It’s a flip phone. I like it. The little hinge helps it hug my face (yay for hugs!) and puts the receiver closer to my mouth so I don’t have to talk as loudly. It keeps the conversation… more private? I know that might sound a little weird, but that’s basically how it feels.
However! I’m starting to think I should upgrade, if for no other reason than people keep sending me text messages. This is important because 1) my current calling plan doesn’t have free texting; and 2) when I say “phone is old-school”, I mean it’s the 10-digit pad where you have to hit the 7 button four times to get an S in the message. It takes a while to write stuff, especially when you’re committed like me and type out entire words as opposed to “how r u?”
I’ve started doing some research online and just looking at the information (and the prices) is making my wallet feel like a piece of charcoal that’s going to burst into flames any second, which is especially bad since I keep it in my front pocket. Part of the reason is because I don’t want to get a fat wallet and start leaning to one side every time I sit down; part is because if someone’s going to pick my pocket, I might as well get a little thrill out of it.
But due to the joys of the Interwebs, there’s an ungodly amount of information floating around that may or may not useful. Consequently, I figured I could ask all of you what phones you have and why they’re awesome/why they suck. Thoughts/comments/suggestions? (Writing “I can’t believe you’re a geek and you don’t have a smartphone” isn’t productive, so don’t bother, Matthew…)
Oh, and I was also thinking about buying a new GPS on Cyber Monday because mine sometimes has issues and the company that made it no longer exists. (One time I used it to try to get home—when I was “at my destination”, I was actually in St. Paul, about half an hour’s drive north.) If I get a smartphone, it could fulfill that need as well, so two birds with one calling plan…
It was a long time before I parted with my beloved Motorola RAZR, so I feel ya, Shawn!
I didn’t make my foray into the smartphone world until about a year and a half ago. When my husband jumped on the Google Nexus One bandwagon, I inherited his Motorola CLIQ, which I thought was pretty neat. I liked the fact that it had a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Then he started getting phones because of his job, and so I got his Nexus One. I miss the physical keyboard (they will always be superior to touch-screen keyboards, in my opinion) but the phone is pretty decent. These days it’s not top-of-the-line in terms of features or specs, but it suits my needs perfectly. It’s a very good, solid, phone.
About a decade ago, I was a big fan of Motorola– they made some solid phones. These days, not so sure. HTC is a good brand (they made the Nexus One, and my friend is a big fan of her HTC Incredible), so it might be worth checking out their offerings.
You may also want to consider what features/specs are important to you. A physical keyboard? A front-facing camera? A large screen? What can you compromise on? Definitely take store phones for a test drive, and test out your friends’ phones. Try Android phones, try the iPhone.
Me, I’m not willing to spend more than about $50 on a phone, so I’m happy to settle for either hand-me-downs that my hubby bought, or whatever new phones my carrier offers at subsidized prices within that range.
Good luck with your search! Let us know if you’ve narrowed down any contenders!
I JUST got an iPhone. I had an old Blackberry Curve that I didn’t really use or like, and my boyfriend had a flip phone that sounds about like yours. When the new iPhones came out, we (I) decided that we needed to switch. He got an iPhone 4 the day we went to the store, and I ordered the 4s and got it five days ago. Honestly, now that we have them, I do NOT know why we did not upgrade to good smart phones earlier. You can do so much with them, and I haven’t even scratched the surface of the possibilities.
My favorite thing so far is the camera on the 4S. It is 8MP and takes about as good of pictures as my Canon point and shoot – plus, I can edit and upload right from the phone without even having to bother with the computer. We also have used the maps while driving (well, while being a passenger), and that works really well, so you definitely can go with a smartphone for GPS instead of getting an actual GPS.