I recently upgraded my trusty flip phone for a…nother flip phone. I was excited, after a year and a half, to see what new technologies Samsung and Verizon had teamed up to bring flip phone users. Eighteen months is an eternity in the tech world, so the innovations were likely to be abundant. I anxiously awaited the new wonders my next gen flip phone contained. What I found is that, unambiguously, Verizon and Samsung are marketing their last remaining flip phone exclusively to elderly people.

Last week, I upgraded my Gusto I to the Gusto II. When I first upgraded to the Gusto I, it was just called the Gusto. There was no indication there would ever be a followup, although I was one of the louder voices in the chorus calling for a Gusto update—that phone was simply elegant. So when the time came to upgrade once more, I didn’t let the features and flash of the many smart phones stray me from my path. I once wrote an emotional love letter to my Gusto, so you can guess my Gusto-citement for its sequel. But times have changed—Verizon is now only offering one flip phone, down from several flip-choices the last time I upgraded two summers ago. It was OK, because that one phone was in the storied Gusto family, a well-trod tradition of excellence, so I knew I was in good hands. Or so I thought. 

Cursory inspection of my Gusto II when it arrived a few days ago revealed a larger chassis, and a correspondingly large keyboard, with several new buttons. One such button is a prominent “ICE” button right next to the directional keypad. This is an “In Case of Emergency” button and not the much stupider alternative I initially thought. This handy new ICE button reduces the number of steps to call 911 from an arduous and unwieldy four to a speedy two. Clearly, this is in case granny falls down and suddenly becomes confused at basic phone operation, she can just press ICE (and then, of course, “send”). I’m sure the time saved from that shortcut will be just the duration before going into shock. While a bit of shock to me as well, I was able to chuckle past this button. But it got worse. The picture buttons kept on coming.

There is also a button with an envelope on it. This is the texting button. There is a button with the image of a person talking on it. This is the voicemail button. These are both new additions to the Gusto. In fact, the Gusto II is almost identical to the emergency phone for kids or old people that only have three buttons with police, fire, and a responsible adult programmed in in. I tried to reconfigure the voicemail button to instead auto-call my friend Daniel. This was unsuccessful.

The font size on the menus is laughably large, clearly for the myopic, aging population looking to master basic wireless communication. I can only look at four contacts on the screen at once. It was five on my old phone, and the screen was smaller. When my phone rings, if my contact name is longer than four characters, it will have to scroll across the front screen, whereas my old phone could comfortably display a first and last name. Who is calling? Michael? Or Michaela? There is no way to tell anymore, so I guess I can’t meet anyone named Michaela for the next 18 months. Michaelas, you’ve been warned.

The other clues are just too obvious to not draw this conclusion that Verizon has assumed their sole flip phone will only attract the likes of the 70+ crowd. Unlike its predecessor, this phone has no USB connectivity, so the pictures and contacts stored on the phone are trapped there forever, unless you want to painstakingly email each one to yourself. They actually downgraded a genuinely useful feature, because Verizon knows that seniors won’t know how to use it anyway, and when they lose their proprietary charger, they will be forced to buy another one from Verizon instead of using a USB cable. The Greatest Generation, and me, are now stuck with our low-res pictures on our arcane phones. And I didn’t even help save the world from Evil. I just have a flip phone.

At least I can wrap my head around the logic behind these blunt picture keys and garish font sizes, even if I don’t like them. But Samsung also made some insidious changes as well. As if to spite their flip phone base and jeer at them for not smartphoning, they have cleverly switched the button for text messages to the other side of the phone, leaving us loyal Gusto users reflexively opening the menu, or pressing ICE, every time we are trying to contact a friend. There is no other reason I can to do this other than dastardly head games to break the will of flip phone stalwarts. But they did more than that—they also broke our hearts.

