Upgrade
I finally upgraded my cell phone. I really wanted a bar type phone but the only phones made that way look like some kind of brick, with sharp edges. Even I don’t want to walk around with something that ugly. The one that I thought I might like, a Kyocera, seems to not be available so I ended up with a danged flip phone. And not just any flip phone, but one that will take pictures too. Great!
Well, the flip phone isn’t sooo bad, but I find that I try to hold it to my ear like every other phone that I have. I doesn’t work quite like that and I end up kinda squashing it. The other features available I could take or leave: speaker phone, I actually use from time to time and the hands free stuff I really like – just don’t expect to find me walking down the street talking into my headset (OK, there was that one time) but the voice activated commands? This is a typical conversation with my phone
(Push the button on the side of the phone)
Phone: “Please say a command”
Me: “Call… someone”
Phone: “Say a Name”
Me: “Steve”
Phone: “Did you say Steve?” (not bad at voice recognition)
Me: “Yes”
Phone: “Call (sorta unintelligible)?”
………
Phone: “…command timed out”
Me: “Agggh”
Phone: “No match found. Please say a command”
I’m not sure which of us is dumber here.
Some other features that I was really used to but aren’t on this phone: a mode that vibrates first, then rings if you don’t answer it within like a ring or two. This new phone is either-or. Huh.
Of course, I’ll keep it.
Really, it’s not the phone but part of the privacy feature I have. Anyone that says my name into their phone has to have the correct security clearance to call me.
That does remind me of the phone I had last. It was rather nice, but it wasn’t capable of doing most of the stuff that my really really old phone could do.
The phone I have now, though. Well it seems to work fine but it has so many features that I know I would never want to use. I really would just like a phone that, well, worked as a phone.
Of course, it really doesn’t help that in the area that I am at, Cingular – who bills themselves as the largest network in this area, recently sold their towers to T-mobile. And T-mobile is converting them off of the Cingular system to their own. Something tells me that the service here will degrade even more so even a real phone-type cell phone wouldn’t work all that well.
Hmmm, maybe it’s time to move again or switch providers. Either option sounds equally painful.
Comment by Steve — 8/1/2006 @ 9:20 pm