Read Between the Phones

I came home with a new phone yesterday. I wasn’t going to get a new phone yet, but my daughter needed a new one since she dropped her year-old slider into the toilet. She’s going off to camp and needs a phone. Kids didn’t take phones to camp in the olden days, but that’s beside the point.

I’m an Apple girl. I’ve had nothing but Apple computers for the last ten years. I was an early adopter of the iPad. I don’t run without my Nike+ app on my iPod. Of course I had an iPhone 4. Of course I wanted another iPhone.

Wait. There’s a backstory.

Flashback - 2008. Verizon, our wireless carrier, does not yet have the iPhone and everyone knows AT&T sucks, so I get a Blackberry Storm which the Verizon salesman assured me was everything the iPhone was and more.

It wasn’t. It was less.

I was happy at first to have the Storm. It made me feel like I’d caught up with everyone else and gotten a smart phone. For a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months, the Storm made me happy enough. Then it really started pissing me off. The shiny newness wore off quickly and it didn’t pull its telecommunications weight. I started to hate it. The more I saw how happy everyone else was with their iPhones, the more I hated the Storm. I think, if it’s possible, the Storm hated me just as much. I couldn’t wait until my contract was eligible for an upgrade.

The exact day of my upgrade eligibility I walked into the Verizon store and plunked down my money for the iPhone 4. The iPhone immediately did for me everything the Storm had never done. I was infatuated. “If I could marry it, I would,” I said. Over the life of the contract, it became a part of my everyday existence, but with time the shiny newness faded as it does with any long-term relationship and my iPhone became utilitarian. It met my basic needs but offered nothing more to engage my interest. Even so, I went about my days, never separated from my phone. I didn't know there was anything different.

But then my daughter’s slider slid into the toilet and I had a decision to make. I had to decide whether to let her go to camp phoneless or whether to give her what she needed. My only real choice was to give her my iPhone 4 and use my upgrade to go get the 5, even though the 6 is probably due out in a matter of weeks.

Flash forward to yesterday. I walk into the Verizon store and tell the two cheerful, helpful, and enthusiastic young men that I want the iPhone 5. They shake their heads at me. “Look at you,” they say. “You’re going places. You’re young. You’re smart. Why do you want to stick with a phone that can’t meet your needs?” They show me the Samsung Galaxy S4.

It’s love at first sight. I hadn't realized that my tech needs weren't being met but I do now. This phone does everything I want it to do. It takes beautiful pictures. It lets me know when it needs attention, but it’s not obnoxious about it like the Storm was. It plays nice with my other electronic friends better even than the iPhone. This phone is truly a smart phone. I’ve had the S4 for twenty-four hours and I know I’ve just scratched the surface of this happy relationship.

The boys at the store were right. I had outgrown the iPhone. Even though there was an iPhone 5 promising to keep me interested, there wasn’t enough there under the surface to convince me to stay.

I’ll take care of the S4 and I know it will take care of me. I know, however, that I’ll have to keep learning about this phone and how we can work together. I know from past experience that the shiny newness does wear off and sometimes it takes work to find new features to use and love. Otherwise, I may find myself itching for an upgrade long before the contract is up.

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