Any Recommendations for a NON-Smartphone?
 

Hi All,

Well, a rather unusual request, but I am thinking about just using my Ipad2 for emails,web browser, calendar/scheduling and actually going back to a phone that just calls and texts. Crazy I know,:D.

I am currently using a Samsung Galaxy S2 on T-Mobile and while it is a decent phone, the battery life is driving me insane. It is beyond terrible, raerely gets me through more than half a day.

Anyone have any suggestions for a nice compact GSM phone that they like?

I like simple Nokias. Cheap, simple and does the job! Heck, even the monochrome 33** series does the job for me! :D

Pretty much any non-smart phone will have awesome battery life.

Also, my last gen BB Bold (9700, I think) has great battery life. I use it for work and charge it about once a week. It's more compact than the current gen and not much bigger than many non-smart phones. For emails and texts, nothing beats the BB keyboard.

David, you do age well with your phone. :D

For OP, I get good battery life out of my Nokia and Motorola. Maybe you can look into them.

I still use my dumb nokia phone ;) I retired the 6230i after using it for 8 years because of buttons problem which make it unusable, otherwise I will still use it up to now. I'm using Nokia 7373 right now, it's smaller but have less battery life, 2 days of heavy use.

The advantage and the curse of the smart phone is if you can have all your information in your pocket. If you want Toadopt approach of the Canadian government and have the ability to compartmentalize, going with a dumb phone and iPad makes sense. You're certainly many places in life you cannot take your iPad with you. I suspect this may be a good way to partially disconnect.

Stu makes an excellent point, that is another aspect that plays a big role in this....:D

The old Moto Razr GSM phone is still my backup phone. You can buy them new/unlocked on amazon for less than $50.

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-V3-Un...3769355&sr=1-1

-David

I recommend Toshiba G450 - though it can be hard to find.

Nokia, hands down.

They always had the best battery life and ability to pull in a weak signal of any phone. The Nokia menu system is intuitive. High build quality.

I'd buy a recent Series 40 phone and enjoy.

Do you like flip-open or candybar style phones? Do you prefer a compact footprint, or thinner? In general, you'll have a choice of bigger but thinner, or smaller footprint plus fatter.

Personally, the best phone I've owned as a phone was my 2004-vintage Motorola V300. Kind of fat (about an inch thick) but it's been durable as heck when travelling, the battery lasts forever (and hasn't died on me despite sitting discharged between trips for months at a time) and it's tri-band so it works almost everywhere (the similar V330 is quad-band.)

No camera worth mentioning, no data features worth mentioning, no music player, but can talk and text and the text-entry for an old-school dialpad is pretty good. I got a quad-band Samsung Sync (A-707) as a travel phone to replace it, which has some minimal music player features, a bigger screen, a decent camera for an old phone, and is thinner... and I've decided I like the Motorola better.

Looks like the slightly newer and quad-band V330 runs about $10 to $30 on Ebay, with plenty of newer models only slightly more, but I don't know if the physical build quality has held up similarly.

I like my Samsung B2100 which is fairly indestructible and reliable with reasonable battery life. It does have a music player and will take fairly low res images but for me it really shines as a phone first and foremost. The torch on it is very handy too.

Thanks All....I think I may go with the Motorola EX119. Good size, nice and thin,qwerty keyboard and it can do all the basics. Price is right at approx $110 unlocked. Also has dual sim capability, good for traveling.^

And, if the manufacturer indication of standby and talk time is even partially accurate the battery should be decent....

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/IN...X119-IN-EN.alt

Wait, I'm confused. You said you wanted a dumbphone, but the one you've chosen has most of the features of a smartphone - email, web, touchscreen, camera, video record/play, music player, social media etc. But it doesn't have 3G data, so your email, web, and social media experiences will be very slow.