Jank Hank

I didn’t get my first phone (far left) until after high school. It was your basic Samsung flip phone, but it had a COLOR screen. Watch out now. It was among the first to have one, so it was a big deal. As you can imagine, the ringtones were standard bleeps and blops. If you squinted your ears hard enough (you can’t do that?…I can) you could hear the music it was trying to emulate. One of the best features was being able to take pictures and assign them to contacts and then have the picture come up on the little LCD whenever they called. Of course, like with all older cell phones, it had extraordinary battery life; days without a charge. My biggest gripe, however, was the fact that you couldn’t easily extract the pictures from the camera without some obscure software.

Next up, we have the Motorola Razr. It had “better” polyphonic ringtones, anemic battery life, but at least it was thin. I was able to get pictures off of it because of the inclusion of a MicroSD slot. I found myself texting more often, so I knew its utility would soon vanish. This phone does earn my respect, however, because it did survive a fall from a roller coaster. I lost it during a loop. When I finally got it back, it had a dent in the back and some scratches, but all the buttons and screen came out unscathed.

Then we have the Samsung Ace. This was a mistake. It had a qwerty keyboard for easy texting. Camera, MicroSD slot, and I could finally set mp3s as ringtones! *Gasp* I know. By the way, whoever thought of calling them Truetones…*sigh* no. Just no. Sure it did everything I wanted to, but then, unsurprisingly, I wanted to do more. I wanted apps; WinMo 6.5 wasn’t having that. Worst of all, the reason I did not like this phone, was whenever someone would say “Hey nice Blackberry” or “Hey is that a Blackberry?” Seriously…slash commit seppuku. Those are the same people that think all mp3 players are iPods. Please educate yourselves.

Lastly, we have the Palm Pre. Touchscreen, apps, keyboard, Gmail sync, boom, bam. It does everything I wanted it to. Guess what? Yeah, I want more. The app market is not as big I hoped for it to be. Also, the speed of newer phones is making me feel like I’m stick in first.

I hope you enjoyed this brief history of personal phone ownership. Using all these different types of phones has helped me determine what it is exactly that I look for in a phone. My next phone purchase will definitely be the most rewarding.