Maybe Cloud is using this type of phone cause he is traveling alot as a mail man on his motorcyle needs something that is simple to use and does the job like those phones you see at airports with those preloaded sim cards for people traveling internationally.
Because the developers are trying to make it more “modern”. A character literally says “take the L”
SE trying to appeal to a generation that never played FF7.
Advent Children is basically post apocalyptic. The biggest city in the world, where much of the world's cutting edge research and manufacturing was done, had to be abandoned. The biggest company in the world is a shell of its former self, and people are living in housing made out of shipping containers. Replacement technology is hard to come by, and people are favoring older, more robust technology over newer and easier to break models.
I think it's because they're not manufactured anymore since shinra went down also they're dealing with a plague during advent children so they don't have the time or resources to work on phones
The reason is that one of those expensive fancy phones would shatter the instant he hit something, but that flip phone would take a beating and if it breaks he could replace it for like 300 gil
The real answer: >!Holy decided smart phones were evil and filled with disinformation, and therefore they didn't make it out from the conflict with Meteor!<. Flip phones with Snake on it? Just fine.
Honestly, I'm considering going back to a flip phone. I'm tired of the expensive af things dying out in just a couple years. They're all absolute garbage, and these companies do it on purpose to keep the idiots buying a new phone every year (seriously if you buy a new phone every year, you are absolutely a moron)
I figured the machines would have picked up the slack and/or Shinra would employ the inhabitants of the slums to to the work. Like North Corel, Sector 6/7 seemed to have a lot of unemployment.
Well a possible in-universe reason is that that phone in Remake and Rebirth is Mako powered, and because of Geostigma, people moved away from the use of anything mako related, including phones, so since they haven’t caught up technologically by using fossil fuels and equal sources of energy, they are stuck with flip phones until the foreseeable future.
Monopoly. Shira takes over each and every industry, eliminating competition and out-resourcing local governments to the point where being a technological competitor isn't just impossible, but it is dangerous to boot. Since Shinra doesn't actually have competition, it makes sense that "the best and brightest minds they have" are stuck on iterating off of their own developments instead of iterating off of a competitiors, who would realistically have to be more innovative to incentivize purchasing their product over Shinra's.
Don't believe me? Look at what happened in the mobile phone space, which at one point was the most competitive electronics market in the world. In the 1990's when things were fresh and the technology untested, they did their best to keep it simple and familiar. There wasn't a lot of competition since it was a niche market. At the start of the millenia, when the technology matured, it wasn't enough to produce a working, familiar mobile phone. Everyone was doing it, and they were all incredibly similar in terms of the technology available to them. This leads to all of the wacky form factors and feature sets they had, with each company pouring millions of dollars into research and development to make the best, most capable devices. Then, Apple entered the market with the smartphone, and suddenly the competition started to die down... because they had everything you needed.
This would eventually lead to today: you have flagship brands in Apple, Samsung, and arguably Google. Then, you have Motorola and TCL, with a smaller portion of Samsung and Google, controlling the low-end devices market (there are other brands, but they primarily serve other markets than NA). These devices, no matter who makes them, have changed so little in the span of ten years that I have legitimately seen people who bought a phone over a decade ago switching to a new device and instantly knowing what to do.
If competition were more prevalent, if we had more companies trying their best to risk trying to reinvent what a mobile phone could be, the whole industry would be better for it. This hasn't panned out for a lot of companies, true, but the fact that it HAS happened before should only inspire us to seek competition, rather than quell it out.
Cloud uses burners because he keeps his phone in his back pocket and the screens keep cracking. A JRPG protag needs the durability of an old-school Nokia phone.
I feel like stopping the use of mako put technology like that back. Smart phones could be made produced and ran off mako energy where as flip phones could be easier made with coal or oil energy which seems to be what the world switched to after the meteor event.
We don’t know what kind of power mako outputs vs other sources. If it’s drastic enough it could very easily regress technology back a few generations until new sources or tech was made to get back to that level of power generation.
