My life with a flip phone

Art by Jarisse Nabung

There’s nothing like the feeling of being able to make your own phone call— or at least, that’s what I thought until last summer, when my parents gifted me with my first cellular device, and probably the only one I’ll get until I can buy my own iPhone. But with the way it’s been going– do I really even need one?

I’ll back up a little bit. Seventh grade hit and middle school hit even harder, but what really knocked me to the ground was seeing all of my friends with phones. Furthermore, because I didn’t have a phone and therefore had virtually no way of contacting my friends, I missed out on a lot of ways to connect with them outside of school. This gave me crippling FOMO and a desperate craving for a “real” phone.

In a way, middle school, the time of one’s life when the most self-discoveries are made, was incredibly profound for me– I didn’t have a phone to dilute what was happening around me. Now, at the time, this was unacceptable, but now that I’m a little older and hopefully a little wiser, I'm kind of grateful that I didn’t have a phone. Sometimes I’d get random emails from new friends on my LAUSD account, “wanna hang out?”  and through their effort to contact me and actually make plans, I was able to see who my real friends were.

For me, not having a phone was only difficult in middle school, when I hadn’t established a social circle that I could be comfortable around. After sticking with a good group of friends, we adapted to my unique situation and figured out ways we could talk outside of school on my laptop. Although ninth grade was a long year, in the summer before sophomore year, I finally moved up in the ranks to getting a real flip phone.

I’ve had the Nokia 2780 for about four months now, and it’s been nostalgic for many of the old people I surround myself with. It has its pros and cons– I can finally text my mom and dad when I need to get picked up, I can call my friends, and I can take pictures. However, the Nokia has its cons as well, a main one being that it takes me about a year to text anyone. It’s because of the T9 keypad, where one number represents three letters, (The number 1 equals a, b, and c,) and it takes a lot of clicking to get to the letter z, if I ever need to use it. The camera quality is mediocre, at best, but it’s still fun to take pictures, even though they’ll probably never see the light of day. If I need to record a video, the quality is terrible, being only 480x720 pixels.

The Nokia does allow you to access the internet, but it’s extremely laggy and not worth it. I’m still able to access YouTube, Instagram, and Google, but I never use it and I save that for my laptop. It saves time when the screen freezes up.

Finally, the Nokia is extremely durable. I’d go as far as to say that it’s stronger than an iPhone, but that could be very wrong and I may have not dropped it hard enough. However, my flip phone has survived impact on concrete, gravel, and has even fallen down an entire flight of stairs! There are a few scratches on the screen, but I currently don’t have a case or protector on it and there isn’t a single crack anywhere. The only thing that happens when I drop it, is that the back casing falls off and the battery falls out, causing the phone to shut off. Luckily, it’s really easy to put the battery back in and turn the phone back on.

Personally, as someone who has never owned a phone with a screen bigger than two inches, the Nokia gets the job done. I’m able to call people, text, take pictures, and even get directions on google maps. It obviously has its drawbacks, but doesn’t every phone? 

Maybe I’m writing this because I secretly don’t want to be the only one on campus with a phone that can open and close– but if you are considering getting a flip phone, I endorse it wholeheartedly. It’s a weird experience, but many weird experiences turn out to be enjoyable.

Art by Simone Modina