmo stuff.I did kill one though by driving over it. Accidently. On a motoyway sliproad. So it meant once I'd gone 1/2mile and worked out what the slight "bump" was as I pulled away I had to go to the next junction (rush hour, massive queue) turn around, go all the way back to hopefully find a still intact phone lying there. It was lying there but in several squashed pieces.

[M'coli]

 

I have one of these, a Nokia 1208, I think it's the cheapest most basic phone you can buy.

It's EXCELLENT. Bombproof and the battery lasts all week.

Any of the budget series Nokias are excellent - they don't try to do too many things other than be a cellular phone. Many fancier ones get bogged down with gimmicks or the worst thing of all, the touch screen.

[Cavcraft]

Todays big gripe WHICH IS NOT LEVELLED AT ANYONE ON HERE... is people who seem to spend their entire internet life snivelling/arse licking/cowtowing to people in the hope they will be offered a 'job' moderating or whatever on that particular forum.Why can't these twats just get a pissing life and speak their minds rather than what they think people want them to say?Oh, and Keyboard Conans who start trouble/antagonise people then go crying off to the moderators when they get it back.

[pogweasel]

Urgh, those touch-screen jobs are totally infuriating (not to mention unspeakably expensive, and largely pointless). Does that well cheap one have blu-tooth?Nokia BT is great for synch-ing with my survey gear.

[Milford Cubicle]

My cheapy effort doesn't have Bluetooth unfortunately.

[Pillock]

Meh, I love my gadgety phones.I had an HTC Trinity. Touchscreen, Windows Mobile, GPS/Bluetooth/Wifi. 'Unfortunately' that got 'accidentally damaged' in an 'accident' so they've sent me a Nokia N85, which is nice but fatally flawed in that it's a Nokia. Their budget phones are great, but their fancy phones are shockingly bad. Example: since I update to the latest software, I cannot play back MP3s in track order. Only in alphabetical order. Given that it's a music phone, with dedicated music playback buttons, this is astonishingly rubbish. The GPS is also poor since the screen is tiny. The only good thing it has is the FM transmitter, so I can play back my (annoyingly alphabetised) music on a FM frequency, and tune the car stereo into it.So I've found that CEX will give me £178 for it, and will also sell me an HTC Dream for £185. So £7 out of pocket and I get back to my touchscreen wifi bluetooth gps three-hours battery life linux-based phone. Yay! I shall go and get one this week

[Richard]

I had a £10 Nokia but I found it so user-unfriendly that I was back to my 3410 within a couple of days.My work phone is a Nokia N78 and it is truly dreadful. It just does what it wants. When the Bluetooth earpiece in on charge it randomly connects and disconnects and sometimes it will phone somebody. It's also on its third screen since Christmas. If it's in a bad mood it can take 20 minutes to persuade it to make a phone call. Dreadful device.

[Mr Lobster]

I've got one of them too. Nearly three years old and a bit battered but still pretty damn good. Central 'joystick' bit is starting to get a bit iffy but other than that it's great!

 

And it has a proper 'ring ring' which is all that really matters.

[FredTransit]

Can't be doing with gadgety phones, I want to make calls, not get on the internet using a 2in square screen! Why would you do that?

[Pillock]

It's not really meant for browsing Autoshite whilst you're driving though :)I find mine most useful for google maps, yell.com etc. Basically, out and about and think "oooh, I wonder if there's a xxxx nearby". look it up. Out shopping, see a nice new telly or something. Scan the barcode on the box into my phone, it'll go on price comparison websites and tell me the cheapest I can get it.

[Angrydicky]

 

 

 

I've got one very similar to this. An excellent camera which is ideal for taking pictures of shite, and as of today 547 pictures stored in the memory, plus music. It's still going strong....

[Guest]

I don't really mind having gadgets, having a cameraphone is a bit of a novelty. My problem is that I've never found a "new" phone that has felt great to use, they all seem to be really clumsy.Seems like there's been a big budget for cramming weird features into phones, but nowt on the usability/ergonomics side, meaning you get really fiddly keypad buttons because they've made them really small or into one big pad, other "handy" buttons in daft places, rubbish menu layouts, etc. I saw an iPhone being demonstrated the other day, can't believe people are that bothered about them, they look like a complete ballache to actually do things on. What's the point?Anyway, I've figured out what I'm going to do now - I'm going to get a broken/locked one, take mine to bits and use it as a repair kit. That's the Autoshite way.

[Mr H Sceptre]

Can't be doing with gadgety phones, I want to make calls, not get on the internet using a 2in square screen! Why would you do that?

Agreed. Calls, texts, alarm. Thats pretty much it for me.

[r.welfare]

+1. I've had my Nokia (is it a 3210? I have no idea) for about 4 years, and I have no desire to change it even though it's bashed about and the camera function automatically adds a Vaseline effect to every picture taken. My wife has a touchscreen job (Nokia 5800 I think), and it's a PITA to use, plus chews through the battery like no-ones' business.Those old Nokia 1610's that Pog champions were great, I had one as my first mobile in 1998; you could use 'em as a modem as well! Only about 9600 baud, but good enough when my ISP was down...

