After ignoring various calls from elders, contemporaries and the young, I have finally "joined the 21st century" (as one friend put it) and purchased a smartphone.
I had two reasons for keeping my "dumb" phone as long as I have. First was the cost of a data plan, which as recently as two years ago would have added nearly $500 a year to my bill. And second was my need for a tactile keyboard, because my fat, clumsy fingers do not operate touch screens with any particular facility.
Data-plan costs have fallen as carriers now expect customers to purchase their phones outright (which I had, in fact, been doing anyway, as my previous phones were the unpopular Palm Centro and the LG Octane), so it's only going to cost me less than $300 a year to upgrade. And my LG Octane has a broken screen and requires me to put the power cord in Kama Sutra contortions in order to charge it.
I ended up getting as "retro" a smartphone as they come: a BlackBerry Classic. And yes, I got it for the keyboard, which seems to be very easy to operate. The only real need I have for the data plan is to access e-mail and the occasional web page, for which the relatively small screen will be more than adequate.
So now I'll look like a business executive from the late 1990s when I pull out my phone. That's not quite "joining the 21st century," is it?