This is going to be so materialistic and un-philosophical. Also kind of old hat to most of my geek friends. Sorry.
I upgraded my phone yesterday, Yes, I got rid of my old rotary-dial steam-powered cellphone and sprang for a nice new shiny smartphone. And before you think, “Wow, Stephanie, you came out of your cave!” let me tell you I have staunchly resisted getting anything more capable than something portable that would make and receive voice calls. No text, no internet, no calendars, no camera. Just voice. There were lots of good reasons for this. Unwanted texts would cost me money; calendars and such services would mean sharing too much of my private life on servers that already know quite enough about me. The cameras in most phones are terrible. Being a photographer, I have to say I care about such things. Plus, and perhaps most importantly, the plan required to support a smartphone was about twice what I was paying for my voice-only phone.
Until yesterday. I finally bit the bullet. I walked in, said I wanted my free phone upgrade and didn’t want to cough up for a data plan. What I walked out with was a brand spanking new smartphone which ended up costing me less money for more features, a good camera, a usable if smallish keyboard and a huge touchscreen. The best part? All the internet stuff like calendars and email and fancy apps only work if I’m in range of a WiFi hot spot; there is no data plan. The rest of the time it’s voice and text, just like I want it. This means I don’t have to carry my entire life around with me if I don’t want to. I have a pile of numbers that I can call from anywhere in Canada as local calls – handy when I go to Montreal in a few weeks.
Yes, it’s a smartphone. Yes, it tried to outsmart me for a while. It had no idea who it was up against, however.
I’m grateful for a bunch of things – thank you to LG for coming up with a great phone, thank you to the representative who knew his stuff and pointed me to the right phone right away. Thank you that I can now do Yahoo Messenger in bed! Thank you that I can now check email in bed first thing in the morning – oh, wait…