I remember a Half Price Books in Bellevue Washington when I lived in Issaquah. Great store! Sold all my old LPs and a bunch of books to them when I moved to Vegas. I retired from Microsoft in 2012; it got too lefty-progressive for my taste. I got addicted to SmartPhones when I got a free one from work. Now have a Samsung, last year's model.

I did away with my landline when I got my cell phone. It costs me $30/mo which is dirt cheap. I text local friends quite a bit and needed some way to browse cat pictures on Facebook.

[Off topic alert] Hmmm. What kind of cat? I rescued three in 2015 and have never regretted it even when one of them decides that the only way to wake me in the morning is to bite my hand.

TracFone is it. Many of my relatives have iPhones, but not worth the price to me.

I have reverted to a little Samsung flip phone. I just don't need all that crap on a phone. It still has more features than I need plus a red button that can locate me and get help if I need it. It is small, and does everything I need. I am tempted to get a smart phone, but it's pretty much like most electronic gadgets, loaded with features I'll never use. Some young up and coming executive types keep their entire office in their pockets.I'd go nuts. No escape. I thank myself almost daily that I managed to work for myself most of my life.

I want a phone that is just a phone, NO TEXTING!!! With HUGE buttons and numbers to make it easier to read. I would settle for a video camera to record the police as the second option.

Hmmm... TracFone? ;) We use it for my kids. As they pay for their texts and data is turned off, it encourages value and responsible use.

Most of my actual phoning is still via landline. I do have a tiny smartphone which I use mainly for traveling. Got the phone free and pay about $21 every three months for a limited amount of phone/text/data minutes that I never use up (especially since they rollover). I hardly ever text, but the phone does come in handy for checking the occasional website.

What good is a "SMART PHONE" in dumb hands?
My wife and me both have had I phone 5 and now have I Phone 6 and neither of us use them for anything other than texting through WIFI and I message which is exclusive to I phones only and actually pretty unreliable at best. We have a big fat Zero for cell signal at home and for at least 3 miles until we top the mountain. She has full signal when at work but we cannot make voice calls to each other. From home I must have satellite TV and Internet plus I must have land line phone services and we have the cell phones for emergency purposes as well as texting through WIFI. AT the top of the mountain they have hard wired cable TV and internet with no data caps and real HS plus they have near full cell signal and don't need a land line phone. YUK!

cell phones and sports on TV are ways to avoid actually communicating and interacting with other human beings.

Hopefully, this kneeling thing will break the hold of TV sports on peoples' time. We have been manipulated into making the NFL and those ghetto players rich while wasting our lives.

If you like sports, play them yourself, or at worst go to see the games in person. Watching TV is just a waste of time.

People become glued to their smartphones all day, and dont actually interact with other people any more. Its all about tweets, following where people go all day, and other nonsense.

Or use the phone as a phone - communication is easier and clearer speaking than spending a long time typing on a "keyboard" that entirely too small for efficiency. Why should I waste my time texting because someone else wants me to?

However, I can still use the smart phone for lots of other things- calculator, alarm clock, kitchen timer, music player, camera, scanner, gps, exercise monitor, etc. None of those require use of lots of expensive data- most don't even need a phone connection, and they are in a very compact useful form.
I have had a smart-er phone (not just a dumb mobile phone) since I decided to go overseas for an extended period (about 2005. I didn't have a cell phone before that at all.) The extra functions on it are great for travelers.

Experiment aborted after approximately 36 hours. Failure resulted from time to text, which severely limited real time text conversations. This lead to anxiety in text recipients, who are accustomed to faster response times. Of second importance was the lack of emoticon visibility, which do in fact enable word connotations to be communicated more clearly. Conclusion and recommendation: keep your smart phone, but limit usage of apps that draw significant time without enhancing communication or awareness.

I am being forced into a decision of whether or not to get a dumb phone or keep my flip phone. I hardly ever use the phone but the only way I can get/transfer funds, (profit) from a site I put a lot of effort into, is to verify my account thru a dumb phone, they won't do it thru my laptop nor my flip phone.
The only possible option I have is the site/company has affiliated with paypal, I only have to have some funds in that account. I won't know if all this is going to work out for another month.
PS, if I can glean a steady paycheck with this system, I will share it with all. I won't know if it actually works until I get to that point. (I'm from Missouri)

A few months ago me dino was pushing a cart through Walmart where two salespersons~cough! cough! patooie! yuck!~salesladies wore Direct TV sales uniforms.
The Caucasion one asked the expected question and I advised that I got Direct TV on the very spot where she stood about four years ago.
The other, a short and adorable looking Asian Indian (maybe Pakistani), approached all wide-eyed and pointed at the bulge in my shirt pocket.
"Oh, is that a flip phone?" she said with intoned wonderment while brightly smiling. "You still have ONE OF THOSE?!"
I took it out and showed it to her.
"Oh, how ADORABLE!"
I even let her hold it. She said, "I haven't seen one of these for a while."
"I'm old-fashioned," I explained.
She gave it back, I wished both ladies a nice a day and I pushed the cart on toward the catfood aisle. Monsieur Moocher must be fed.
Yesterday was different. Besides there being no Direct TV salespersons (this time I'll say it because sometimes they are male), just before I reached the catfood, my eyes caught sight of a Janis Joplin CD, which I immediaely added to my cart.

Cut the cord, er, wifi, er, cell data.
I look forward to your objective analysis.
(My addiction is to my laptop, phone data has been too pricey to be addicted so far. The Gulch is definitely a distraction.)

Cool.

I have friends who ask me about my disappearance from Facebook and LinkedIn. "What's it like?...." It's great. I do use my smart phone to manage my investments and video my kids. That's it.

Interesting. Thanks. It is something to consider.

When I think about it, aside from the telephone, my smartphone is the level, compass, and clock that I use with my telescope for backyard astronomy. But I could make fixes to the telescope, which I have done for other reasons.

My smartphone is also my Map. We have two older GPSs for the cars, but we never use them anymore. We could.

The calculator. Again, I have another one, an older scientific/programmer's, that I carry in my briefcase as a backup.

The camera.

Notepad. (Most of the entries are the TV series that we have on disk so I know which ones to look for when I stop at Half Price Books.)

I do my own weather. It is 60% likely to be 60% like yesterday's. Red sky at night, sailor's delight... and all that...

Dunno... Maybe I'll go back to a flip phone, too. Contract's up in a few months... Hmmm...

BTW we do not watch much broadcast TV. We do not own a digital set. Occasionally once or twice a year, I will plug the wires in for network TV. Mostly, we watch DVDs, no Netflix or Hulu, or Chinese People's Liberation Army in the living room.