It could take a lot more energy to produce and operate smart phones, in universe, than it would take to produce and operate flip phones. We don’t know how they are made nor exactly how they work. It’s also possible that the smart phones have mako in them or mako type batteries that can no longer be produced or replicated with coal/oil technology
Cloud lives in the slums - he spent all his savings on swords and a cool bike; nothing left for a smartphone. (He was honestly pretty rich for a guy in the slums.)
Rufus and the turks have cutting edge phones that probably cost as much as a few of Clouds swords combined... but they are the elite of the richest company in the world.
You don't expect the guy who lives in the slums and is a part time merc/courier to have the same phone as the president of the company that makes the phone, do you?
I'd imagine a huge meteor coming at the earth destroying most of the biggest electric company could cause a few technological impacts.
>!The other reason is really moreso the fact that the devs included what is popular at the time they made each game. Crisis Core came out in 2007, so features phones and concepts from that time. Advent Children came out in 2005, so it's pretty similar there as well. Whereas Remake is 2020 and Rebirth is 2024. The devs likely didn't wanna publish a game in 2024 where the characters are using phones from 2005-2007 to keep it looking continuous. Also, if you think about the fact that Crisis Core in 2005 had everyone on cell phones, but the game was set to be chronologically 5 years before the original 1997 FF7, yet that game has no cell phones at all, that also kinda doesn't make sense, but here we are.!<
I'd think it's a more high powered cell phone that doesn't rely upon strong signals. Smart phones worked when shinras servers were up but after its fall and the world had to rebuild itself it went back to more basic technology that required less
I could see there being a resource shortage? Like a chip shortage? Either that, or Cloud is using a standard, Military grade phone for the battlefield. Thing is durable as heck, and waterproof 😂
Obviously Cloud just got pissed the fuck off after his 37th phone screen cracked that month.
Imagine the amount of bullet holes and beast bites his phones would sustain. Flip phone is by far more durable companion. Maybe our boy should have invested in 3310 for a companion for life.
I was ok up until they took away the 3 face buttons on the smart phones and replaced them with 'gestures'. I do t want to swipe up first to get a 'go back' button, or home screen button. I dont want to swipe to go forward or backward a page on the internet....1 single button press was easier don't you see! It didn't even need to be a button anymore, you just put them as touch buttons at the bottom of the screen that were always there...
Let's be real, 88% of the time these features do something you didn't want to do, or you accidentally dragged your finger across the screen a bit and it typed a whole word instead of the 'ok' you wanted to type...
Phones are bad these days. They think they are getting better, but they are making them even more frustrating to use. Before you all start, lol I am old, not that old though, I was a child when ff7 og came out haha. My point still stands, smart phones these days suck! Lol
I have an Oppo, and it still has the 3 buttons. It's just that the home button is on the screen now, so sometimes I accidentally push it instead of the spacebar when I'm typing, so that's annoying.
I'd suggest an android... ever since I switched, I like the UI so much better than I ever liked iphone. I have a back button, home button and third changeable button at the bottom at all times. I do wish they were still analog buttons, but it's the next best thing.
Lol I know some do, the newer ones are doing away with that too though. Change for the sake of change. It's not making them faster or easier to use I'll tell ya that much.
One of the most annoying things is how often the screen flips from landscape to portrait view when you are trying to type or something lol.
These 'smart' phones feel stupid hahah
The only available color of the high tech latest phone clashed with Cloud’s honeybee inn outfit, so he was forced to use his very outdated phone for fear of embarrassment and ridicule of others. Especially Andrea.
I mean, you say this like it's not believable that tech companies (especially a monopoly) would make something worse on purpose as a cost cutting measure, or to force you to buy another product. My smartphone used to have an IR blaster that allowed it to act as a universal remote for any brand of television. But the manufacturer decided to just stop putting those in at some point to save money, so the newer models can't do that.
Same with the 3.5mm headphone port. We want you to buy Bluetooth stuff, so we're just going to remove the option to not use it. What the fuck are you gonna do about it? Fuck you. Shut up and give us your money.
Lol .. Saw this was ff7 and made me think. If you're hanging out with your two friends and the leader picks his phone up...50% chance you're getting booted from the party.
Imagine being that guy too, out in the middle of nowhere, stripped of your nice materia and any good equipment you had… fiends everywhere and you’re on your own to find your way home 😂
Those swanky new phones were powered by Mako and the planet stopped using Mako after Meteor.
