Julie Barbour-Issa calls her eight-year-old cellphone “the dinosaur. It’s a brick, and I could use it as a weapon in an emergency,” says the 30-year-old Norwood, Mass., civil engineer.
While most consumers rush to get new smartphones every 12 to 17 months, a few holdouts cling to obsolete cellphones and other tech gear that is four, six or even eight years out-of-date. Sue Shellenbarger explains on Lunch Break. Photo: Motorola
The screen on her Nokia 6010 got a star-shaped crack when it was dropped on a rock after an office Christmas party four years ago. It’s embarrassing to whip it out at family gatherings, she says, where relatives have all the latest smartphones. Even buried deep in her purse, the phone has an antiquated “beepity-beep” ringtone that embarrasses her. “My friends say, ‘I had that phone back when it was cool—10 years ago,’ ” says Ms. Barbour-Issa, who is currently an at-home mom. She missed a hike with her friends recently because they set it up spontaneously using their smartphones to message each other on Facebook.
Janey Bishoff
David Blumenthal: His Welsh terrier chewed the case of his five-year-old Samsung flip phone to ‘the consistency of an old piece of gum.
But all that is OK with her, she says. “I hate waste. I don’t care if I’m hip. And I’m cheap.”
Most consumers rush to get the hot new cellphone—every 17 months on average, according to J.D. Power and Associates, a marketing-information company. Device makers like Apple, Motorola and Nokia—as well as cellphone carriers—constantly advertise the latest models and fastest service. Still, the holdouts cling to obsolete models with clunky designs.
Andrew Morris
Kat Lopez: Whipped out her Samsung Juke (‘You flip it open like a switchblade’) and challenged her smartphone-toting friends to a ‘text-off’ to see who could type the fastest.
These die-hards say they are reducing waste and like sidestepping costly service contracts. Some like the simplicity of phones with few functions, says Anthony Scarsella, chief gadget officer at Gazelle, a Boston-based reseller of electronic gear. Others “want to make a statement: ‘I don’t want the latest and greatest, I want to hold on to what I have,’ ” Mr. Scarsella says. About 6% of the 600,000 gadgets traded on Gazelle’s website in the past two years are cellphones over three years old.
David Blumenthal still uses a five-year-old green Samsung flip phone, even after his Welsh terrier chewed the case to “the consistency of an old piece of gum,” he says. He tried to buy a replacement cover but couldn’t find one. So he put Scotch tape over the back to hold in the battery. “It’s a very basic, functioning telephone, and that’s what I use it as—a telephone,” says the Chestnut Hill, Mass., attorney. Raised in a frugal Maine family, Mr. Blumenthal sees no need to “keep running out and buying new things if you can patch them and they hold together.”
Stacey McFadin
Daniel Clarkson: Friends laugh at his eight-year-old Samsung. But when he drives to an unfamiliar place, ‘I like the idea that I can look at a map and get around on my own.’
Others develop an attachment to a certain model, says Joe McKeown, a vice president at ReCellular, an Ann Arbor, Mich., cellphone recycler. Some customers have bought five or six identical models of the original Motorola Razr, an ultraslim flip phone that was extremely popular six or seven years ago, he says.
Kat Lopez has loved the Samsung Juke ever since she first spotted a turquoise-and-silver model in a Verizon store in 2007. “You flip it open like a switchblade,” says the Manhattan, Kan., graduate student. It fits easily in her pocket, but it also flies out easily. She is now on her fifth Juke—one was lost when she was riding a roller coaster. When Samsung stopped making them, she sourced the last two from a college friend and on Amazon for $50.
Lehtikuva
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was photographed in 1989 using a Mobira Cityman to make a call from Helsinki, Finland, to Moscow.
When friends made fun of her Juke’s tiny alphanumeric keypad, asking, “How do you text on that thing? It’s so small,” Ms. Lopez says, she challenged them to a text-off over dinner and won—by typing and sending an excerpt from the restaurant menu faster than her two friends using smartphones. “I’m so used to it that I don’t have to look while I text,” she says.
Daniel Clarkson’s friends laugh at his eight-year-old Samsung flip phone, which actually has an extendible antenna. But the 31-year-old Memphis federal court clerk likes avoiding the temptation to text or make calls while walking down the street, or download directions while driving. People focused on their smartphones are “so oblivious to their surroundings, they could walk into a car in the street and not realize it,” he says. And when Mr. Clarkson drives to an unfamiliar place, “I like the idea that I can look at a map, and get around on my own.”
Everett Collection
In 1987, a Motorola DynaTac phone was used by Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) in ‘Wall Street.’
For Erica Koltenuk, “the pressure to always be in communication with people is overwhelming,” she says. She liked the fact that the battery in the old Motorola Razr flip phone she used for the past 1½ years couldn’t hold a charge for more than five minutes. It gave her a good excuse for keeping phone calls short. “I could say, ‘Gotta go, my phone is dying,’ ” says the 25-year-old Salt Lake City teacher, student and wilderness guide. “I think being on the phone or texting prevents you from doing things in the moment.”
She has found a kindred spirit in her boyfriend, Patrick Crowley. The last time Mr. Crowley bought a new phone five years ago, he told the salesman, “I want a phone that you could drop-kick into a lake and go get it and still be able to make a call.” Mr. Crowley, 32, a hydrologist and co-founder of Chapul Inc., a health-food start-up, got a Casio G’zOne, then replaced it with an old, used model off Craigslist two years ago. He uses it only to make calls—and occasionally as a flashlight. When he comes home, he and Erica “don’t want to be looking at our phones,” he says. “We want to be cooking together and having face-to-face conversations.”
Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared March 28, 2012, on page D1 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The ’80s Called, and They Want Their Cellphones Back.
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