It started off pretty well but all day today I’ve been fighting with my health insurance (again) because they have decided they don’t want to cover an essential medication that my partner has been on for years (again). Things are moving forward, our primary doctor just gave us over a month’s worth of samples so we won’t run out while we fight, and they are compiling documentation to make a case. I’ve never had to fight to have meds covered like I have with our prescription provider this year, it’s the worst. I had to fight them earlier this year to get them to cover long-acting insulin. Insulin! Ridiculous.

Other than that, can’t complain.

I didn’t know, so I went and looked. There is indeed an option to record calls.

It’s an android, so yes. Spotify, Deezer, YT Music are all options.

Oof, yeah. The 3310s are basically bricks now with so many carriers discontinuing 3G service. Nokia makes a couple of 4G feature phones, the 225, the 6300, and the 2780 Flip. The 225 runs S30, the 6300 and 2780 run KaiOS so they have some app support like a web browser, but functionality is very limited. And you won’t get good photos out of any of them.

If you’re looking for privacy, look into the Fairphone. If you’re looking for a feature-rich phone that will force you to use it a lot less, look into Sunbeam. They run a stripped-down variant of Android with only the most basic functions.

I got a Unihertz Titan Pocket earlier this year, I highly recommend those too, though they run Android 11 so if you are serious about privacy you’ll probably want to do some degoogling. Its camera is… okay.

I have some stuff at work that requires 2fa too. I have an old iphone with no SIM in it in my office, I use it for authentication and that’s it :)

I used a dumbphone for quite a while last year and honestly loved it. I have a small collection of them at this point since they are relatively inexpensive.

Today I use a Unihertz Titan Pocket which is technically an android, but looks like a Blackberry. I’ve gotten a bunch of comments on it. It will certainly do more than I need, but I’ve disabled the play store and use it mostly like a dumb phone, with the exception of streaming music, which the dumbphones obviously wouldn’t do. I bought a dedicated mp3 player for that purpose, so that’s not the feature that brought me back.

I switched because while I could absolutely use the dumbphone to do everything I needed to do, group texts were ultimately the thing that brought me back to an android. Though it’s been a known issue for many years, group texting on Nokia’s feature phones is just bad… when it works at all. I still keep an eye on the dumbphone market and will absolutely switch back when group text messages are sorted out.