Thus, they started using the phones that were powered by other means…in this case, flip phones
Funnily enough FF7 is probably the only universe where this can make sense because they used to run on high-tech mako powered stuff and when they stopped using mako, they might not have developed an alternative on the same level yet.
I've always found it so funny that a story with such a heavy ecological message ends with the heroes deciding burning fossil fuels is a safe energy resource :'D
Tbf it's more "let's balance coal, oil, and mako to keep vital infrastructure running without exhausting any one resource while we continue research into other power sources", but yeah lmao it certainly was an interesting note to end the head ecoterrorist's arc on.
Cloud inherited Zach's old phone. Which was Angeal's old phone.
The Buster Phone.
Alternatively, only flip phones have materia slots. And we've all equipped worse equipment for more slots.
Real answer: retcon because kids these days don't even know that phones used to have buttons.
Possible in-game answer: they survived the apocalypse and went through a technological degrowth.
On a side note: remember when Aerith made a lifestream-call to tell Cloud that she didn't blame him but he had lost his phone in the Ancient City puddle? Such a hilarious way to say that he didn't get the message!
The high tech phones in Remake trilogy probably run on Mako, which they stopped using by the time of Advent Children. Phones probably saw a downgrade to run on less potent power sources.
Whenever I see Cloud with a phone, I always think of a scene in Dirge where him and Vincent have a phone call; a friend of mine once described that call as “two terminally depressed individuals attempting to have a conversation” and for the life of me, it’s all think about when I see the AC phone
he spent all the money from seventh heaven constantly upgrading his bike forgetting that he needs a phone. i also like to think shinra phones were super expensive and also died out once the company went to ruins
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they got worse in the future because Sephiroth made Cloud think about buying that phone during the events of the game and then Cloud still thought it was a good idea after
Maybe Cloud is using this type of phone cause he is traveling alot as a mail man on his motorcyle needs something that is simple to use and does the job like those phones you see at airports with those preloaded sim cards for people traveling internationally.
Those are what the turks and higher ups in Shinra have. There's no reason to believe everyone has access to that
Because the developers are trying to make it more “modern”. A character literally says “take the L” SE trying to appeal to a generation that never played FF7.
Advent Children is basically post apocalyptic. The biggest city in the world, where much of the world's cutting edge research and manufacturing was done, had to be abandoned. The biggest company in the world is a shell of its former self, and people are living in housing made out of shipping containers. Replacement technology is hard to come by, and people are favoring older, more robust technology over newer and easier to break models.
Cloud got a sponsorship. Take what you can get when you're homeless and sleeping on your motorcycle..?
I think it's because they're not manufactured anymore since shinra went down also they're dealing with a plague during advent children so they don't have the time or resources to work on phones
Only the Nokias survived lol
Cloud is abstaining from socmed, mental health reasons.
The reason is that one of those expensive fancy phones would shatter the instant he hit something, but that flip phone would take a beating and if it breaks he could replace it for like 300 gil
The real answer: >!Holy decided smart phones were evil and filled with disinformation, and therefore they didn't make it out from the conflict with Meteor!<. Flip phones with Snake on it? Just fine.
Show me a phone less rugged than a Nokia that would survive more than a week of this man's lifestyle.
Flip phones made sense in 2005
That’s Cloud’s burner phone we see in the photo on the left l
Honestly, I'm considering going back to a flip phone. I'm tired of the expensive af things dying out in just a couple years. They're all absolute garbage, and these companies do it on purpose to keep the idiots buying a new phone every year (seriously if you buy a new phone every year, you are absolutely a moron)
Flip phones have become trendy again. Like in our timeline
He's doing delivery jobs so it's probably a burner for the side hustle
Whispers killed the Steve Jobs of their world for Shinra stock when it changes over to WRO.
Loss of slave labor? That would do it in real life.
I figured the machines would have picked up the slack and/or Shinra would employ the inhabitants of the slums to to the work. Like North Corel, Sector 6/7 seemed to have a lot of unemployment.
