Verizon bought tracfone. My last flip phone was refurbished and cost $4. It was 3g so they forced me to upgrade to a 4g smart phone. Hubby's flip phone still works so I think his must be 4g. My 'smart' phone cost $42 because all the cheaper phones on their clearance site were sold out. I have friends that buy the high priced phones. One uses hers for business (going well, started when she and hubby were 72!) A couple of others have good inheritences. Some are still working at real jobs...lots of kids get high priced phones ????
Mary, JMO but you need to let the phone software update. There are usually important security updates and patches installed with updates. And FYI, "they" can track your location whether you allow location services or not. Turning off location services may keep certain apps from tracking but it doesn't keep you from being tracked.
You are right and they can listen to you too. Trust me, they will update it. I have been through it before. First they offer and ask for permission, then they badger, then they will just do it without permission (kinda like the gov't). My credit is frozen, I don't bank on line, I have no friends who get mad when I say that... I am waiting for an attack by ransomware. But thank you for your concern. A phone is just a phone. But a good cigar is smoke.
I have been through the whole not wanting to be tracked thing, and for a long time, thought it was possible for people to actually live without being tracked if they tried hard and did the right things. I have gotten past that in my old age, thank goodness. Now, I totally believe that the government (or whomever) can track just about anyone if they want to bad enough, even when that person has gone “off-grid”, so to speak. I do not have any reason to care if I were being tracked, my life is pretty harmless and basic; and I just don’t care anymore. I love my Apple iPhone, and all of my other devices, and they provide a wonderful way for me to track my health and activity, as well as keeping in contact with my family and friends. I want them to work as well as possible, and I do all of the updates when they are available, and none of that has had any kind of negative effect on my life. Apple has now come out with the watch and phone having satellite connectivity, which can save a person’s life if they can’t get cell service and need to be rescued. Someone who lives in an area with poor cell reception could really use this new feature if something happened to them. A few years ago, we had the terrible tornadoes here, and no electricity for almost 2 weeks, and cell service was out, too. It was over 24 hours before the first emergency vehicles came out into the area where we lived to start rescuing people. Having access to satellite connectivity would undoubtedly have helped to save lives if the phones had had this feature back then, so it is not just explorers or people who are hiking or lost on back roads who might use this to save their life. I remember reading about the older couple in the RV who were lost in the mountains, and died because they could not call for help.
Good heavens. I just learned something that I never knew about the iPhone. Holding down the spacebar will allow you to slide the cursor on the screen!!! WHAT!!! All the time I have wasted, trying to fix typos by trying to get that stupid cursor in the right spot (turning me into the "cursor.") Just thought I'd share in case I'm not the last person on the planet to know this. I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Duh.
I had an strange thing happen while I was talking on my iPhone 12 a couple of weeks ago I was talking on my phone when I increased the volume a little buy touching the up button on the side of the phone ,my phone then phoned someone else in my contacts ……odd I haven’t spoken to apple yet but plan to soon .,that’s to odd for words …,anyone know why ?? I didn’t touch any buttons other than the side up volume button
Wellllll...my phone died. I didn't do anything bad to it like dropping it in the toilet or losing it in the hay, like I normally do. But it just scrambled its own brains going to restarting with that circling business that indicates loading and it never stopped. It is interesting that, as little as I put on my phone, there are still things that I will miss, like the contact list. I found people, other than family and friends that I may have difficulty reloading. I make hard copy of pix I want to keep and do little with the phone but it still is an inconvenience. I stole hubby's phone, when I went out, in case I had car trouble or trouble at the farm until I get a different phone. Tracfone said I can order a free replacement today-- "a ticket has been placed" a phrase used that I find annoying. I loved my flip phone. Texting was difficult but it only cost $4. I was forced to upgrade to a refurbished smart phone to increase g's, whatever they are. Toilet death. So I got this one and it committed suicide. I will continue to use a paper and pencil. The gov't is not an actual phone problem. Most of my conspiracy comments are made here, not on the phone.
My wife has been bugging me to get a new phone. My phone was an iPhone 12 Pro, and I hardly ever used it and generally don't even remember to bring it with me. I told her I wanted my bag phone back, or, absent that, a flip phone would work, just so I could call someone if I didn't feel like changing my own tire or something. What I ended up with was an iPhone 15 Pro Max. So now I have a new version of a phone that I won't bother answering. I just hope that the photos work better than the 12 Pro. The 12 Pro took good photos, but I couldn't directly move them from the phone to my computer. I could air-drop them to my wife, to my son in California, or to some stranger on the street, but whenever I tried to air-drop to either my own computers, it would ding as if a new file had arrived, but it was impossible to find it, even using the computer search. The phone used to send air-drops to my Downloads file, but it's been sending them into an abyss for the past year or so. I've checked iCloud and my Dropbox cloud, but they seem to go nowhere.
I got the 12 Mini several years ago and have had the same issue with photos and general tethering to the WIN PC. It's not all that clean, and disconnecting the phone from the WIN PC is "inelegant", to say the least. I transferred some pics over a week ago (as you said, takes multiple attempts), and at least once a day I get 3 concurrent "iPhone Disconnected" error messages as though the connection were accidentally truncated...but Apple instructions say to "just unplug it." There is no "Right-Click/Disconnect Device" option. I have the same problem tethering the iPhone to the PC to use the phone as the internet connection. The connection between the two often just drops for no reason, then I have to unplug the phone and plug it back in to refresh it. I had to install iTunes (the recommended interface solution) to use the phone as the internet device for the initial connection (it could transfer pics just fine), and now that function "just works" without loading the software. It's surprisingly clumsy. I never had these issues with any Droid. Regarding "upgrading": I still have a rotary phone from the 70s. I can make calls and receive calls, and both parties can hear each other fine. As far as I know, it's still supported.
When I take a photo with my iphone, it goes right into the photo file app on my phone, which also puts it on my ipads and the MacBook Pro. I never had any trouble , it just all goes there , like magic. When I was using the Chromebook, I had to move stuff around to have my photos in the Chromebook, so I opened a google photos account and shared it on my ipad with my apple photos, so any picture that I take goes right into my google photos as well. They also go into my amazon photos, so I have backups all over the place that would work with just about any device that i was using and wanted my photos. I remember you saying something about not wanting all of your photos on your MacBook, @Ken Anderson , and that probably has something to do with why you are not seeing them on there, or you are not using cloud-sharing for the photos, maybe. In any case, if you add either google photos or amazon photos (both of which store in the cloud and would not take up room on your MacBook), then you can move pictures from your phone to the google/amazon photos app, and access that app from your MacBook. If you are storing your photos in iCloud, they will be on your MacBook photo app, and do not take up any room since they are in the cloud and not on the device itself.
I want to be able to selectively move photos to a selective computer. Most of the photos I take are not ones I want to keep, and I certainly don't want to store them on three computers. I don't want a photo taking up space on three devices. While I do use iCloud, my iPhone wasn't sending them there, either.
Then try using the google photos option, Ken. You can take the picture, and if you want to save it , move it to google photos, and then you can access it from any of your devices. Actually, since you use your kindles a lot, Amazon photos would be an even better solution for you than google photos, that way you can access them easily from your kindles also. Just delete anything you take and do not want to keep.
Am I the only troglodyte who does not want everything I am stored on someone else's servers? I need to work on my trust issues. I guess I'll have to work through that on my own.
What about Amazon Photos ? It works the same way, and works with your kindles. A new iphone is probably not going to do anything different with moving your pictures than the old one did, because it is what you have done in your settings to tell apple what to do with photos.