I’ve sort of been there. I had one of these when I was a kid (I couldn’t afford the ‘proper’ rectangular power supply, on the left, or the cylindrical variometer on top of it though)
It’s the legendary ‘Wireless Set No 19’, designed by the Brits, this one built by the Canadians and bilingually painted so it could be shipped out to the Russians. It was used in tanks in WW II and to chat with my mates in the early 1970’s. Its contemporary was the WS38. Twice the number but less than half the set. However, it was mobile
So, just to close this out, in the end I went with the CAT S42 as suggested by @thebiglebowski. £179 plus P&P from Laptops Direct, so no contribution to Bezos’ space program. Or so I thought. Turns out it was delivered by Amazon Shipping …
It was £100 less than the ruggedized Galaxy and less faff with hard cases etc. It’s more faff to set up than my old S5 though.
I thought the weakest thing about it might be the camera. Here are a few snaps I took yesterday and one of a hollyhock flower (weed) in the car park next door.
The rear edge of the flower is sharp, but the near edge on the right isn’t. I guess this is the lens’s depth-of-field limit when I’m shooting from just a few inches away.
The battery’s been fine. I charged the phone on arrival (overnight Aug 2nd/3rd). Since then it’s been switched on in the house, so Wi-fi connected, for maybe 3 days. There have been a couple of very short cable connections to a PC USB port, for photo transfer, but otherwise no additional charging. It’s also had 3-4 days running in my pocket outoors. It’s been off for the rest of the time. It’s Aug 11th now and there’s still 36% charge showing. Can’t really complain about that.
So far I’m perfectly happy with it . Thanks to all for your thoughts.
People who still own PCs ? Once you’ve mastered the ins and outs* it can be surprisingly fast.
I’ll let you into a little secret. My speakers are still connected to my amps using cables too. Some people even think different cables can give you a different sound.
*1. Find plug on end of cable (other end left conveniently plugged into PC)
2. Push into socket on phone
3. Er, that’s it
I’ve just turned my PC on. I can’t see any photos on anything called a cloud (I can see some clouds in some of the photos that came down the cable - see above ).
Google will back up all your photos onto Google Photos; it’s probably doing that without you knowing. You could install the Amazon app that does the same. Or you could install something like Syncthing that will do it onto your own computer without any tech giant interfering.
I guess Google would be doing a whole load of stuff without me knowing. Or it would if I’d signed into my account via the phone (not doing so has stalled the setup routine, but I’m sure Larry and Sergey will get over that. They have plenty of other people’s private lives to mine …)
I probably shouldn’t bother about any of this privacy stuff. I don’t really have anything to hide TBH. But I still find it disappointing that they don’t make more effort to hide their background presence. My personal e-mail goes through an old hotmail address. I read it by opening an Outlook account (through which Microsoft ‘look out’ over everything else I’m doing, I imagine). Sometimes I don’t open that account as soon as I turn the PC on. Since I’m not logged into them, and since I delete all cookies at each switch-off, I might naively imagine that they aren’t looking at me either. Then a small window will slide into the bottom right corner of my screen alerting me to a new e-mail and showing me the title and first bit of text. So I’m not logged in. But they are.
So much for “Change your e-mail password regularly to keep your account secure” then … Nothing about the PC you regularly use being able to access your e-mail whether you’ve changed the password or not.
You can see why normal people just click ‘OK’ to every cookie warning etc they get. The knowledge needed really to understand the mechanisms by which your data is/are secured is light years beyond what anyone who hasn’t got time to study it can master.
If people have access to your PC then they generally have access to all your passwords. That’s why you need two factor authentication. But if people get hold of your phone and its unlock code you’re proper fucked.
.
. Thanks to all for your thoughts.
).