My sims usually have at least a landline phone. They get a cellphone if they roll a want for one, or if I think it makes sense for them to have it. For example, someone higher up on the business or politics ladder would probably have one. Fortunately, I don't have to play 'hunt the landline', as I have a mod that adds a 'call' option to every sim. If I don't see the phone right off, I can use 'call' to have them hunt it down for me! (And if there is no option I know I forgot to install a landline.)

Most of my sims have landline phones in their houses. I don't know why... Maybe nostalgia or maybe it's a... Sims 2 "thing" because I don't use them for my Sims 3 sims (I delete them from all the EA premade houses in my Sims 3 game, lol!). These days most Sims 2 sims have, also, a cell phone because I have Monique's hacked computer and the online shopping makes it easy to get one. I know that it started with all my teens who roll wishes for cell phones the moment they age up and afterwards I found it stereotypically hilarious when my married Romance sims (mostly the... Dons -Lothario and Baxter- and Daniel, lol!) had a cell phone and hid in the bathroom to make their... "dirty" phone calls, lol!

My Sims all have landline phone, just one Sims have a cell phone as well as land- line. What I don't like about Sims with a cell phone is the way the ringing look it's like their body somewhere is ringing. lol

To me, the Noyin looks like a BlackBerry. Which is still 12 years out of date, lol.

As for me, I've mostly been using the landline as of late, mainly because I've been to lazy to send them to the cell phone store.

Quite a lot of people have said their Sims get a mobile (cellphone) if they want one. At §149 it's not an insignificant purchase for a lot of my Sims, so, while noting that they'd like a 'phone, I feel I also have to consider whether they can really afford it. What do you do if money is tight? Personally I couldn't let a Sim buy a mobile 'phone, if I knew that would mean not being able to buy groceries, or having their furniture repossessed. Also, what do you do if the want to buy a 'phone rolls away when your Sim arrives at the shop with the SellaFone machine? Do they just buy it anyway? It could be interpreted as them changing their mind. (Possibly they change their mind when they see the §149 price tag!?)

I'm always surprised that some people think their Sims are too rich, and use mods to make them poorer. Without any such mods, I have a surfeit of poor Sims, and none of my Sims has ever grown really rich in normal gameplay. Most of mine struggle to get past the JAM level. (JAM = Just About Managing!)

I mostly stick with landline phones, but once in a while, I get a cell phone for story reasons. I had a sim who stole all her parents' household funds to go to college. Then she flunked out after a year, so in shame, she settled down in the woods and roughed it. So it made more sense for her to own a cellphone.

(Eventually, she and her parents made up, but she was happier in her little wood hut with outhouse, "hose" shower, and oil lantern, than in a tiny house full of siblings.)

Well, I suppose I should have said they get one if they can afford it . It's true that if buying one would put them in a pinch, or they simply don't have enough on hand, they probably won't get one. Not unless they're the sort to be reckless with their money. My sims do get to make mistakes (and boy do they make some doozies sometimes).

As for what do if the want rerolls, that's not too much of an issue in my game. I use Monique's Hacked Computers which allow sims to shop online. They get the phone 'delivered' right to their inventory! If they don't have a computer but do have enough to buy a phone, I'll assess what other wants they have at the time. If they don't have any significant wants that I'm afraid to lose, I lock the phone want and send them off to a community lot where they can buy it. If they do already have a locked want I don't want to lose, then it just comes down to how many times the want pops up again (after it rolls away) and how annoyed I get with that. Sometimes, I give them one to stop it from cropping up. Sometimes, I say "Tough cookies, you changed your mind too many times, I'm not sending you out again"



I wonder if it comes down to the version of the game people have? I think some of the careers that were added later have bigger bonuses and salaries. So if you have a sim that keeps rising in job levels, they can really rake in the dough.

$149 Simoleans really don't cost that much for a working class sim family to obtain a cell phone. Usually a 2nd level job is good enough to afford buying a sim cell phone after one days worth of work even without a promotion, unless your sim is currently using one of the downloaded career tracks that make less then $90 Simoleans a day and only working 4 times a week or less. One such career that is like that is the MTS Rapper Career where you need a level 4-5 or 6 and a ton of skill and friends just to get $400 a working day pay, but most careers even the downloadable careers make plenty enough to afford a sim Cell phone for $149 Simoleans.

I will warn you the MTS Rapper Career starts your sims off on working 7 days a week and $40 Simoleans a day requiring a lot of skill in order to get promoted to $60-70 Simoleans a day only so it's better to have rappers start off in group homes or small homes rather than large apartments

The price of a cell phone in the game has no basis in real life, that's for sure-I mean, you can buy a dirt cheap phone but most are $500 or more and that's just the phone without the service.
I bought mine through Tracfone, but that means you have to buy literally what they're offering-and $200 is about as cheap as you can get, like the pixels.

All my people get a cellphone when they grow into teens. Sometimes they receive it as a gift interaction. The wants to buy personal electronics would come up and occupy valuable slots. I don't like the mp3 player or the games device, but usually buy those when they want them. I usually add a wall phone for completion, but rarely use it. A great benefit from using a cellphone is that I immediately know for whom out of a few people in the house the call is, and don't have to drop what I was doing only to find out the call is not for me. The wall phone can be annoying, ringing for an hour while the "pixels" are studying, and the target is in room -1. Before I learned modding, everyone always bought at least two cellphones, so that they could queue up another call while currently using their phone and have it removed from the inventory. Sometimes more than two because occasionally the phone in their hand would get lost due to an unknown bug.

To me, the wide aspect ratio resembles a Nokia 6600. But of course the price and functionality are those of a basic phone. I think the game portrays a time period when phones were no longer a luxury, and before they became pocket computers.

I give them cellphones because it bugs me when I forget about the landline after moving them in, and then my other sims find out that they cannot call them. And then I have to go back just to give them a phone!

But I really miss the landline. I haven't used one in real life for ages. I love the feel of the old times in TS2.

Mine get landlines, because most of my sims are retro (as is the entire game now!) and I am a traditionalist. Some of them get cellphones, but they usually have to go out to buy them. It only happens if it's convenient, they are determined, and they have plenty of funds.

Every house gets a landline, just so everyone is reachable because I'm not sure about kids actually. Can you still call them if there isn't a landline in the house? In my medieval hood, I just put the landline in the servants' quarters.

Yes you need a landline to call kids. If you try to call someone without them having a landline or cellphone you get a message "X doesn't have a phone! You can't call somebody without a phone!"

Sims in the sim bin do not have phones (maybe if they have cellphones?) and if you move them into a "dummy lot" (e.g. to make townies local to a subhood) you must place a phone on that lot or people can't call them.

Since I typically have multi-sim households, a house phone makes the most sense.

I also figured out when doing poverty challenges that a phone is the cheapest way to get food if your sim is flat broke - either by calling for Chinese, or a taxi to make BBQ at a community lot. (This was before walk to lot!) Therefore, I consider it an essential survival object. You also do not want to find your sim is phoneless when a fire breaks out!

I seem to recall that there was a case where the cell phone didn't ring, and only wall phones did. I think it might have been the Novel before I modded it. At one stage I also added wall phones to upscale looking community lots, like they did with the shobby lots, but I lost that neighborhood since. In Downtown I sometimes add a payphone by the roadside. I used to see those in reality years ago.

There is in fact a mod for this, by BoilingOil, called Phones for all. Extremely helpful if your teen who went off to college didn't buy a cell but needs to attend her cousin's wedding before she ages up by moving into the dorms.

I always get my Sims landlines. I like them more. I only get Sims cell phones if they roll the want to buy one as teenagers. Otherwise, home phone.