I Do Love Gadgetry

Since my contract ran out with my cell provider, they’ve been desperate to “give” me a new phone to reward my loyalty. Mostly I’ve been ignoring them. The plan is to step down to pre-paid service, since I use my phone so very rarely. Sometimes I call my daughter, more often I send a text to her or Twitter, that’s about it. I’m paying for way more cell service than I use, and it needs to stop.

There are two reasons I haven’t made the change.

1) I have to call customer service to do it and I hate talking to strangers.

2) I’ll probably have to give up my phone. And I love my phone. I’ve had it for five years. Back when I got it, it was just a phone. Then my provider decided it was a smart phone, and started trying to force me to put a data plan on it. Not wanting a data plan, I fought them for two years, and they eventually stopped bugging me about it–unless I tried to change my plan. Go online to give the kid more text messages? Can’t save “plan changes” because the website won’t let my phone not have a data plan. Have to go into chat and lay the polite smackdown on some poor rep who’s only trying to do her job.

Now, when I want to actually change my plan, they hold the cards. I probably won’t be able to get them to step my five-year-old not-so-smart phone down to prepaid, just because when it went “antique” they still had it classified as a smart phone.

Sigh.

So anyway. They want to “give” me a new phone if I’ll just swear to keep paying them monthly for two more years. Other than the yanking about with my not-so-smart phone, I’ve been happy with them. So I open the emails. And I look at the phones.

They are shiny, shiny phones.

But. I don’t like the “slab phones” that everyone is making right now. Having no desire to EVER watch a movie on my phone (I have a computer, a laptop, a netbook, and a really nice TV that all have bigger screens than any phone) I am not attracted to them. Also I’ve taken many a call from people who either could not or would not lock their keyboards while they were on the phone, so I got the annoying beeps as they cheek-dialed on their touchscreen.

I love my flip phone with awesome actual keyboard, thanks.

The apps, though…I think about how much more productive I could be with a good calendar, a walking to-do list, a grocery list I could update wherever…and then I tell myself it’s all a lie. I drive five minutes from home to work. I drive six minutes to the grocery store every two weeks. Otherwise I am at my fully functional computer, or at work on my somewhat-functional computer, or at the very least near a notebook and pen. I do not need those apps.

Also, there’s the fact that I really am very rarely far from a computer. When I am, I probably did it on purpose in an attempt to unplug. It would rather defeat the purpose of HAVING a cell phone if I had to leave my phone behind whenever I stepped away from my computer.

But they are so shiny, those apps…and I think about my attitude towards smart phones, and it seems…curmudgeonly. I do not want to be a tech curmudgeon. I like being the one who can figure out why this person can’t print and that one can’t get to her inbox.

On the other other hand, I can’t work my TV without my kid half the time. The tech-savvy boat has already left me on the pier.

Maybe there’s an app for that?