A recent Oatmeal comic explains why we all love and hate our little bricks of techno-magic, the smartphone. Almost a year and a half ago, I picked up an Android phone (Moto Cliq) with our family’s contract. For a while, the thing worked. I had a physical keyboard, a little screen, some apps, but it didn’t seem as cool as the hype (shocker, I know).
Sluggishness set in with each passing day. The bootup time made me wonder if the thing was wirelessly connecting to a 300bps modem that was, itself, serially connected to a punch-card reader. Swiping menus was choppy. App loads chugged. One day, I was struggling to answer a phone call. Between the time I swiped the screen and the time the OS, you know, did something, the call entered voicemail. Later, the phone wouldn’t ring at all. Then, suddenly, a bunch of voicemails suddenly appeared.
Eventually, I avoided installing any non-core apps. I think it was allergic to them.
Fast forward to now
Don't you sometimes wish? (Image from "Sometimes Having No Smartphone is a Good Thing" by Adrian Eden)
I’d been through three Cliqs, and was then told that my only other non-Cliq option was something called a Comet. I went for it because, well, how could it be worse?
With the Cliq, I could at least use the GPS to navigate. The last time I got lost with my Comet, I had to pull over to the side of the road, stop, and hold the phone very low. Deep in the shade beneath the driver’s wheel, I cupped my hands around the dim screen in the hopes of seeing anything at all. It was like carefully nurturing my last match in the hopes of building a fire before the thing flickers out. Ah, shit, I hit the home button!
The Comet’s screen has been engineered to magnify the slightest bit of glare so that an overcast Seattle morning is little different from a sunny LA afternoon. If you live somewhere like Denver, and a T-Mobile rep tries to sell you one of these, you have my permission to punch him in the face. Hard.
Phones that make and receive calls are cool
This all says nothing of the antenna. Literally. I can’t say anything because two cans and a string get better reception. Maybe it’s not the antenna. Maybe it’s the service. Anyway, I live in Seattle. This isn’t rural North Dakota. What’s the deal?
At least the phone comes with built-in tethering. That’s handy on my daily bus-ride, when having no bars is a staple item of every day’s commute. It’s a good thing I have an SD card, because I’m sure not streaming any music.
Also, our home resides at the bottom of T-Mobile’s inverse-cellular-phone-nexus-chasm. I don’t want to get too technical or anything, but let’s just say that my wife’s phone drops calls so often that I half wonder if T-Mobile’s farmed our actual service out to AT&T.
She has to go out on the porch, hang out by the sidewalk, or maybe do a handstand to keep a call for more than a minute. It’s giving me a lot of existential angst. I’m tired of asking “Hello? You still there?” before talking for fifteen seconds. She might be gone. It’s quite sad when your family has a total of three cell phones and you mull over the idea of installing a land line. Isn’t that the shit the companies were saying we’d never need again?
Screw this
You get the point. T-Mobile is no help. Everyone working in their stores suffers from corporate neutering. They can sell you whatever you want, but if you need help, you must consult the Great Wizard at the top of Call Center Lane.
He’s bathing in my money and laughing at my account history, because it’s a really ripping read. He knows the truth: brick and mortar stores don’t matter anymore. They are illusions – mere emporiums where no manager can make things right.
I’m giving CREDO a shot.
They’re willing to will buy out our family’s contract, plus they don’t donate any money to the loonypants douchebags featured on FOX News’ many variations on the same Captain Crazycakes’ Fun, Friends, and Conspiracy political variety show.
So, I’ll roll the dice with a (hopefully passable) LG phone. I’m sticking to phone calls, task lists, emergency photos, GPS, music, and podcasts. No games, no enhancements, no rooting, no fancy shit. Nothing.
I’ve learned to keep my expectations low. If they get any lower, I’ll be bone-digging. I won’t find any, though. I’ll just upset a nest of feral, underground death-marmots. Fucking marmots. I know they’re behind this.
