A couple of weeks ago I bought a new cell phone. Now this wasn't something that came easily to me, the reason being that I hate updating anything electronic. It's not a money thing and I'm not a technophobe. It's just that I find most new features to be unnecessary, pointless and often fail to improve the product or my life. The people who design updates to existing products must be either pure evil or complete morons.
It all started a few months ago when the battery on my trusty Motorola V3x started to fail. I'd charge it up overnight only to be seeing the red low batt icon by lunchtime. I considered a new battery but this phone has had a hard life and it's starting to show. So, having reached the awful conclusion that I need a new one, which one should it be?
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| Slick but annoying new phone with battered but great old one |
The world has changed since I bought this phone nearly 4 years ago. Everybody is now packing a smart phone and you get the feeling that you're a second class citizen if you don't have one of these shiny gadgets poking out of your pocket. From my research I narrowed it down to 2 potential candidates. The first one was the iphone. The biggest reason for getting an iphone is that they're cool. Except....every Joe blow now has one so actually they are not cool anymore. Next issue is that big glass screen. One tumble down the side of an engine would be the end of that. I reckon an iphone would survive about 3 days in my reality before it was scratched, dented and or cracked. Another annoying thing about the iphone is that they keep changing the damn thing. We are now up to iphone 4. I expect 5 will be launching in a few days. Then there's the price. A lot of money for a lot of junk that I don't want. I don't need a music player...I've got an ipod. I don't want to watch movies on that tiny screen. I don't care that it's got a camera...I've already got one of those. So that was the iphone ruled out.
The other potential was the Motorola Defy. It looks good, its tougher and its half the price. So I went to check one out. The first problem was that Vodafone don't do them. That means switching to the evil empire known as NZ Telecom. Now Telecom have been screwing the people of this country for years but I put that aside for a moment and went to their store. The salespeople were the usual early 20's bubbleheaded idiots you would expect to find in such a place. I said to one of them "Tell me why I'm going to switch to your company and why I'm going to buy a Defy" It took a while to sink in that she might have to actually do a sales pitch here. "Well, Um Ah, It's really cool because I can check my facebook from it" she came back with. "Ok. Let me explain a couple of things to you." I said. "I am not 16 years old. I also live in the real world. I have zero interest in Facebook, Twitbook or any other social media networking timewasting bullshit like that. I don't want to download the latest video from Lady GaGa and I don't care what that stupid Hilton girl is doing this week. I need a phone that I can talk to people and send the odd text message....old school like." This seemed to be a concept that was unfamiliar to her but she confirmed that, yes it could be used as a simple voice communication device. "Oh, another great thing is that it's Android based" she added. About that moment I felt a weariness descend on me and I knew then that I was not going to buy a smartphone. I don't know what Android is. I don't care either. I simply cannot be bothered to learn a whole new way of button pushing to achieve exactly what I have now.
Right...that simplifies things. What I'm going to do is buy the updated version of my old V3. That would be the V9. Looks very similar, bigger screen, better sound, thinner body and longer lasting battery. And the best thing is I don't have to spend the next 2 weeks figuring out how it works. $220 later and I'm finding out that cell phone designers cannot help themselves from fucking around with things. They've changed the layout of the keyboard and moved some of the buttons. Why?? It isn't better for that. It's just annoying. I will now spend the next 2 weeks pressing a button that used to do something else and cursing the idiot who decided to change it. For some reason my text message inbox wont sync up with my phonebook on the SIM card so I don't know who the texts are from. Another thing is the charger. The plug is so tiny it is difficult to use. The old one worked perfectly and was of a size that made it easy to insert. It's beyond me why anyone would think this is an improvement. Why change things that work well? You just end up pissing people off. If I ran a electronics company the first thing I would tell my staff is, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. In this little saga one thing has become very clear to me. Newer does not mean better.
It is to be expected that, whenever there is an enhanced version of a particular cellphone model, there will be several modifications. People usually prefer the original versions, which are more user-friendly. On the other hand, upgraded versions become very complicated to use. Anyway, you'll get used to its new features eventually. =)
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