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No one keeps their old CRT TV screen at home after buying a new LCD screen. But surprisingly, the same isn’t true for mobile phones. Many people have the tendency to keep their old mobile phones even as they buy newer, more expensive models. Metrolife takes a look at this strange trend and finds out what keeps people from saying goodbye to their phones.
Often you would see people carrying a phone which looks like it’s come from the pre-historic times. “This mostly happens when your current phone goes for a toss,” says Poorti Mishra, a bank executive. “Today, spending a day without a mobile phone is almost traumatic for most people so if you have broken or lost your mobile, you need to have a backup,” says Suchismita, a marketing professional. And people who are more prone to such mishaps are the ones who are the most well-prepared. “My roommate has lost and broken many expensive mobile phones over the years.
So she keeps an old Reliance phone, which comes in handy at all times,” says Savita, a professional in an insurance firm. Another reason people keep them is because they are not junk. “I don’t buy a new mobile just because the old one is broken. It is usually because there is a newer, sleeker model out there in the same price bracket. If I am not getting a discount of at least Rs 500 on the old phone, I’d rather keep it,” says Vikrant, an IT professional.
Old phones do have their benefits which make people keep them. “I love my new geeky Android phone. But what I really like about my old Nokia is that it has a keypad on which it is easy to type. Since my new phone is a touch-screen, I always have to look at the screen while typing. And also it decreases the precision with which I can type,” says Chirag Anand, a software developer.
“The new phones have so many things that can go wrong,” says Anish, a professional. There is a lesser risk of theft too when it comes to old phones. “The good thing about them is that no one would even want to steal them. They are worthless but still useful,” laughs Poorti.
And finally, though the market has a good number of dual sim phones, many still prefer using their old ones. “One is a utility phone which is used only to talk to a person while the other is for the rest of the work like e-mailing, networking to name a few,” says Nita Sovasaria, a software engineer. So as they say, old is gold.