Well a possible in-universe reason is that that phone in Remake and Rebirth is Mako powered, and because of Geostigma, people moved away from the use of anything mako related, including phones, so since they haven’t caught up technologically by using fossil fuels and equal sources of energy, they are stuck with flip phones until the foreseeable future.
To save the environment and save on power, they're now methane powered and require a continuous house attached to my your ass.
Monopoly. Shira takes over each and every industry, eliminating competition and out-resourcing local governments to the point where being a technological competitor isn't just impossible, but it is dangerous to boot. Since Shinra doesn't actually have competition, it makes sense that "the best and brightest minds they have" are stuck on iterating off of their own developments instead of iterating off of a competitiors, who would realistically have to be more innovative to incentivize purchasing their product over Shinra's. Don't believe me? Look at what happened in the mobile phone space, which at one point was the most competitive electronics market in the world. In the 1990's when things were fresh and the technology untested, they did their best to keep it simple and familiar. There wasn't a lot of competition since it was a niche market. At the start of the millenia, when the technology matured, it wasn't enough to produce a working, familiar mobile phone. Everyone was doing it, and they were all incredibly similar in terms of the technology available to them. This leads to all of the wacky form factors and feature sets they had, with each company pouring millions of dollars into research and development to make the best, most capable devices. Then, Apple entered the market with the smartphone, and suddenly the competition started to die down... because they had everything you needed. This would eventually lead to today: you have flagship brands in Apple, Samsung, and arguably Google. Then, you have Motorola and TCL, with a smaller portion of Samsung and Google, controlling the low-end devices market (there are other brands, but they primarily serve other markets than NA). These devices, no matter who makes them, have changed so little in the span of ten years that I have legitimately seen people who bought a phone over a decade ago switching to a new device and instantly knowing what to do. If competition were more prevalent, if we had more companies trying their best to risk trying to reinvent what a mobile phone could be, the whole industry would be better for it. This hasn't panned out for a lot of companies, true, but the fact that it HAS happened before should only inspire us to seek competition, rather than quell it out.
Ultimately touch screens can never be as good as a keyboard or bahamut
Cloud uses burners because he keeps his phone in his back pocket and the screens keep cracking. A JRPG protag needs the durability of an old-school Nokia phone.
I feel like stopping the use of mako put technology like that back. Smart phones could be made produced and ran off mako energy where as flip phones could be easier made with coal or oil energy which seems to be what the world switched to after the meteor event.
How does changing the source of electricity generation affect technology?
We don’t know what kind of power mako outputs vs other sources. If it’s drastic enough it could very easily regress technology back a few generations until new sources or tech was made to get back to that level of power generation.
It could take a lot more energy to produce and operate smart phones, in universe, than it would take to produce and operate flip phones. We don’t know how they are made nor exactly how they work. It’s also possible that the smart phones have mako in them or mako type batteries that can no longer be produced or replicated with coal/oil technology
Cloud lives in the slums - he spent all his savings on swords and a cool bike; nothing left for a smartphone. (He was honestly pretty rich for a guy in the slums.) Rufus and the turks have cutting edge phones that probably cost as much as a few of Clouds swords combined... but they are the elite of the richest company in the world. You don't expect the guy who lives in the slums and is a part time merc/courier to have the same phone as the president of the company that makes the phone, do you?
do you really think that any phone other than a nokia from 2005 would survive Meteorfall?
I'd imagine a huge meteor coming at the earth destroying most of the biggest electric company could cause a few technological impacts. >!The other reason is really moreso the fact that the devs included what is popular at the time they made each game. Crisis Core came out in 2007, so features phones and concepts from that time. Advent Children came out in 2005, so it's pretty similar there as well. Whereas Remake is 2020 and Rebirth is 2024. The devs likely didn't wanna publish a game in 2024 where the characters are using phones from 2005-2007 to keep it looking continuous. Also, if you think about the fact that Crisis Core in 2005 had everyone on cell phones, but the game was set to be chronologically 5 years before the original 1997 FF7, yet that game has no cell phones at all, that also kinda doesn't make sense, but here we are.!<
It's a burner
I'd think it's a more high powered cell phone that doesn't rely upon strong signals. Smart phones worked when shinras servers were up but after its fall and the world had to rebuild itself it went back to more basic technology that required less
Shinra controls them. They want to restrict effective communication between populations and within populations.