If you want a free upgrade phone from Verizon, you have two main choices: the Gusto II or the iPhone 4. Verizon’s daring customers to make a choice: Buy the sleek, powerful, useful iPhone 4 (with, of course, a data plan, something Verizon salivates over), or buy your final cell phone before you wither up and die. And I use the term “free” upgrade very liberally because Verizon has recently enacted a laughable $30 upgrade fee. Can’t that fee only apply to phones actually with a retail value over $30? The funny thing is, I could have been easily and happily silenced with another Gusto I. That was a work of beauty. But this underwhelming Gusto II has soured me, Verizon—that is of course unless you make the Gusto III.

If you do, be kind and be gentle when you design it. Think not of forcing younger users into a smart phone or retribution for lost potential data plan revenue, but think of those who only want to live the next 12-18 months of their young lives in T9 serenity before 4G mayhem. If you can’t adhere to that simple plea, then so be it, but promise me if that’s the case that you won’t even try to make a Gusto III. I can’t take another disappointment of this magnitude.

Matt Powers lives in Brooklyn.

PREVIOUSLY

Mallory Ortberg dropped her smartphone in a bowl of pee. She went without a phone for two months, waiting patiently for her upgrade date, at which point she she could get a new smartphone for a low price.

The day of her upgrade date, so long and patiently awaited, turned out not to be the day of her upgrade date, but a date one year from the day of her upgrade date. She was still phoneless. She was defeated. 

TODAY

Logan Sachon: Mallory can you give me an update on your phone situation?

Mallory Ortberg: I HAVE A PHONE! /releases doves /puffs of white smoke. Like how they do when they choose a pope. You know, the doves and so on.

LS: Tell me how this happened. How did this joyous feat come to pass. 

MO: So after the little flippy phone that I ordered from [SHITTY WIRELESS PROVIDER]‘s website got here, I took it into one of their many retail stores and asked to have it activated. And the fellow working there said it wouldn’t work because it was a prepaid phone and I had a contract and somehow they’re incompatible. Which seemed silly because I need a phone and here’s a phone that obviously works if you open it up, surely you can perform your corporate magic somehow, Mustafa. Also I do not recall seeing the words ‘prepaid’ when I ordered the phone. But I am not the most scrupulously detailed person always, so the culpa may be mea, you know? Anyhow, I just kind of stood there helplessly asking him if there was anything he could do to help me, and he said “not really,” which I found maddeningly vague. So then I just despaired and went home and was mad for an hour and then stopped being mad

Anyhow, I complained about it at work a lot, because I’m never one to suffer in silence and some of my coworkers took pity on me and said “Oh wow, two months, that’s forever, I think I have an old [SHITTY WIRELESS PROVIDER]-enabled phone you could have. I’ll get my mom to send it.” And I sort of just didn’t care or believe them because then I was numb. Surely the phones would blow up in transit or be poisoned husks of ivory or something. But after another few weeks the Droid got here and I went in and had it activated. and it’s been so great. I posted my phone number to Twitter just because I missed getting texts so much, which was really fun. ALSO did you know that when you get a text on a Droid, it growls “DROID” at you in a very whimsical manner. Very droll.

I’m very happy. I would say the Droid is more fun than the iPhone. And it was free! Well, free minus the $50 i spent on the flip phone that didn’t work and also minus the two months’ worth of phone bills I paid when I didn’t have a phone, but other than that: free.

LS: After all of these trials you’ve been through, have you learned anything? Is there a lesson here?

MO: Nothing ever changes. I’ll probably do something to ruin this phone too. It’s inevitable. There was no lesson here except that entropy is the greatest force of all and if you avoid action and wait long enough you get free stuff from people who are tired of your passivity negatively affecting them.

These are all joke lessons. HERE IS THE REAL LESSON. The real lesson is that if you are determined enough it is worth some time and inconvenience to not spend money on a phone. Those two months were definitely worth it. I think it’s crazy for me to spend hundreds of dollars on a really nice phone when I know I can’t be trusted not to destroy it. No matter how careful I am, because I’m clumsy. So it was right to hold out for a used, sturdier phone.

