Get Smart

For Christmas, my roommate gave me a new phone. That would not normally be something I would even mention, but I have actively resisted “smart” phones. Lily has been trying to convert me to the newfangled technology for years. I always insisted that my 2009 Nokia did everything I needed a phone to do. I have never had any particular loyalty to Nokia, but it was a good phone. I dropped it more than a few times without complaint and it never had any problems with sudden Hong Kong rain showers. If I needed to use a computer, I had one at home. My phone could always get a signal to send and receive phone calls. Back in my day, that was what phones were for.

A few months ago, I was in a bit of a car accident. My passenger and I came out of it in a few pieces. Everything we had with us was lost, including my trusty cell phone. There is no way to know if it survived. It could be lying in the weeds somewhere or broken into a million pieces. Maybe it even found a new home with someone who picked it up and thought it was a Star Trek communicator.

Whatever the fate of the old phone, I needed a new one. As it turns out, no one around here sells 20-year-old cell phones anymore. They have “retro” phones that look like old cell phones, but they have all the “smart” bells and whistles. I was open to not having any kind of phone at all. I used to live my life without being tethered 24/7. I'm sure I could do it again.

Lily went and got me a new phone anyway. It looks new, it feels new, and it does a million things that I will never use. The first thing I did with it was delete all the apps that wanted me to download/setup Facebook, WeChat, Twitter, Alibaba, Google+, Taobao, Instagram, Pinterest, Didi, Foursquare, WhatsApp, Linkedin and a million other things I will never use. It has Skype, which I used to use on my computer fairly frequently. But I thought these new phones were supposed to make Skype obsolete.

Now I can text like everyone else. My old phone could send text messages, but the numeric keyboard required redundant typing. “Good night” was 46666663066444444, and you had to wait for the letter to appear. If you typed too quickly, it would simply rotate through the options on that key; G, H, I, 4, G, H, I, 4. It could receive texts, but none of the smiley faces ever showed up.

Being able to hold text conversations does not impress me. I hate the way most people type like 5-year-olds when they text. I always read “ur” as “err”, and I really don't care wmam. Gaby Hoffmann's acronym crazy character in Sleepless in Seattle was supposed to be a joke, not a premonition.

The only thing I like about the new phone is the camera. I also lost my camera in the accident. It was a decent SLR, and I knew I would miss it more than the phone. The phone camera is not nearly as good, but it is convenient. I will probably use the maps the next time I go somewhere new, but I certainly don't need them here.

2009-2017
RIP