Not An Expert

 

The dates are a bit misleading, I killed one in July of last year, this was actually the insurance replacement.

The Infuse was my first Android phone and my first GIANT phone. I was a serial killer of Blackberries, and had maxed out but did not kill an iPhone 3G before I got the Infuse, which was purchased out of iPhone frustration.  As a heavy Google user, my inability to get full cooperation between the iPhone which was old and slow and Google products sent me running to the AT&T store. The crafty folks there talked me into an Android, the Infuse.  I thought it was da BOMB for all of two days before it started cutting up. Shutting down, dropping calls, battery dying fast.  I cussed out AT&T repeatedly, went to the factory story to get it fixed, tried to update from Froyo (remember that) to Gingerbread and the update failed, experiencing problems upon problems.   In spite of all that and requiring a replacement, I made it work.

My smartphone is my main computer and my part-time camera. I dog it like every phone that’s ever been in my possession.  This one was particularly nice because of the screen size and the resolution, it takes great pictures.  I’ve written blog posts on it, shared documents from it, sent emails and engaged on my social networks from it, then it died, it stopped taking a charge on a Thursday.

Friday morning I called AT&T about my options and went to a store.  I ended up ordering another insurance replacement (not an Infuse, praise Jesus) but had to wait on it to arrive.  I have a work phone but I don’t take personal calls or texts, nor run any apps on it, so I purchased a GO phone. I’ve had withdrawal ever since.

First of all this thing has physical keys, no touch screen.  Everything is menus and navigation and what you need at any given moment is difficult to find.  You can browse the web, and there are Twitter and Facebook apps, but they are barely usable.  Multimedia messages come through but they come through in parts and you have to “play” them.  The camera is serviceable but is 2 megapixels.  Over the weekend I ended up using my work phone and the mobile versions of Twitter and G+ which were slow but doable because I just couldn’t take it anymore and am too lazy to be fulling with a laptop for everything.

In the end this post is really a “first world problem” post.  I don’t need a smartphone, I don’t know that it’s a real need for anyone, it is a convenience, one that lets me stay immediately up to date on everything around me.  GO phones or any variation of them is an excellent low-cost, low-maintenance option and trust me I’m thankful they exist and pray they continue to do so. A couple of good things happened while I was without a smartphone: I got more reading done, actually watched some TV over the weekend and most importantly learned that if need be I can do without.

By the way, I’m keeping the GO phone. I won’t be without back-up ever again.