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Technology Update
Mar. 17th, 2008 02:40 pmSo, back just before getting married, my Lady, wise person that she is, figured that 1)She needed a new cell phone, and 2)Given the prices of the day, it made sense to get one for me as well, on a family plan. In retrospect, this was a fine idea. I've been walking around with a phone in my pocket since then. The same phone, for roughly four years.
As most people are aware, these things really aren't built to last for four years. My battery was clearly showing signs of age, not holding a charge for long. Recently the phone seemed to be failing to take calls, pushing them off to voice mail when I theoretically had plenty of signal. Then it started getting really flaky, and would occasionally completely shut down when it had plenty of charge, and not allow a reboot until I hooked it up to a charger. So, Yesterday I finally knuckled under and got a new phone.
I was dedicated to the proposition that we pay enough for our cell service that I did not want to pay any actual money for the phone. Sprint offers some credits to help entice users to upgrade more frequently, so I aimed to go with a minimum of expenditure beyond that.
Which ended up to be $0 for the phone itself, and a nominal activation fee, which I can tolerate. I am a little let down by the fact that the devices with buttons properly sized and spaced for hands like mine would have cost me $100, but I don't use the beast enough to pay for that feature. And a little belt-carrying case was part of the offering, but the clerk allowed me to walk out of the store with one that didn't actually fit the phone, which means another trip for an exchange.
The real funny part is that I got a new phone largely to have more reliable up-time from my battery - so of course the day I get it, the time before I am most likely to be futzing around with it entering contact data and such, I forget to charge it, so that it is making low-battery noises at me already.
Irony can be pretty ironic.
As most people are aware, these things really aren't built to last for four years. My battery was clearly showing signs of age, not holding a charge for long. Recently the phone seemed to be failing to take calls, pushing them off to voice mail when I theoretically had plenty of signal. Then it started getting really flaky, and would occasionally completely shut down when it had plenty of charge, and not allow a reboot until I hooked it up to a charger. So, Yesterday I finally knuckled under and got a new phone.
I was dedicated to the proposition that we pay enough for our cell service that I did not want to pay any actual money for the phone. Sprint offers some credits to help entice users to upgrade more frequently, so I aimed to go with a minimum of expenditure beyond that.
Which ended up to be $0 for the phone itself, and a nominal activation fee, which I can tolerate. I am a little let down by the fact that the devices with buttons properly sized and spaced for hands like mine would have cost me $100, but I don't use the beast enough to pay for that feature. And a little belt-carrying case was part of the offering, but the clerk allowed me to walk out of the store with one that didn't actually fit the phone, which means another trip for an exchange.
The real funny part is that I got a new phone largely to have more reliable up-time from my battery - so of course the day I get it, the time before I am most likely to be futzing around with it entering contact data and such, I forget to charge it, so that it is making low-battery noises at me already.
Irony can be pretty ironic.
