Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge

31 May 2011

The Revolt Against the Short Life of the iPhone


I'm a very strange chick;
I'll admit that myself.
I can stand in some guy's garage and talk
technology, and actually make sense,
but I also go
way out there, deep into some other domain,
sometimes.


Those are my most vulnerable times.
I know that now.

Sometimes I make decisions that even I,
a true chick at her core
despite the brain that is wired
precisely,
like a guy's,
don't understand at first.


But shortly thereafter, the wisdom of whatever wacky decision I just made
often becomes apparent.

Today I made one of those extraordinarily bizarre decisions,
that kind of decision that would make most people cringe.


I got rid of my iPhone.
The thing lasted two years - precisely the length
of the contract - and at that point
when the two year contract was over
(or, in their terms, "up for renewal"), 
at that very instant,
my beloved iPhone
transformed into another entity:


it would get frozen and stuck;
it would drop phone calls;
no one could hear me on the other end!;
it would erase all my contacts
for no reason whatsoever; 
it would not open certain apps
(like Facebook and even this blog)
that it used to open mightily.

It had reached the point
of obsolescence.

Of course,
both A, T & T and Verizon
now loomed as potential providers
of the next version of the iPhone,
and another two year plan.

~ ~ ~

So I thought about it:

I thought about the $100.00 I have been forking out every month to ATT for a particular kind of plan
with texting and five friends and the data plan,
and this was for a phone that never worked at my mother's house,
and that was now quite unreliable,
after fulfilling its requisite 2 years.

And I thought about the new MacBook Pro I just purchased
(yowza!)
and I thought about the number of times
in any given day
that my iPhone let me
check my Facebook status,
or the weather in Uruguay,
or the phases of the moon,
or playing some stupid game where I had to use little birds
to knock off monkeys.


And I decided to go get myself a simple talk plan
and what the Verizon sales person called
a "dumb phone."

But I was attracted to not just any dumb phone:
I got myself a Contracter's Phone,
and I think it was the practical
guy side of my brain
that instructed me to do this--
I figured it would be harder to break,
have good speaker phone,
and not risk getting stolen,
and also, I really liked the look of it.



And I am bedazzled:
the phone comes with useful accessories,
like a flashlight or a compass,
not to mention a modest GPS and the program that plays YouTube videos;
and a nice strong case,
and a good camera,
and very good speaker phone,
not to mention the fact that if I have a friend who has one like it,
we can use our phones like walkee talkies.

These activities compose, for me,
about 80% of the things I found myself using
on the iPhone,
and added one that I'd never dreamed of before!
(With the only significant absence being
the absence of the ability to play music,
but I do own an iPod, too.
Silly me.)


So I sold the old sluggish iPhone
back to Verizon, and got $70.00 taken
off my contractor's phone,
and got the thing for $140.00,
with a coupon for another $50.00 off.
Moving to a basic talk plan
will cut my phone bill nearly in half,
and I have this awesome phone!


I think I have the material here to start a 
counter-attack to the domination of the iPhone and now the Droid
on the "cool" cell phone list.

People who are cool
have Basic Plans and Contractor's Phones,

and can walk down the street talking to each other
like they're on walkie talkies.

If all the iPhone users
opted to go this way 
after two years,
we may be able to force Apple
to create an iPhone that lasts
three or four years
and/or can survive
the work of a contractor for that long.


Thus I declare the beginning of the
revolt against the tyranny of the iPhone
on the "cool" market.



(Now, I know that any contractors out there
are reading this and thinking:
I knew that all along, crazy chick!
and my response to that is:

you're right,
and I consider myself chastened, because
now I can clearly see
that those phones that Verizon lovingly calls "dumb"
are really some of the smartest phones
of all!


1 comment:

Debra She Who Seeks said...

You don't need to convince me. I don't even have a cell phone. Your new phone sounds fine to me!