Originally Posted by
Sue-zz My neighbour only buys fifteen year old cars for the price of UK KeyOne. They seem to last him about 9 months before he has to buy another, but maybe he is just a cheapskate car geek. Or he likes stuff he can fix with a hammer instead of a laptop. :-)
The question of BisPhones here in the UK is kind of an ongoing mystery quest with no real answers. The favoured carrier Three (free/cheap European/USA calls back to the UK) is doing Weird Things with BIS, in that it [currently] works with no fees other than the standard PAYGO 1p/cent a megabyte. It used to cost a flat rate of £5 a month, or maybe it's my phone/SIM/phase of the moon, but I get fee-less BIS on PAYGO. How long for is still a guess.
Several other phone-y happenings have come and gone. The death of Windows phone/mobile was over-egged in the press, the W10 phones are still getting updates, but Microsoft have built a strong Android presence, and if, like me, you drop phones and need to replace them every month (I realise Bolds are indestructable) the $79 Android Motos are now disposable commodity items, like toothbrushes. They have good OneDrive and Office/Outlook/launcher and keypad (Swiftkey) integration. Other than the excellent tile interface of WinMo and the lack of Google slurping, there's now no real reason to hanker after WinMo phones. R.I.P.
The BlackDroids are still too expensive here. A DTEK50 is still hovering around £200, a KeyOne is £400 - too much to pay for Android when much the same functionality is found on the £100 Motos. Bold 9900's are around £60, about the price of a tank of gas. Curves are £17.50.
I changed my car this week, I have a choice between hooking the thing up to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, but not Blackberry Auto, so I've gone with a locked down NetGuarded Android. As always, progress is often retrograde, and it's getting hard to find a smartphone of any description the same perfect size as a Bold: the trend is to 5.5" phones, which are really a pain in the asterisk to carry around or place in the car.
On the upside, my rapid slide into senility means I can read the screens more easily. :-)