A few weeks ago, part of the hinge on my cell phone broke off. Needless to say, I’ve been handling my phone with kid gloves as of late. Don’t get me wrong, this has been one amazingly durable little phone. Until the hinge finally broke, this phone had survived over 4 years of abuse (I must’ve dropped it at least 50 times) and even now it still works perfectly.
Alas, all good things must come to an end, and there comes a time when the workhorses of today outlive their usefulness for tomorrow. That, and it’s just too damn hard to use a flip phone with a broken hinge. So, I’ve decided it’s time to put this phone to rest, and I’ve been looking at new cell phones/cell phone companies these past few days. I use Sprint-Nextel (which used to be SprintPCS but… isn’t anymore… I guess) and am actually quite happy with it, so unless I find an incredible plan with one of those other guys, I’ll probably stick with Sprint. The only other carrier I’ve marginally considered is T-Mobile, but their phones don’t strike me as being all that memorable, so why go through the hassle of switching?
Speaking of phones – what the hell? There are way too many cell phone reviews out there that read like this: “This phone sucks because all you can use it for is a phone. It doesn’t have all the other things that phones should have now, like a radio, music player, music player controls, video player, camera, high-speed internet, personal calendar assistant, scheduler, built-in microwave, four wheel drive, nuclear weapon launcher, the location of Jimmy Hoffa’s body, and the cure for cancer. What the hell were they thinking? This phone sucks and you should spend your money on a better phone.”
I think I was one of the 12 people in the entire country who bemoaned the whole camera phone fiasco. I even complained that color screens were just a sleazy way to make people spend more on batteries. I vividly remember complaining that having all these gimmicky “features” on a phone was excessive and that all I ever really needed was a small flip phone with good call quality. Of course, nobody listened to me, and it’s gotten worse now; not only have all these crazy features become standard, they’re practically treated as an entitlement, along with 50 billion other needless gadgets and gimmicks. We have a name for these things: bloat.
When the hell did a regular, run-of-the-mill cell phone become the pariah of cell phones? We are so spoiled.