My Nokia was rejected by my mugger but people are returning to ‘dumbphones’

They are low tech and hard to text on, but the simplicity is comforting. I was a devotee for years and can see the appeal, writes Max Fletcher

While my friends could bask in universal sympathy after losing their beloved BlackBerrys, I had to tell the rest of our school and the police that my phone was so crap it had been rejected by the mugger.

I was never ideologically opposed to smartphones. Or, at least, I wasn’t at first.

It all began one spring afternoon in 2006, when a group of friends and I were mugged. The assailant demanded our phones and wallets but when I handed him my Nokia 1110, whose keypad was strapped to it with an elastic band, the mugger’s response was categorical: “Nah, mate.”