New Phones

Fow many years now Susan and I have been aware that our mobile phone situation has been antiquated, even if it has been adequate to our requirements. We last bought phones in December 2013, and they were... well, not sophisticated by the standard even back then. What they were was small, very light and very, very cheap. We stuck our UK SIM cards in them, contemplated getting French SIMs, and then didn't.

Then, about 18 months later we bought our Wiko 3G "big phone". I can't exactly remember why, but I think it was because by then even the cheapest phones had GPS. I believe I paid €55 for it, but we didn't put a SIM card in it until we went to Australia in 2017 and discovered that our phones didn't work because Australia had turned off its 2G system.

In 2019 Susan bit the bullet and ordered a SIM card from Free at €2 a month. That card went into her phone (the small white one) and we bumbled along quite happily using our outmoded phones a couple of times a month.

Now, however, Susan has a new phone. It's not quite bells and whistles, but it does adequate photos, it's as big as a barn (in a 21st century way) and it has a modern operating system and 4G. It's the phone in the middle showing 16:30 in the photo below.

At the same time, I ordered a SIM from SYMA at €1.90 a month. I have stuck it in our old "big phone" - the phone on the left of the photo. On the right of the photo is my tablet (bought second hand in 2019), and you can also see the camera we bought in 2020, and our power pack for recharging stuff on the go (necessary if you have a phone with a flat battery while you're driving a 70 year old car).

Everything is now hooked up via wi-fi and bluetooth. I can transfer photos from camera (or Susan's phone) to tablet, process them and then post them to Instagram with my 1GB a month data allowance. All whilst sitting in the said 70 year old car.

I would say "happy days", but I do miss being able to just bung the phone in my pocket and not have to bother charging it from one month to the next. It's not even as if we ever really use the phones...