You can pick up a no-name quad-band phone for a seventh of the price, and most carriers will let you turn off SMS functionality altogether, if you feel passionate about only receiving phone calls.
His mobile phone, the size of a second world war walkie-talkie, is among the ancient possessions returned to him.
So most national media polls now combine two RDD samples, one of landline phones and a second of cell phones.
Mobile banking can also offer additional security by enabling text-backs, which employ a customer's phone as a second form of authentication when using either browser-based or mobile banking.
On one occasion in 2009, Milsom called Shelley from a new pay-as-you-go phone for a fraction of a second and then sent him a message via a Bloomberg trading console saying: "That's me".
But those talking on a hand-held phone spent three-quarters of a second longer in the street, and people with hands-free devices were even slower: one and one-third seconds behind those with no distractions.
Huawei's tacked on some added security, but the reader goes to work quick, firing up the phone in a fraction of a second.
As he also told me, the company has also been experimenting with using the presence of your phone itself as a second factor.
The bill was considerably higher, in part because it included $120 for installation of a second phone line, plus service for the second line.
That is about twice as much as for dial-up service, although the added cost of a second phone line narrows the difference considerably.