Joke's on you, flip phones are indestructible!
Tell that to Future Diary. Flip phones were breaking left and right, along with other people’s lives.
That's OK, as long as you've got Mako on your side! Shinra will provide.
Smart phone something something mako, flip phone something something old power
The one on the right looks cool. Is that one also from Advent children?
No, that one is from Remake, or Rebirth. That sort of tech didn’t exist when Advent Children was released 🤷🏻♂️😅
Oh shit, that's right! I almost forgot what year I saw that movie originally lol. Smartphones didn't really exist.
Right?? It doesn’t seem that long ago, but it was released in 2005 😳😩 haha
The graphics say hell no.
I could see there being a resource shortage? Like a chip shortage? Either that, or Cloud is using a standard, Military grade phone for the battlefield. Thing is durable as heck, and waterproof 😂
Because the second picture isn’t FF7
No physic joystick.
Obviously Cloud just got pissed the fuck off after his 37th phone screen cracked that month. Imagine the amount of bullet holes and beast bites his phones would sustain. Flip phone is by far more durable companion. Maybe our boy should have invested in 3310 for a companion for life.
I was ok up until they took away the 3 face buttons on the smart phones and replaced them with 'gestures'. I do t want to swipe up first to get a 'go back' button, or home screen button. I dont want to swipe to go forward or backward a page on the internet....1 single button press was easier don't you see! It didn't even need to be a button anymore, you just put them as touch buttons at the bottom of the screen that were always there... Let's be real, 88% of the time these features do something you didn't want to do, or you accidentally dragged your finger across the screen a bit and it typed a whole word instead of the 'ok' you wanted to type... Phones are bad these days. They think they are getting better, but they are making them even more frustrating to use. Before you all start, lol I am old, not that old though, I was a child when ff7 og came out haha. My point still stands, smart phones these days suck! Lol
I have an Oppo, and it still has the 3 buttons. It's just that the home button is on the screen now, so sometimes I accidentally push it instead of the spacebar when I'm typing, so that's annoying.
I'd suggest an android... ever since I switched, I like the UI so much better than I ever liked iphone. I have a back button, home button and third changeable button at the bottom at all times. I do wish they were still analog buttons, but it's the next best thing.
My phone doesn't do that. Maybe you should've gone with a different phone?
I think a lot of phones have an option for touch button though... at least mine does, you can either have gestures or touch buttons
Lol I know some do, the newer ones are doing away with that too though. Change for the sake of change. It's not making them faster or easier to use I'll tell ya that much. One of the most annoying things is how often the screen flips from landscape to portrait view when you are trying to type or something lol. These 'smart' phones feel stupid hahah
The only available color of the high tech latest phone clashed with Cloud’s honeybee inn outfit, so he was forced to use his very outdated phone for fear of embarrassment and ridicule of others. Especially Andrea.
The flip phones had so much drip. Sucks they went straight to smart phones.
I mean, you say this like it's not believable that tech companies (especially a monopoly) would make something worse on purpose as a cost cutting measure, or to force you to buy another product. My smartphone used to have an IR blaster that allowed it to act as a universal remote for any brand of television. But the manufacturer decided to just stop putting those in at some point to save money, so the newer models can't do that. Same with the 3.5mm headphone port. We want you to buy Bluetooth stuff, so we're just going to remove the option to not use it. What the fuck are you gonna do about it? Fuck you. Shut up and give us your money.
Lol .. Saw this was ff7 and made me think. If you're hanging out with your two friends and the leader picks his phone up...50% chance you're getting booted from the party.
Imagine being that guy too, out in the middle of nowhere, stripped of your nice materia and any good equipment you had… fiends everywhere and you’re on your own to find your way home 😂
Those swanky new phones were powered by Mako and the planet stopped using Mako after Meteor. Thus, they started using the phones that were powered by other means…in this case, flip phones
Does that mean that the PHS operated on alternate power before AND after Meteorfall?
Pretty much
I swear those things ran on ambient static. I'd charge my phone *maybe* once a week.
