Nkrs
After two months of having an ordinary dumb phone, I often forget that I have a cellphone at all. I listen music on it (for about 6 hours daily when it's a working day and I'm not at home), make calls and send texts, and even take a picture occasionally. The battery needs to be charged once every 11 or 12 days, which is significantly longer compared to the old phone which had to be charged once (or even twice) per day.
Mark Dain
"The battery needs to be charged once every 11 or 12 days". Every. 12. Days. Twelve Days. Not Twelve Hours. *dies*
Nkrs
Yes, but take into account that it is, in comparison to the modern smartphones, a very limited device. For me, though, it does everything I want from a phone (and even more: Opera Mini allows me to access Facebook, email, bus and train schedules, news and many other websites and apps); someone else would likely sacrifice the battery life for more functionality.
Eric
I rely on Facebook Messenger pretty much exclusively to arrange my social life. That's a switch I'd like to make but would prove completely impractical, I think a lot of people are caught in the same net.
Nkrs
At uni, we used emails and Google Talk on the PC along with text messages over the phone, and then Facebook and it's messaging service once smartphones became popular and more convenient. At that point I believe I was in the same situation as you - all my communications with other people at school were on Facebook. Nowadays they use WhatsApp or Viber or whatever else there are cheap data packages for; I really don't have the means and the want to catch up.
Martijn
My Nokia 206 (a predecessor to @nkrs' phone) had both a Facebook app and WhatsApp app build in. And I could use Opera Mini for most other things (including Sublevel). I do not recall if Facebook offered an app for Messenger, but it would be worth looking into. Using a feature phone does not mean you have to cut off communication channels you are currently using.
😀 Tom
Every now and then, the idea of having a "dumb phone" tempts me. The battery life and fragility of a smartphone does bother me. I'm considering getting a Caterpillar S60 when it comes out to address the latter concern though.
Nkrs
That looks like a solid phone. When my old phone died, I already had a picture of what kind of phone I'd get as a replacement. Of course, it's easy to go out and invest 400EUR in a top-of-the-line smartphone, but having an upper limit of 100EUR meant that I could only get a dumb phone, or a very cheap and probably outdated smartphone (like those Samsung Galaxy models which still run on Android 2.3 or 4.0, or other phones from the "no name" end of the Android spectrum). Having burned my fingers with the previous phone, it was a no-brainer to go safe with Nokia 230, and it was one of the better decisions this year.