*

*
Michael Evans, painter of light - full frame

Friday, September 20, 2013

Device Day

Today was device day, for me and much of the country.

The Apple flagship, the iphone 5s, became available today and apple sycophants and fanboys everywhere were eagerly lining up by the millions for their stylish technofix.

I need a new phone. Well, maybe I do? I guess I do. Does it reflect personally on me when peers see that the glass on my ancient Motorola Bionic is cracked into five pieces?

Does my low tech device make me a phone untouchable compared to all of those brahmin techies rocking the newest invention?

I have been considering this purchase for many months, my sights set on the gorgeous HTC One. Carved out of a single piece of aluminum and clothed in a magical schwinn blue exterior, twice the memory of the iphone 5s, quadcore snapdragon chip, fast, not too big like the Galaxy 4, great BIG screen, decent camera, sweet sounds, a ferrari built by an underdog. This phone is pretty sexy.  My kind of phone. Plus I like Google's voice recognition.

I have been on the horn with tech guru big dave for months, sending him every comparison report and pleading for guidance in my selection. But there is no denying it, Dave is an Apple guy. I am as well, but not the phone. The thumbprint is a seductive way to tempt people into instant purchases, with a fair percent of income stream surely finding its way back to Apple. I hate itunes. How soon until some wiseacre cracks the thumbprint database or more likely the gmen are pouring through it? Anyway Dave says to not be a sissy and to buy the newest fruit to fall off of the Apple tree.

We citizenry are pawns trapped in an enormous battle between the titans google and apple. The former reads and strains all your emails and then targets ads at you, the other makes things so damn seductively enticing that you end up just opening your wallet up for them, like your first googoo eyed crush.

It took forever for Verizon to release the HTC One, five months after ATT. In phone terms it means the phone is in it's twenties or thirties right now, plodding forward into middle age. We waited and waited and waited and it is now here. But maybe I should wait and check out the 5s? I was in a quandary for sure.

Today was the day. I trucked over to BestBuy not knowing what kinds of lines to expect.

The lines weren't long but the people took forever. Casino wealthy native americans spending thousands in front of me. Bags of them. I waited and waited. Picked up the iphone, they only had black 16gb units, boy that screen looks small. My eyes ain't so good you know. I signed up for it.

A guy walks up, wants to know if they have any gold ones, went into a tizzy when they said that they did not. And I thought how weird, the accoutrement' of the champagne colored handset reminding me of people who must put gold ornaments on their entry level Mercedes. It just seems a bit tawdry to me. Did I really want to be associated with that fake prada vibe?

Did I want to be associated with that? I changed my mind, told the clerk to grab the blue HTC and to forget the iphone. Forty nine bucks and then they upgraded to wifipak too, making the whole deal practically free. Got home, easy information transfer, fairly intuitive android operating system. In blue! I'll never get the blue Ferrari I always wanted but for 49 bucks, I can have the phone.

Hit a snag when the phone book initially wouldn't transfer to the UConnect system on the Dodge. Called Dodge and HTC and they said it wouldn't pair and that I was out of luck. Oh, shit I thought. Looks like I will have to get the iphone after all. I decided to go back and tinker with it one more time. Voila. Bluetooth paired, phone book downloaded, all systems go, the kid is now back in action.

1 comment:

Brigitte S. said...

Dude Where's My Phone! I am still rocking an Old Skool Blackberry. People who discover that I am still using this ancient device have a baffled look on their face when they see me pull the battery out and re-boot when it freezes - a frequent occurrence. Some younger folks have looked at it in strange wonderment much as they might if they were told to write their school paper on a typewriter. Still I don't want to get rid of it...it is like an old dog that still gets up when I touch it even though it is on it's last leg and it's hips are creaking. . I am going to have to get a new puppy at some point and bury my old, mangy friend.