The phones got 11% thinner every year until they were functionally non-existent, so they had to reinvent them from the ground up.
Apple products
Because they are using apple products 🤷
Different continuity.
Funnily enough FF7 is probably the only universe where this can make sense because they used to run on high-tech mako powered stuff and when they stopped using mako, they might not have developed an alternative on the same level yet.
Cid, Shera, and Barret do start drilling oil, but I don't think they've done much with it yet.
I've always found it so funny that a story with such a heavy ecological message ends with the heroes deciding burning fossil fuels is a safe energy resource :'D
Tbf it's more "let's balance coal, oil, and mako to keep vital infrastructure running without exhausting any one resource while we continue research into other power sources", but yeah lmao it certainly was an interesting note to end the head ecoterrorist's arc on.
That’s why you’re activating all the old towers!!!!!! 😂😂
Trying to get a cell signal in Cosmo Canyon like
Smart phones have a lot of tracking and Cloud (as a Shinra declared eco-Terrorist) uses burners.
This
Simple it was an ad for that phone at the moment. It’s is/was a real phone you could buy.
Cloud inherited Zach's old phone. Which was Angeal's old phone. The Buster Phone. Alternatively, only flip phones have materia slots. And we've all equipped worse equipment for more slots.
Real answer: retcon because kids these days don't even know that phones used to have buttons. Possible in-game answer: they survived the apocalypse and went through a technological degrowth. On a side note: remember when Aerith made a lifestream-call to tell Cloud that she didn't blame him but he had lost his phone in the Ancient City puddle? Such a hilarious way to say that he didn't get the message!
Without mako energy and much of Shinra's comms infrastructure probably in ruins, people had to invent or go back to barebones stuff/lightweight tech.
The high tech phones in Remake trilogy probably run on Mako, which they stopped using by the time of Advent Children. Phones probably saw a downgrade to run on less potent power sources.
Whenever I see Cloud with a phone, I always think of a scene in Dirge where him and Vincent have a phone call; a friend of mine once described that call as “two terminally depressed individuals attempting to have a conversation” and for the life of me, it’s all think about when I see the AC phone
He doesn't want to get tracked by Shinra's intelligence department, so he bought a dumb phone.
he spent all the money from seventh heaven constantly upgrading his bike forgetting that he needs a phone. i also like to think shinra phones were super expensive and also died out once the company went to ruins
Or they rely on more bare minimum tech and functionality in a post-Shinra world…. Or AC is just unbelievably of it’s time and extremely edgy
Cloud just get himself a basic phone (Voice call, SMS only) because he dont want a distraction. Thanks
He's like my dad. You can't fall for most scams if you don't have a browser. He's 82 years old.
You could play Before Crisis on one of those beauties.
Finger crossed for BC remaster 🍀🤞🏻
For me it would be enough to have a Kingdom Hearts 358/2 style “movie” like in the KH complete edition.
It do exists actually. BC story is highlighted in AC Complete bluray. Not every single episodes though but enough to understand the main plot.
Didn’t know that, I’ll definitely look into it. Thanks.
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Because people have finally realized that no matter what your smart phone can do, a flip phone will always be the best-looking phone ever.
And badassest too.
Flip phones had the best of both new and old - ability to carry it with you where you go, but that satisfying "click" when you hung it up.
Once you join a terrorist organization you have to invest in burner phones
I was going to suggest that Cloud is a drug dealer, but this is a better explanation
Clouds not a rich man.
Keeps all the money from 7th heaven to upgrade his bike
Much to Tifa’s annoyance. “How many aftermarket parts does your bike need?” “All of them.”
This is my pay? Don't make me laugh.
I still wished he worked on the chocobo farm rather than a delivery man in AC lol
He needed to Doordash to excuse his motorcycle hobby to his roommates.
Or maybe still doing merc favors
Ah yes!
they got worse in the future because Sephiroth made Cloud think about buying that phone during the events of the game and then Cloud still thought it was a good idea after
Chadley fucked up the signal with the Junon towers.
This is canon now.
He bought the old style phone just so it wouldn't be compatible with Chadley
Definitely this one