- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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I enjoyed the flip phone, like, this convo sucks, clap and closed
Answering on flip phones was equally boss. When you master that perfect wrist flip where you can just crack the hinge a little with your thumb and let the flip do the rest of the work.
So satisfying every time.
The older startacs where you could whip if out of a pocket and wrist flip it open.
They still sell land line phones.
Yup! Most are office phones and don’t make the most satisfying part. When you made the bell on the phone ring you slammed it so hard.
I use a desk phone every day in my office.
Flip phones are where it was at. Conversation had you mad? Bye! CLACK!
I would usually call my friends from lowest to highest digits in their phone number
Back when we used to *69 everyone’s mom.
You can still do that if you don’t mind buying a new phone after.
And the ringer in the phone was a physical bell with a little magnetically-actuated hammer, so if you slammed the receiver down hard enough, the bell would actually resonate for a little while after. You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.
“You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.”
Oh man, this comparison is going to stick with me; it’s one of my favourite things I’ve read in recent weeks
Thanks! I debated whether to include it, because it’s definitely one of those “well my brain sure isn’t normal!” things, but now I’m glad I did.
“AND NEVER CALL ME AGAIN!” slam
ding
+1 enlightenment points
This was so unbelievably satisfying….Fuck you! SLAM … brrring …SLAM … brrring … over and over again
You can always tap your phone on a hard surface a few times to wake up the telemarketers.
Or start screaming somewhere near your phone that you’re suddenly in the market for a new house or changing your brand of pet food, and just sit back and waste the time of all the marketing and scam calls you get.
I pretended to be brutally murdered while on the phone with a scam caller.
bloody gurgling screams and all.
you’d think they would be more sympathetic but hung up after shouting, “fuk u!”
I bet they angrily pushed their disconnect button and were only left with the ringing in their ear.
I answer all unknown callers with “Thank you for calling State Department of Telephone Fraud Investigations, how may I direct your call?” and they tend to hang up lightning fast and not call back for some reason
Back in the days when you could dial numbers using the hook. Great for those taxi phones in supermarkets that had the keypad covered over.
Slam it so hard you could make it ding. If you were still mad, you could then yank the cord out of the wall. If you still weren’t done, you could throw it across the room, and it would be just fine, when you calmed down, plugged it back in, and set it on the table again.
The phone would, but the wall impacted would have a hole
I got the 2024 moto razr+ flr my work phone when ATT had it on sale for almost nothing since nobody was buying them
I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to hang up by snapping the phone shut.
I used to take the order for food deliveries They had usually mis-dialed so I’d never hear from them again. I’d offer extras too just to jazz it up a bit
And, the phones were built to take it.
AFAIK, one reason for that is that AT&T was the monopoly provider of telephone equipment. They didn’t have to compete with anybody who might undercut them for price. In addition, people often rented their phones, paying a small rental charge every month. That meant that AT&T built the phones to last. They were extremely solid because AT&T didn’t ever want to have to replace a phone that someone was renting.
Nowadays, we see the answer to the question “What if we made the hinges plastic?” in almost everything we do, everywhere we go.
Landline phones were mostly plastic and took lots of abuse for years just fine.
I was speaking generally of most consumer goods that have cheapened on design and materials, but to address phones…
While the material of the shell was plastic, there were huge differences in both shape, density (bakelite has different compressive properties than polyurethane) as well as engineering.
IE, the shells of lets say, and old 1985 motel phone, were made of pretty thick bakelite or poly plastic, and the insides were made of very simple metal and copper wiring, there were no integrated circuits, there were no moving parts, no computers, no video screens, no charging ports, no boards with parts, they were almost entirely mechanical, the function of the keys only served to send signal tones and didn’t connect to anything more advanced than a switchboard somewhere. That’s why they could withstand a lot of abuse.
Modern electronics, including the rare home landline phones we have now, are made of much thinner polyurethane or styrene shells, they have almost entirely solid-state parts inside, chips and boards that capacitors can come loose from, charging ports that can break off the housing and make shorts in connections, wiring isn’t designed to withstand someone accidentally yanking the whole thing, they have LCD screens and are basically just more fragile in all regards.
The issue has a lot more to do with the wider array of consumer goods though, like vacuum cleaners or microwave ovens and home goods that are supposed to last for years and years, but tend to break after only a couple years, and this is now by design.
no moving parts
Mechanical bells in phones were nice. If you slammed the phone on the receiver you would get a nice ring from them.
People also didn’t own the phones themselves. They were usually rented from the phone company as part of the service contract. So the phone companies had an incentive to buy sturdy equipment. Consumers buying things for themselves often buy the cheapest they can, resulting in lower quality. Yes, lots of products today are worse than they could be, consumer demand for cheap devices plays a role here as well.
microwave ovens
There are only a handful of companies making the core component magnetrons. Various brands just package it differently.
My Bosch vacuum cleaner is 11 years old and works great. The only problem it has is weaker cable retraction. My Bosch washing machine is 7 years old and works fine. My Samsung fridge is 5 years old and great. My Miele dishwasher is at least 15 years old and works great. My no name brand cheap toaster is 17 years old and works great. So from personal experience, I think this is acceptable.
I never had a microwave magnetron give out, they last far longer than the plastic housing, plastic handles, hollow frames and thin plastic films over the buttons. I’ve also lost five vacuum cleaners of various brands in the last decade, full on smoke and melted plastic. Only Dyson has lasted more than a decade.
And I also realized that by discussing the durability of branded houseware, I am absolutely too old to be on the internet anymore.
The old heavy ones were bakelite