FIN

The more time that passes, the more ire the sight of my flip phone garners from people. “You still use that?” they ask, somewhere between surprised and disgusted. “How do you get around with it?” “Do those still work?” Or my favorite: “Did you lose your iPhone?” Not so long ago, my flip phone got a light-hearted chuckle from strangers when I used it in public places, but recently people seem borderline offended that I still use one.

What surprises many is that I am using a flip phone despite being in the prime target demographic for a smart phone:
1.) I’m a young, single, college-educated white male
2.) I live in a major city
3.) I work for a website
4.) I used to work at the Apple Store
5.) I’m living in the 21st century

Somehow, all of these sure-bets have failed to make me a smart phone convert. What went wrong? I don’t use a flip phone to be cool or ironic (even the most self-aware, image-conscious person would likely grow weary of the limitations of the flip phone). I can’t explain exactly why I still use one, but it has something to do with cost, durability, and a desire not to be reachable in all manners of communication, at all hours of the day, all days of the week. If something is important enough to elicit my attention on a Tuesday evening or Sunday afternoon, a call or text will be more than sufficient. Luckily, my flip phone can handle both of those.

But there are definitely other, stranger reasons I still have my flip phone. 

A year ago, my flip phone got me unwittingly picked up at a bar. I took out my phone while waiting for my drink, and a young woman next to me excitedly pulled out the exact same model. We both had well-formed opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of our Samsung Gustos (strengths, of course dominated the discourse). She was a fan of the way the the phone intelligently learns your texting mannerisms; I extolled the virtues of the “text to email” feature. She even taught me how to quick search the contacts list, a time-slashing measure I use to this day. Looking back, we were definitely doing that “I’m young and live in New York” thing where you talk about something kitchy but really you’re flirting. Except, I was definitely just talking about my flip phone.

Even as our conversation matured from sundry cell phone observations to more typical barroom fare, I kept thinking of more points and flip phone experiences I wanted to share with my new compatriot. We shared a common lineage—we were the last two survivors from a distant land time had long since forgotten who serendipitously bumped into each other in the unapologetic capital of smart phones. We were relegated to an oral history that would be doomed if we didn’t preserve it through T9 word or the Gusto’s very spotty voice recognition software. We talked for over an hour and a half. She kept telling the increasingly-peeved man I kept bumping into accidentally that she was sorry, because this was our awkward first date.

This was unambiguous flirting, but at the time, that only made me think of the calendar function on my phone, which lets you search for stored events by date. I used the opportunity to launch into my feelings on this topic. Even when she put her hand on my upper arm when leaning in close to tell me something, I still didn’t pick up on the fact that this was anything more than a fortuitous flip phone symposium. I was so under the influence of flip phone discussion that after those charmed 90 minutes, I left forever, caught up in the mayhem of my friend who had just broken a beer glass without getting the number of my brave countryman on our unifying device.

I’d like to see an iPhone do that.

Not all of the warnings that smart phoners give are misguided. I do miss out on fun Yelp, Twitter, and Foursquare deals at my favorite bars and restaurants. Loyalty in this new century of ours only counts if you can log it with a mobile device, and I am behind the curve. What I don’t yearn for, however, is my friend Kelly’s almost franticly proud compulsion to “check in” everywhere she goes, most quixotically at a Dunkin Donuts at 2:30 a.m. two weekends ago (nothing free was rendered from this, but much was lost).

I love my flip phone paradoxically because I don’t actually love it. Like many things I don’t love, I don’t look at it often. Sure, I excitedly talk about it when a cute girl at a bar has the same exact relic, but I don’t paw at it endlessly when I’m bored or have a spare minute, and that’s not because I’m a cool, unattached person: It’s simply because there’s nothing to do on a flip phone. My phone has never once obstructed me from noticing my surroundings for more than 15 seconds. I’ve never  ”tweeted” on my phone. I don’t have to compulsively check it, because when I get a text or a call, it will vibrate and I will tend to it. It also has this really neat function that displays the time on the front of it, saving me from having to wear a cumbersome watch.

