Phone Home

Can someone please explain it to me; why do we need to cram the functions of numerous gadgets onto one piece of equipment? Has nobody realised that the latest and greatest mobile phones are prime targets for thieves and muggers? Or have we all realised it, with everyone deciding to forego the warning? What is with this fatal attraction that causes most people to yearn for a mobile phone that can practically do everything except cook you dinner (and even then, you could attempt to use the phone’s radiation to act as a microwave)? The Luddites must be rolling in their graves!

Either that, or they’ve transformed into zombies, and are plotting the premature downfall of the earth (no longer to be caused by the implosive formation of a black hole, originating in Switzerland).

It’s the one of the few issues that makes me feel incredibly old. You would have to admit that anyone who opposes the ever-expanding growth of technology in this day and age is fighting for a losing cause, though from time to time, they have reason to object. Being inventive is one thing; using up valuable world resources on something that does fuck all to promote development – except human stupidity – is something else entirely. Yes, that’s right; some moron has already invented a T-shirt with cords attached to it, so you can pull it up like a set of blinds without lifting it like a normal person would do! Wow, just what every Londoner needs; an easier, lazier way to get naked in public.

It isn’t even so much to do with the pathetic additions they put on these phones. It’s the fact that they don’t work.

I’ve seen the uselessness of the ultra-modern mobile phone. I’d often hear people griping about this, that and the other thing: “Bluetooth is on, but it simply won’t connect to your phone” (you’ll discover that this is true in 99 situations out of 100); “I can’t connect to the Internet to check my e-mail!”; “It has a music player on it, but it only supports one format of song, and that format is only ever found on the phone itself”. These phones are not merely lousy when it comes to working as they should, but guess what happens when you drop them for the first time?

They shatter.

And I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill *breaks into two pieces* type of shatter. Or Feeder's Shatter. No; somehow, they get designed in a manner that insures that when the inevitable does happen, it explodes into so many fragments, infinity can’t describe the number of chunks there are lying on the floor.

To be honest, I appreciated the indestructibility of my old mobile. Really, it was the next best thing to indestructible (which sadly turned out to be destructible, as I found out when I finally broke the thing in a fit of rage). Those were the days where I could walk about casually, drop my phone onto a jagged rock or two, and then pick it up and dust it off. Its functionality would still be at its maximum.

Almost the same could be said about my current phone. I received it as a gift from my sister last Christmas; in all likelihood, I must have dropped at a rate of once a day. Is it broken? No. *reflects* That last sentence would have been true had you asked me it before 2pm on Monday. Yes, it’s a teensy bit damaged now, but it works; the damage caused was a lot closer to superficial than it was to detrimental to the lifespan of the phone. Amusingly, I manage to drop my phone daily and fail to give it even so much as a scratch; it turns out to be the fault of someone else when it finally decides to give up the ghost in its perfection!

I was angry at first, but not any more. There are precious few things in existence for which I hold a grudge towards for a sustained period of time.

Right, moving along…what happened to the days where you could get by with a phone, which had two purposes; ringing other people, and texting other people. That’s all I really want from my phone! I don’t want to watch films, or episodes of popular television shows on it. I don’t want to play a crummy version of a video game on it. I don’t want to listen to poor quality music, emanating from its tiny speaker. And most of all, I do not want to shell out hundreds of pounds on a "new" phone that will be obsolete in a few months anyway! Echoing modern trends, my phone might as well be referred to as “old” (not “ancient”, mind you, which would only apply to phone more than 3 years old), but why should I be roped into buying another when the current still provides me the features of a phone I truly need? Besides, newer phones intrinsically have the same, recurring problem; weaker phone reception.

Now if you will excuse me, I must find my phone and drop it on the floor a few more times to show how a person with woeful dexterity such as myself, can continue to maintain operation of a phone nowadays.

Want to buy a phone that operates as it should? The trick is to buy a brick.