Bringing the word to the people, rain or shine
RIP old cell phone
Motorola V180
Most people who know me understand that I love technology. From computers to games, I’ve always had an interest in these things. It comes then as a surprise to all that my cell phone is six years old and can only do voice and text. (And it can only store a maximum of about 30 text messages.) Why did I stick with it for so long? It worked… if you ignore the fact it didn’t auto-update the time and date correctly from the day I got it, the volume buttons wouldn’t work when the lid was closed, vibrator in it broke about two or three years ago. But it made great voice calls. It was also the first phone where I could have custom ring tones.For the past month or so the internal screen has had problems displaying. It seems like a loose wire, but the screws holding it together look stripped, making disassembly a pain. Well, I say adieu to it and accept the Samsung T139 into my life, courtesy of Rainman (it was his old phone).
Samsung T139
It, like my old V180, is a very basic phone. Text, voice and some horrible Java game demos pre-loaded. The only downside to the phone is I don’t have the PC connection cable to set up a custom ringtone. And I refuse to download and pay for ringtones.
Why don’t I want web browsing on a phone? Horribly overpriced data plans. I simply refuse to pay $80/mo for a data plan I won’t really use. Instead I pay $40/mo for unlimited text and 600 anytime mins (with unlimited night/weekends). And that’s really more than I need.
Though, once I get back to Japan, I’ll have a smart phone once again. Mostly out of necessity.
-
I also tend to fall behind when it comes to phones. For the longest time I’ve been faithful to my Nokia 8210, which even now seems to be much better at being a phone than any of the new inventions for hipsters, who like to finger their screens constantly.
That said, I also had to upgrade, for various reasons. First, I moved on to N-Gage QD, which also served me for years and probably was the best smartphone I’ve ever owned. The general rule of thumb is, the more you can do with a phone, the more you can screw it up. N-Gage was the first phone I could install stuff on, and that feature showed its ugly face once I started experiencing system errors, which later forced me to format the whole thing – something I wouldn’t have been forced to do with any of the previously owned phones.
After N-Gage, I switched to Nokia N73. It ran Symbian as well and was meant to be faster, and it was, until I stuffed it with games and programs which made it crash, and so the format story repeated itself.
Currently I’m using yet another Nokia. This time it’s … well, something. It’s on the kitchen table and I can’t be bothered to get it and check which model it is, but it’s much like N73, only thinner and without the thumbstick, which pretty much makes it useless for playing games.
Sometimes I’m considering getting a new battery for my 8210, but people would probably laugh at me if they saw actually using a phone from all the way in 1999. There’s that, and the fact that you probably can’t get decent new batteries for a phone this old.
I do appreciate the fact that my new phone can take decent photos, as long as the scene is well lit, and videos. This helped me a whole lot, especially recently, when I cought a burglar, both on film and literally. We’ve had six break-ins in 2011 alone in my building and when I heard noises from the basement in the middle of the night last friday, I ran downstairs, phone in hand, “tape” already rolling. Caught two bastards in the act and held one of them down until the police came. So yea. Video came in handy, but as far as phones go, there’s no substitute for a 8210.
-
- Comment Feed for this Post
RIP? Have you replaced your beloved V180? and if so what new phone are you replacing it with?