[brammy777]

Well my last phone is/was the most reliable phone i have ever had, a Sony Erricson k850iNever broke, and never got any software problems, and its holding 750 photos and 100 songs.The buttons are small though, so alot of you wouldnt find it too handy.Iphones are shit, wow it has an application, who cares? Everytime i use one, i spell every word wrong due to the stupid size of the touchscreen keys, and i have small hands.My current phone is good, but i think it might break one day......

[dollywobbler]

Can't believe I'm joining in this conversation but my Sony Erricson K550i is also pretty darn good. I think it's crashed once and the buttons are a bit fiddly, but I like it and unlike some other modern phones I've tried, it actually works well as a phone!

[seth]

Hang on there's hardly any grumpiness going on here! I hate predictive text. It just makes it up as it goes along! How can a bloody small hand held electronic device ever have a chance in hell of guessing what I actually want to write down?Only amusing aspect to it is that Mrs Seth is apparently spelt "lathe"

[dollywobbler]

I hate texts. Completely. I can touch type with a proper keyboard but get me texting and it'd be faster to get your Grandad to type it.

[trigger]

This is the crappest phone I've had for years.

 

 

The Samsung F480 Tocco, Got it on contract a few months ago, It's shite to use, You can't sent text messages on it without you accidentally sending them or spelling half of it in German, It doesn't answer when people ring you and the camera is worse than the old 0.7mb digital camera i had 6 years ago.

 

Wish i kept my Nokia N95, Best phone ever.

[Albert Ross]

Copy on the lack of miserable bastard stuff.However............fucked off at my phone changing the language to Italian, and spending 7 quids worth of credit in one afternoon, texting pseudo latin to my friend in Holmfirth, I decided to bite the bullet.I now own (well they own, but I use) a new Sonim "Land Rover" phone. Chunky, shock proof, waterproof, mudproof, dustproof, extremes of temperature proof, great for sausage fingers, etc. Hope I don't lose it or get it nicked. I wanted a no-nonsense communication device. It also has internet (for surfing autoshite.com at work), a camera (for taking pics of shite), a torch (for finding rust on shite), satnav/GPS (for finding shite again) So it''s a good deal really, just what I needed TBH, as I was fucked off to the hilt of this old Nokia being bollocksed half the time.

[brammy777]

all i need a phone for is texts photos and calls, fuck the other stuff, i have a computer anyway haha.My phone takes excellent photos, and has unlimited texts, so win But anyway back on topic.Flickr is pissing me off, as im apparenltly 19 photos away from my free account limit, which is very annoying, i dont have the money to afford a pro account just yet. And the amount of photo snobs on that website! Someone deleted my pictures off a pool because the quality was lacking, sorry i dont have an slr guys.-A buyer on ebay hasnt paid for the stereo i sold him, or contacted me since he won it 2 days ago, now i know you have to wait a week for payment sometimes but come on, if i cant pay someone for an item right away, i at least message them!

[Steve_RS]

I have a SonyEricsson K800i which I bought (second-hand, obviously) two years ago for the princely sum of £50. Has a cyber-shot camera and takes 'OK' pics. But recently it has started to show signs of getting old. The battery only lasts a day. The camera button has become very temperamental, and the little joystick thingy doesn't go 'up' anymore (so you have to press down a few times to get where you wanna go).Has lasted me well, and still works ok at ringing out and texting, but its time for a new one now i reckon. Would happily buy the same one again.

[outlaw118]

Not sure if we've already had this, but I can't be arsed to wade thru' 94 pages of pissy whinging!!Quiz contestants.If the question is a, b, or c, I don't want to hear that your nanna once told you that blah blah blah...I don't need to hear your thought process...Do you know the answer.Yes or No?Answer it then mofo!!Eggheads has become increasingly prone to this babble of bullshite....

[dollywobbler]

Well, let's have a quiz rant anyway.Anne Robinson - being cruel about people is not funny and just makes you look like a Ginger Witch. Stop it. (though one of the funniest quiz moments was on Weakest Link - "In TV, is the name of a presenter Dermot O Leary or Dermot O Logical" - contestant - "Pass!")Deal or No Deal - no there isn't a clever fucking strategy, it's a game of chance and it could easily be done in five minutes.Who wants to be a Millionaire - "Is that your final answer?" No, it isn't. What I actually meant to say was make a wish before blasting you away with an Uzi. Twat.

[ashmicro]

This cunt

 

 

Really boils my piss.

 

It's Stephen Nolan from Radio 5. You mainlanders count yourselves lucky - here in Norn Iron we have to look at this gobshite on tv as well. And he's on BBC Radio Ulster.

 

A lot of my friends say things like "oh, he's so thought provoking/inciteful" etc etc. No, he's fucking not - he just argues with people for the sake of it. You can actually hear him foaming at the mouth.

 

Takes cuntishness to a level previously thought only to be theoritically possible.