Instead, he carries a BlackBerry for e-mail and a Motorola 750 flip phone for placing calls.
He got the data he needed (where to be, when, who was driving) and snapped shut his flip phone.
Barcroft has used Macs since 1984, and plans to replace his old flip phone now that his contract with Verizon has expired.
Fifteen years ago, it was the Motorola flip phone that everyone wanted.
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At first glance, they're no more memorable than your first flip phone -- made of a lightweight plastic and feeling rather cheap to the touch.
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The real problem for Apple is that it's tough to build a smart phone that can compete with the ease of use of a simple flip phone equipped with buttons.
Barcroft has used Macs since 1984, and plans to replace his old flip phone now that his contract with Verizon (nyse: VZ - news - people ) has expired.
If you flip the phone over, and remain gazing at the derriere, you'll be greeted with the familiar beats logo.
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It looks like a cross between a flip top phone and the medical scanner used by Dr McCoy in the TV series Star Trek.
The homescreen itself only functions in landscape mode, and doesn't re-orient when you flip the phone sideways (though we don't know why you'd ever use it that way).
On the back you'll find the increasingly common Sony 13-megapixel imager next to a pair of speakers (FLAC playback is supported, by the way), but flip the phone over and you'll be looking at a surprisingly generous 5-megapixel front-facing camera -- much like the one on Oppo's mid-range Ulike 2.
The panel, which bends and drapes over the edge of the device, demonstrated the ability to have a streaming ticker for stocks, texts, notifications and other apps -- even if your phone has a flip cover protecting it.
The interview process tests not what the applicants know but how well they can process tricky questions: If you wanted to figure out how many times on average you would have to flip the pages of the Manhattan phone book to find a specific name, how would you approach the problem?
The phone included other sensors that let you flip from horizontal to vertical view, find Wifi and connect to a Bluetooth listening device.
There's a black plastic accent all around the edges, with the majority of the phone -- the front, "active flip" and keypad -- finished in a handsome shade of dark gray plastic (cream and blue being the other two colors available).
They also mentioned that the keyboard on the Hermione will not flip down like on the P910, but will be on the phone body itself ( true to leaked photos), and that the amount of memory on the Hermione will likely be "in the gigabyte range".
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If your Android phone doesn't have a front-facing camera, you can flip it around to use the rear shooter -- of course, you won't be able to see the display in this configuration, so it won't be ideal for two-way chats.
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T-Mobile's influence on the L9 is immediately apparent as soon as you start up the phone -- you'll find a magenta-tinged wallpaper and widgets as you flip through the seven home screens.
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