I don’t even need a data plan.

Texting is one of the most advanced features the flip phone can handle, and even that gets its own unique little spin you can’t find anywhere else. My mobile can only receive 160 characters per text, so when I receive long messages, they are broken up in chunks, which become like little cliff hangers. Sometimes I have no idea if someone is mad at me or pleased with me based on the first half of their text, and the 20 seconds it takes to get the second half is breathless. I imagine it’s how Alexander Graham Bell felt waiting for the first return phone call. And if you think I’m off by several orders of magnitude, you have obviously never received a lengthy text from a girl whom you just spilled paella all over that the first installment ends in “…just make sure y….” Still gives me chills.

Not all unique flip phone experiences even require a second person. Every couple of weeks or so, I have to delete all my text messages because my dinky phone just plain runs out of space. This sounds annoying, but it’s kind of a cool experiment in memory, because every time I get the message that I’m out of space, I always go back to my earliest text message from the cycle. It’s from a couple of weeks ago, and I am always surprised by what I have written, whether it’s an angry text to a person I haven’t talked to since, or a text from when I was away from home, or a so-clearly-flirty text (emblazoned with far too many exclamations) that it makes my skin crawl just to read it 20 days later.

Of course, any sort of especially sentimental texts can be “locked” so that they’re not deleted in the “delete all” tri-weekly purge, but I find even those never make it past three or four iterations of text deletion. Those are usually the saddest, because they are invariably from unrequited loves or flings that were cut too short, the sappy side of me unable to delete the last text vestige of them from my phone. This is an emotional experience of finality and loss that the endless archives of the smart phone hard drive could never replicate. My flip phone saves me hundreds of dollars a month on therapy.

Eventually, I will get a smart phone. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have proudly said, “Never!” but that was just the hubris of youth speaking. Unless you head for the jungle or the mountains, smart phones will find their way into even the life of even the most fundamentalist flip phoner. Much like analog TV, non-smart phones will eventually be phased out. Somehow, this flip phone issue has transformed me into the reactionary old man who is the last in town to accept the generous offer from the strip mall developers. I know it’s only a matter of time, especially because literally everyone I know, save my parents, has taken the deal. I’m the one in the way of progress, telling people, even some older than me, how much better it was when you couldn’t send an email from the palm of your hand. There are 45-year-old housewives who know more about smart phones than I do. There are likely prisoners incarcerated since the late seventies who have more of a handle on 3G networks.

My aunt has an iPad.

I guess I just want a little more time before I have to stare down this strip mall every day for the rest of my life, and I don’t mean that pejoratively (or at least not entirely). I know strip malls aren’t the most loved things in the world, and I don’t think owning a smart phone is inherently bad, but the similarities are compelling. You can get everything you want in one place, they are unavoidable, they are unsettlingly convenient, and they are everywhere. It’s just different experience, and like futzing with bunny ears, the experience of owning a flip phone is slipping through our fingers.

People are forfeiting their last chance to be off the smart-grid before this country and culture is completely 3G. Smart phone ubiquity is coming, and it’s likely coming very soon. No more weird bar conversation fodder, no more texts being broken into heart-stopping chunks, and no more getting lost on your way to that new Indian place that opened up across town. We will all be beholden to the elegance and agony of the smart phone before you know it, and even the most entrenched flip phone loyalist will have to make the switch. I guess my point is this: what’s the rush?

Matt Powers is a citizen of the world. Also, New York. 

We have all lived in some places. Where have you lived, Matt Powers? 

