I call her fat Nokia

My mobile phone died. I feel bad about it – it took her slowly, the draining of batteries and the nightly requirement that she be re-charged. I haven’t even had her for a year! I guess that’s what happens when you’re a piece of technology. You get outdated; out get old; you get replaced.

Still, I wasn’t expecting to shell out extra cash on the fly, Friday afternoon. Luckily, I kinda knew this was coming. The phone wasn’t holding a charge for very long. My talk time had significantly decreased and the phone was dying pretty regularly. Still...

There are about 800 kinds of sexy mobiles to choose from. I saw several very small, very sleek little numbers with color display, digital cameras, audio recording, video recording, text messaging, songs, dances, little masseuses and a guy who’ll dye my hair. They were so tiny, I kept thinking of the ridiculously small phone that was the running gag in Zoolander. Yes, I did just make a Zoolander reference. I’m aware that I have a problem, don’t send email.

I settled for fat Nokia (3390). She’s not the newest model, sexiest or sleekest model. But she was cheap and pretty easy to use. Up until let’s say, the last phone, I was shelling out top-dollar for high-end mobile phones. I’m something of a gadget whore. I know - it’s a problem.

Anyway, I made what I consider to be a frugal and sensible decision when purchasing from the lower-end of the tech food chain. Basically, I just use my phone for calling people. Oddly enough, that’s what like 99% of people in the US who use their phone uses it for. (That’s my internal, gut guesstimate. That figure is, in no way, based on fact.) I’m not using it to do text messaging. I don’t organize my schedule or whatever with it. I don’t care if it has games or a calculator or can hold 98,000 personalized rings. I just call the pizza guy and my friends and my family.

Right, so I’m not the high-end user that I used to pretend to be. And now, for me, it’s fat Nokia. Seriously, it’s a fat (okay fatter) Nokia. It’s not so sleek or small. It’s probably more appealing to men (although, they’ll never admit it) because it’s not so freakin’ microscopic that they’ll constantly be searching for it. Plus it’s got a bit of heft (a whopping 4 oz) that makes it seem more like a real phone (I’m looking at you Ericsson T200).

And I caved and personalized my phone – I hated the default crappy plastic blue cover that comes with fat Nokia. She used to have a sleek goldish color cover that made her look a little more sophisticated. The blue thing looks like I just spent $100 on a toy phone. Anyway, I ordered her a sassy pink cover. Come on! Pink! Isn’t that fun! Doesn’t that make me fun! God, I’m so sad....

And the fun keeps on coming

In addition to replacing my phone in the past few days, I had to buy a new PDA just a few weeks ago. My Handspring pooped out (she didn’t want to sync anymore, ever!) and thanks to their crappy customer service ($20 for a call please) – I opted to abandon them and return to the Palm fold. Now, Palm has caught on with the whole USB syncing thing (yaay!) and the expansion card thing. They’ve also dropped prices and created a sleeker machine.

I bought my Palm M125 the day before Palm debuted the new Zire. I might have considered the Zire, except that it doesn’t have quite as much memory as I prefer. Otherwise, it’s simple and stripped down interface makes it really appealing. Again, I thought about merging my Mobile phone with my PDA – it’s just that the solutions are kinda clunky.

Sadly, my electronics-buying spree isn’t over. The multi-function machine we bought in April got damaged in the move – by whom is up for discussion – but it’s not working on 2 of it’s 3 functions and so we’ll be spending some quality time (and coin) to buy a replacement. My spending knows no ends. Luckily, that newly formed joint account will come in handy....

Labels: 2002