• monotremata@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    And the ringer in the phone was a physical bell with a little magnetically-actuated hammer, so if you slammed the receiver down hard enough, the bell would actually resonate for a little while after. You know how some people use a bell slowly fading out as a meditation tool? That’s the association I have for that sensation.

    • icerunner_origin@startrek.website
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      3 months ago

      Reminds me of the first time I worked in a newsroom in the early 2000s. When the repeated slamming wasn’t enough, the whole phone would go flying across the office. I, unfortunately, had the desk by the wall, in the prime firing line. My reflexes became boss in those first 3 months.

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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      3 months ago

      Like straight down? On what kind of surface?

      I spiked the fuck out of an old Nokia in like 2093 against the carpeted floor in my office. Sadly I slightly cracked the corner of where the battery case met the phone. The phone still worked but the battery wouldn’t stay connected. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person on the internet who ever broke a Nokia.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Nowadays, we see the answer to the question “What if we made the hinges plastic?” in almost everything we do, everywhere we go.

        • ameancow@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I was speaking generally of most consumer goods that have cheapened on design and materials, but to address phones…

          While the material of the shell was plastic, there were huge differences in both shape, density (bakelite has different compressive properties than polyurethane) as well as engineering.

          IE, the shells of lets say, and old 1985 motel phone, were made of pretty thick bakelite or poly plastic, and the insides were made of very simple metal and copper wiring, there were no integrated circuits, there were no moving parts, no computers, no video screens, no charging ports, no boards with parts, they were almost entirely mechanical, the function of the keys only served to send signal tones and didn’t connect to anything more advanced than a switchboard somewhere. That’s why they could withstand a lot of abuse.

          Modern electronics, including the rare home landline phones we have now, are made of much thinner polyurethane or styrene shells, they have almost entirely solid-state parts inside, chips and boards that capacitors can come loose from, charging ports that can break off the housing and make shorts in connections, wiring isn’t designed to withstand someone accidentally yanking the whole thing, they have LCD screens and are basically just more fragile in all regards.

          The issue has a lot more to do with the wider array of consumer goods though, like vacuum cleaners or microwave ovens and home goods that are supposed to last for years and years, but tend to break after only a couple years, and this is now by design.