Fairmount Ave., State College, Pa., $425/mo.
I moved to downtown State College during my junior year at Penn State after living way up near the Walmart (pause for collective groan from anyone familiar with Penn State geography, or I guess Walmart in general) for the fall semester. This was a former frat house that was de-chartered, likely due to some horrific circumstance involving a pledge many years ago. We tried not to think about it.

Everything was decaying and falling apart, and I lived in a converted attic where you could only stand up in about one-third of the room, but it was massive and I was able to squeeze in a nice little lounge and work space on the side opposite from my bed. We found an old beer-pong table that the frat had forgotten in their haste to vacate and used it as an occasional kitchen table. We avoided touching the floors with anything but shoes. Boots were even better. 

Newell St., Greenpoint, Brooklyn, N.Y., $575/mo.
After securing a summer internship in New York and showing up doe-eyed a day before I was supposed to start working, a younger and more foolish version of myself haphazardly got a fantastic deal. Relegated to a flip phone (that I still use, perhaps I am still just as foolish), I had my Philadelphia-based sister on her computer texting me about apartments in my price range that became available on Craigslist and I would call right away.

The first three places I saw were just so-so but the very last one of the day was a great room in Greenpoint right near to McCarren park and walkable to the Bedford L stop. Due entirely to my sister’s vigilance, I was the first to secure a meeting.  Twenty minutes later, as I chatted with the young married couple whose housemate was heading back to Poland for the summer, their phone rang off the hook with unrequited bargain hunters, desperate for the space.

That summer I became a voyeur by forced proximity to the married couple’s fights and their IKEA furniture building sessions (which often launched right into the said fights). I also spent one an unforgettable evening entertaining my roommate’s Polish mother, who spoke no English, for several hours by myself. I later learned my roommates’ marriage was a rushed green card wedding that perhaps was too green itself to formally cement, and yet they exhibited a passion and love in everything they did—from cooking to laughing to fighting—that I quite admired. It was a really great summer.

Olfert Fischers Gade, Copenhagen, Denmark, 3,400 DKK (585 USD)/mo. 
In one of the most expensive cities in the world, I secured yet another deal via random University placement. I lived right in the city center with a 45-year-old Danish woman named Birgitte who was filled with sage advice, good cheer, and a taste for red wine. She laughed good-naturedly, offered help with my attempts at speaking in her cumbersome native tongue, and occasionally would make me fine Danish cuisine over which we discussed Danish cinema.

On the weekends, she took care of her ex-husband’s children, her ex-step-children, as it were. They were lovable rascals, and I couldn’t even stay mad at them when their shouts woke me prematurely from a too-much-Tuborg sleep. The mutual love between Birgitte and the two kids was clearly evident, which made the coda to my trip all the more somber: Days before I left, her ex-husband remarried and took the kids to a distant part of Denmark, aggressively severing all contact to the woman who had been a weekend caregiver and friend, much to the protest of both the children and Birgitte. We remain in touch and exchange occasional sundries native to our countries, and I still hope one day soon, harmony can be restored to Birgitte, the children, and ol’ Olfert Fischers Gade.

Myrtle Ave., Fort Greene, Brooklyn, N.Y., $720/mo.
Back in America and venturing into the world of employment, I found my current home by process of elimination, in that I only received one reply to my 15 requests to even look at a place. My then-roommate Kent was trying to fill two spaces at once, which I paid no mind to at the time. But a year later when Kent left for his girlfriend’s place and my other roommate Dwight split to try his fortune in China, I realized exactly how difficult trying to fill two rooms at once actually is. You are left stranded without the invaluable aid of an established roommate who can help weed out the crazies and have your back if the new situation starts going south.

The problem was compounded by the fact that one of the rooms I was trying to move has no outside window, which scared a lot of potential roomies away (and one must apply extra scrutiny to people who want to live in a world without natural sunlight). I got lucky once again and found two very nice people. We’ve even had a few communal dinners since they moved in two months ago (although the Danish cinema conversation is not as stimulating).

Previously: Logan Sachon

Matt Powers is is in his early twenties-ish.