I'm good with passe, as long as it makes phone calls. I have been holding on to an original Motorola Razr V3, living like it was 2004, avoiding the extra monthly data charges. It did what I wanted it to: made and received phone calls. The camera
was a bonus feature that I used occasionally. I don't text, so the numeric pad was fine for adding names to numbers in the address book. We were comfortable with each other.
It was, however, inevitable: my long-time friend and companion began to falter. Little annoyances at first, like the back falling off, were not a huge problem. Eventually the rudimentary form of Java it contained stopped working and I could no longer play the sample games that came with the phone. When it started thinking there was no SIM card installed when there was, I knew it was the beginning of the end.
But what to do? I was left behind years ago by the smartphone train, an abandoned caboose on a spur line no longer used. Shelling out additional fees every month for a data plan is not in our budget, which severely limits the choices. I could buy an unlocked brand-new Razr over the Internet for around $50, or I could take one of the free flip phones my service provided. I checked every angle and option, working on what we call "Lucy Plans" (after Lucille Ball and her antics on "I Love Lucy"): what if I get a free phone and then try to sell it on e-Bay so I could by a Razr? How about turning off and on the existing phone every few minutes to make sure it is working? What about selling plasma every month to pay for a data plan?
Eventually the zero cost plan was followed and I was the owner of a new phone that wasn't a Razr. Cindy, as she has for years, sat patiently on the sidelines of my indecision and waited for me to make a choice. She also volunteered to trade phones with me, as she had no attachment to hers...a Razr V3xx. To paraphrase Captain Kirk at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, "my friend, I've come home."
No comments:
Post a Comment