It all started when I was about 14 years old. The cell phone was just starting to become mainstream, in that the normal person could get a cellular phone instead of just corporate big-wigs. A few of my friends had gotten them, and I wanted one soooooo bad!! I would search constantly on Amazon for cool phones I wanted. I knew my parents would never let me do one with a contract, and it was then I discovered the pay-as-you-go plans. I think it was AT&T who first cam up with the GO Phone, where you could pay as little as $10 for a card with 30 minutes of talk time. At 14, I knew I would never use a lot of minutes, I would mainly use the phone for emergencies or incase I needed to stay after school for some reason. So I saved my money and I began to prepare a list of the pros to having a cell phone to convince my parents. Then luck struck! Amazon was running a deal where I could get a prepaid phone for free with rebates!! It was a few weeks before my birthday, so that in addition with my "pros" list, my parents went ahead and ordered the phone for me as a present. I was so excited the day it arrived! I assembled everything and the next morning my mom called AT&T to get it activated! I was the proud new owner of a cell phone!
Then, a couple years later when my sister left for college, my parents decided to get cell phones for us all on a family plan on Verizon Wireless. I got the popular Motorola "bean" phone. It was so awesome. I discovered how to text and I didn't have to do the silly prepaid thing any more. After a year though I started to get bored with it, my sister having gotten a COLOR screen phone (that was the new technology then), and I decided I wanted to upgrade too. My sister had somehow convinced the Verizon guys to let her upgrade early. I wasn't so lucky and had to buy mine on Ebay (the LG VX6000) for a lot of money. But I was content to have one of the coolest phones on the market, and I loved it. Then a year after that I left for college and got to upgrade again. This time it was an Audiovox flip phone. I liked it for two weeks, then I hated it. It was super bulky and not really any better than my LG, so I got another new phone on Ebay which was also an Audiovox, but much more streamlined. It was a good phone. Even more technology advances were made over that time in phones like the addition of MP3 players, higher megapixel cameras, and improved internet. I was excellent at texting, people were always commenting on how fast my fingers flew around the key pad. I began researching the phones I would get to replace my Audiovox and I really wanted to stick with LG. LG had already served me well, their phones are good quality and hold up well. It was still a hard choice since most phones all had the same features. But I ended up with the LG VX8700 which I've kept the whole two years. I've never had any complaints with it, and never got bored which was a problem with phones I had before.
So now the time has arrived for me to get another new phone. Now the technology is focusing around touch screens. The hot phone of the moment was the Apple iPhone which was an iPod, phone and internet device rolled into one. I wouldn't mind getting and iPhone, but I hate AT&T so until Verizon carries it I won't get it. But I liked the idea of a touch screen, and was all set on trying out the LG Dare, which was definitely not at the same level as the iPhone, but seemed pretty cool anyway. I'd always wanted to get a Blackberry also, but didn't want to spend an extra $30 a month for the higher plan. But then news reached my ears about this new Blackberry coming out that was a touch screen phone, the Blackberry Storm. I was super excited to see it. The touch screen was different than any other phone. Instead of tapping the screen, you actually pushed down on it, which sounded really cool to me. It was said to be the iPhone killer, which while it competes there will always be those diehard loyal fanatics who will never let the iPhone die anyway. But after reading Cnet.com's review and user reviews I wasn't sure about the Storm. It was released to early in order to make the Christmas market and therefore had/has some bugs. But reading more and more reviews it seems like the bugs have been worked out. Apparently it has a slow accelerometer and the camera sucks. Fortunately, though Verizon has a 30 day policy to choose a phone, so if I don't like it I'll get the LG Dare. But I think it'll really be useful in Alaska with internet. I pay $60/month for limited megabyte, slow as molasses internet. With a Blackberry I'll pay $30 extra on my phone bill with almost full browsing capabilities.
But the point of this blog isn't really a review of the Storm, just mainly a chronicle of people's enthusiasm for new technology. And if you think I'm bad, remember there are millions that are a million times worse! Those weird "techies" who constantly have to have the most current hot electronic toy. I remember when portable CD players were all the rage and when the iPod came out I thought it was stupid. I figured, what's the big deal about carrying around a folder of CD's? HA! How wrong I was! It's amazing to see my 100+ selection of CD's shrunk down into a pocket size device! I currently have 1,951 songs, which averages out to over 150 CD's! And now we have cell phones that take pictures, shoot video, play music, browse the internet, give us directions, look up nearby restaurants, and more. Amazing isn't it?
2 comments:
Wow. I love how wells you knew yours phones and which did exactly which and when and whatnot. My cell phone history is as follows: I got my first one halfway through my freshman year of college, but it mysteriously disappeared about a year later. I bought a new one of the same model on ebay but it stopped working. A friend's contract renewed and he gave me his old one (same carrier) and it survived about 6 months until it experienced one too many rainy runs. That was the first phone I regularly texted on. I got a brand new phone at my own expense this summer, and the hinge on it broke a few months later (twas a flip phone) and I still managed to work with that until it broke in the same way my second phone had (couldn't hear anyone). I decided that perhaps ruuning with cell phones (even if they're not dropped) may be bad for them. I went to get a new phone, only to find out that the hinge breakage had been due to a manufacturer's defect, hooray! So i got a new one for free!
THEN a week later it started turning off at really random and inconvenient times. Like when I used it as an alarm to wake up early for work. Sadness. So I took it back in, complained, and finally finally FINALLY got a functional phone. Oi vey.
I can text, call, take pictures and video on it, and it's red like a big round beetle! Mmm!
That's my chronicle of the cell. Sorry if I rambled. I just think my apparent tendencies toward cell phone destruction contrast rather amusingly with your cell phone prowess. Cheerio!
dang! you DO go through a lot!
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