My phone couldn't do internetting anyway, was on the wife's.

Yes to both your questions.

So long as the other phone isn't locked to another network, obvs.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

Should've dived for the brick like they taught us in the 80s.  Not sure what to do now.  I was on a monthly contract I got with a Blackberry years ago, but had been using the free back-up phone since I broke the BB maybe 5 years back.  Can I get EE/T-Mobile to send me out a new sim and keep my number?  Could I put that in any other phone?  I don't want to go to into a phone shop, no-one understands the need for buttons, or the lack of desire for anything other than text messages/phonecalls.

You can get a replacement SIM yes. If youre still on the same contract from a Blackberry years ago youre quite possibly paying too much and might want to look into that.

As long as the phone you get is unlocked or locked to EE the SIM will work.

Feature phones are a growing market, so you'd be surprised at the reaction. I can get some suggestions for you if you like.

Obviously Whatsapp would be the same as unlimited texts, I did have that on the BB for a while.  Can you get Whatsapp on pay as you go?

You can’t get WhatsApp without your phone connecting to the internet, which is good because £12 per month with no data would’ve been a rip off.

Surely go Nokia for the retro cool aspect.

Some PAYG contacts have unlimited data allowance for Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc.

Even the cheapest contracts tend to have unlimited texts these days. If that's all you're bothered about, I'd imagine you can get something for £8 or less.

I know it's not a feature phone, but I was looking at the Nokia 1 today. Seems pretty good for the price.

Nokia 1 looks nice.  It's probably time I gave up resisting touch screen, I've got used to it whenever I use my wife's Samsung.  Will have a think, would be nice to have a camera/whatsapp, if only to avoid the regular bollocking I get for requesting pics to be emailed to me (and missing out on taking snaps of my own on days out).  Ideally I'd like to not be able to access the internet though - not spending my whole commute refreshing this place was probably the main reason for downgrading to the brick.  I couldn't stop.

As an aside, nobody lists contracts with no data any more. But you could probably get one by calling them, of you wanted.

Moot_Geeza wrote:

http://www.argos.co.uk/product/4717399

Right, that's about as basic a phone as you can get, so it depends what you want, just a cheap, does the job, or something more.

The Nokia 8110 4G is one of the new generation of feature phones.  It's a little bit bigger and heavier, but not by much. It's got light dust protection and can survive a little bit of water spray, but don't take it into the ocean again.

What's the main difference is the operating system. It's running something called KaiOS, which will allow you to use certain apps. The big draw has been the Google apps, but in your case, Whatsapp might be of most interest. Battery will last you a lot longer as well. Think about the old Nokia's battery life, we're talking that. It also has an FM radio, and a camera if that's of use. Build quality is much better as well.

The but is that it will cost a fair bit more. £50 at Carphone, might find it cheaper elsewhere.

I suspect that WhatsApp won’t be going anywhere for a while, TBH.

Yossarian wrote:

I suspect that WhatsApp won’t be going anywhere for a while, TBH.

Of course not. Some people will stop using it, then it'll merge with Facebook messages, then more people will stop using it. It'll still exist, but you won't be able to use it as a primary way of contacting people because half the people you want to talk to won't be on there any more. Historically, messaging platforms have had very little hold on people; AIM, MSN, Skype...

Of course, they could manage to pull off really unobtrusive advertising that doesn't bother people, but I somehow doubt they'll even think about it.

Perhaps. It all depends on the implementation.

Telegram, Signal or Wickr are likely to be the next big messaging apps, WhatsApp is unlikely to disappear though.

What will be big is when someone creates a properly integrated messaging app that connects to all your messaging apps, including text and social media, and hosts them all in one client.