Last Friday I moved up in the world.  My 2-year term was up for my cell phone provider and I was eligible for a new phone.  Yippee!  I rushed over to the local provider outlet and checked out some of the phones.

Not much has changed in 2 years, which was a little surprising.  There’s more touch screen stuff, and GPS is virtually everywhere now, but other than that, it’s a lot of the same.  Nevertheless, I wanted something new.
My requirements for a phone aren’t high.  I text, sometimes take pictures, and even less actually call people.  After talking to a sales rep I was convinced I needed more.  I needed to surf the internet, watch YouTube videos, and even check all 10 of my email accounts straight from the 2-inch screen on my phone.  How else to do this than with a “Crack-berry”.  So I got one.

It’s a decent little phone – of the smaller, if not the smallest, of the Blackberrys.  And if any larger, I probably wouldn’t have gotten it.  But as it was, it was a nice fit, and light to boot.

However, after about 3 days, I was done.  It wasn’t for me.  And here’s why: It’s too much phone.  I’m a bit of a minimalist.  I like things simple and practical.  All the crap on this phone made it complicated and difficult to use.  What were once simple, one button operations now took opening a menu and scrolling (with that stupid track ball) to the right option then another click.  And why do I need the internet?  I have it everywhere I need/want it (work and home) and there, it’s on a nice big monitor.  It just wasn’t worth the frustration and the extra $30 a month I was shelling out to make this phone mine.  Oh yeah, and Girl wasn’t liking that I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out my phone.  Then again, what doesn’t girl not like about me anymore?

So yesterday I took it back and got a different phone.  What phone did I get?  My old one – or at least the current model of my old phone.  It’s a little different but practically the same.  This size has gone up a little, but at least it doesn’t have a (visible) antenna.  As a bonus (and I’m letting the size slide for this one) it supports a MicroSD card of up to 4GB for storing sounds and pictures, etc.  I dig that.

In the end, my move up in the world of cell phones and technology wasn’t a big one.  I basically got a memory card slot and a slightly higher definition camera in my phone.  I can’t complain. At least now I know I can kick the crack habit pretty quickly if I need to again in the future.