💾 Archived View for gem.saayaa.space › gemlog › 2023-04-02-voicenotes.gmi captured on 2023-06-16 at 16:12:53. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I've recently found myself becoming a big fan of voice notes. I'll usually send rambling voice notes to my friends on signal when I want to convey a lot of random information and I'm too lazy to type.
Voice notes are great in a lot of circumstances, but not always. For instance, when I'm with other people, it can be weird or even rude if I'm blabbering into my phone for a minute and a half instead of silently typing. There is also the issue of coherence. I prefer writing communication over verbal because I can better organize my thoughts, edit, and clarify as I type. When I send a voice note there could be six different tangents that lead to nowhere by the time I send it.
Regardless of my preference for typing over speaking, I've continued to lean voice note over written text for longer messages. A big reason could be that I'm just lazier and spitting into my phone microphone is easier than tapping my thumbs on a screen. But I also think that fact that it's a screen I'm tapping on and not a physical keyboard plays a role as well.
Like many folks, I loved my Blackberry back in the day. The damn thing was small and hardy, and that keyboard was *chef's kiss*. Alas, the era of the Blackberry came to an end and thus we were thrust into the time of screen keyboards.
I get that having the ability for the entire device to be a single screen has its benefits. I guess I just miss when my phone was just for text based messaging (i.e. texting, bbm, email, etc.) and calling. Hell, video calls could still work with a smaller screen. You don't need to see /so much/ of the other person's face and background IMO. But whatever, we are where we are. If we return to the small physical keyboards in the future I'll be elated. But I'm not holding my breath.
I almost picked up a blackberry a few years ago just to see if I could still manage to use it. However, before I could pull the trigger on it they announced that they would all become obsolete or something and I just dropped the idea. I'm sure there are options for newer phones out there with physical keyboards and I think I have them bookmarked somewhere. Maybe I'll dig into that again.
May the search for the perfect mobile phone continue.