{"id":337,"date":"2014-12-06T13:27:44","date_gmt":"2014-12-06T19:27:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/?p=337"},"modified":"2017-06-15T13:38:55","modified_gmt":"2017-06-15T19:38:55","slug":"337","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/?p=337","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on a Small Smartphone"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday I bought an Alcatel C1, technically known as a 4015T.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My Nexus 4 is at a repair shop, having sustained a small crack in the touchscreen.\u00a0 I picked this up at Best Buy for $50, which compares favorably to the $300 I originally spent on the Nexus.\u00a0 One might expect the C1 to offer 1\/6th of the value; I instead place it at about 3\/4ths.<\/p>\n

To be sure, this is a $50 smartphone.\u00a0 The graphics tend to be grainy and the audio (both directions) is inferior.\u00a0 It has less memory, storage, and speed.\u00a0 The screen only looks good if you’re looking squarely at it.\u00a0 It has fewer ringtones, notification tones, and menu options.\u00a0 It’s running Android 4.2.2 and seems uninterested in snagging an upgrade.\u00a0 Perhaps it is incapable of running a higher version?<\/p>\n

And yet, for all that, I like it.\u00a0 I like its smallness.\u00a0 The 3.5″ screen is tiny compared to the Nexus’s 4.7″, but I have to admit that I don’t mind the smallness very much.\u00a0 I used to think that acreage was king when it came to smartphones and I always wondered why the iPhone, Cadillac Of Them All, didn’t grow like the others.\u00a0 Now I see that the small screen has its own appeal.\u00a0 Overall, the little phone is more comfortable.<\/p>\n

It also has its problems.\u00a0 Google Maps is much harder to use.\u00a0 Many websites can’t get their content small enough to fit, requiring the viewer (moi<\/em>) to scroll horizontally.\u00a0 The poorer resolution makes the little I.D. pictures beside Facebook posts pretty much worthless, and this problem persists anywhere small graphics are displayed.<\/p>\n

I’ll be glad to get my real phone back.\u00a0 It’s a central tool in my business and daily life and, as with my other tools, quality makes me money.\u00a0 Even still, it makes me happy to see a little gizmo like this Alcatel available for $50.\u00a0 Its something close to a miracle.\u00a0 With free wi-fi all around us and VoIP cloud numbers available for free from Google Voice (questionable quality) or for $3\/month from a provider like Voipo (which I use), a person could get a $10\/month plan from an MVNO and an app like CSipSimple on his $50 phone and be running with the big dogs for very little money.\u00a0 (For more info, check out my friend’s essays<\/a> on the topic.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday I bought an Alcatel C1, technically known as a 4015T.   My Nexus 4 is at a repair shop, having sustained a small crack in the touchscreen.\u00a0 I picked this up at Best Buy for $50, which compares favorably to the $300 I originally spent on the Nexus.\u00a0 One might expect the C1 … Continue reading “Thoughts on a Small Smartphone”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s45dxY-337","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.barleyservices.biz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}