I think I have asked this question before, but let’s give it a go again, shall we? How many of my readers use a cell phone? I know, it seems like more and more people are calling them personal devices, but they are still cell phones to me. Personally, I use one every day. It is my alarm clock in the morning, my connection to the Internet, if in a pinch, and my calendar, but above and beyond everything else, it is a phone. With my parents getting elderly and a new granddaughter having arrived on March 26th of this year, it is more important than ever that I can be reached at all times. Updating my Facebook or Twitter status doesn’t count. One thing for sure, these little jewels of technological marvels have progressed greatly from the days of the bag phone. As always, comments are more than welcome. Please let me know how you view your cell phone.
Having said all of that, I am not above enjoying tech gadgets. I have a Garmin GPS and when I am driving, my bluetooth is always on. Hands free and all of that. More than once, I have been called a geek, both by my boss and my wife, although with much more love coming from her. I am constantly tweaking my desktop computer and it’s Mepis 8.5 operating system, which is Debian based. I do the same to my work computer, which runs Windows Vista, much to my displeasure. I suppose I fall under the category of “having to understand how it all works”, especially when it comes to all things technology.
This all leads me to the point of this post. About a year ago, I upgraded my cell phone to the Samsung Eternity, which was my first touch screen phone. It has been, by far, the best phone I have used and seeing it convinced my wife and daughter to recently upgrade to the Samsung Impression. I have never really wanted a smartphone, simply because my desire to browse the Internet a lot on a 3″-4″ screen was lacking. Give me my 22″ Acer monitor any day of the week. Couple that with the difference between my $10 data plan and the $30 data plan AT&T requires for a smartphone and it wasn’t a hard decision.
Because I have the master phone on our family plan, it is now time to upgrade again. As I have no wish to have a phone with a slide-out keyboard, I had pretty much made up my mind to go with the Samsung Mythic. That is, until I went to
Sam’s Club yesterday to look around and an AT&T representative showed me the new HTC Aria, running on Android 2.1. She had her own phone up and running and allowed me to play around with it. Needless to say, I was greatly impressed by what I saw. I was especially pleased to see the price of $95 for an upgrade.
Now, I know that the HTC Aria is not as high end of a phone as something like the iPhone, Nexxus One, and other phones that do everything but cook your supper. I know it is a smartphone and that I have to have a data plan, but since AT&T has reformatted their data plans, I can get a 200 MB plan for $15. Given the fact that the Aria is Wi-Fi capable, that should be plenty of data for me. Unless I change my mind, I will undoubtedly be upgrading to my first smartphone on Tuesday.
Since leaving Sam’s Cub yesterday, I have spent several hours on the Internet, learning what I could about the HTC Aria. First and foremost, I have found that nearly every reviewer liked it, but thought it was vastly overpriced, especially considering the fact that the latest and greatest iPhone has just been released. (From what I have heard, the iPhone 4 may not be the greatest, but that would be the subject for another post.) I have learned that the Aria is a smaller phone and is dwarfed by the aforementioned iPhone and the HTC Evo, 
offered by Sprint. It is nearly identical in size to my Samsung Eternity and that is about perfect for me. All in all, I think it all boils down to personal preferences. I have no need or desire to carry a large phone on my belt (yes, I still carry my phone on my belt) and the Aria will do anything I need it to do.
During this time of reading reviews and watching videos on YouTube, there is one thing that stuck out to me. I learned all about how the Aria has the pinch and zoom feature of zooming web pages. I discovered I can constantly keep in contact with my Facebook and Twitter accounts, finding out what some of my friends had for lunch, no doubt. I also figured out that I can have a time and weather widget on the Aria’s home screen, which isn’t so bad. It also tells you what city you are in, which I read is vital to one reviewer. He likes to know where he is.
Of all of the reviews I read and watched, only one mentioned the basic function of a cell phone, which is making phone calls. That mention was in passing, saying it handled phone calls nicely, if you are one of those people who still use a cell phone to make calls. I honestly couldn’t believe my ears. Am I so far behind the times that I use my cell phone to actually talk to someone? I have a feeling I am going to enjoy my new HTC Aria greatly and will probably discover I may use it for more than I imagined. It will not be for Facebook and Twitter, I can assure you, but I suspect I will find some good uses for it. However, the main feature I will be using it for is to stay in contact with those I care about, namely my immediate family. That is accomplished through phone calls and the occasional text message. If it does that, it will be a win for me.
All I need is a phone with caller ID so I know when to ignore my boss.
Thanks for the comment, Larry. Caller ID does come in handy. When my boss or any of the numbers from the shop rings in, it plays the song from the Clint Eastwood movie, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
The wife and I are starting to look for a new phone. Ours are up next month. We’re looking into internet and other options. We’ll likely get the slide out keyboards,as the wife texts a lot.
Thanks for the post. It reminds me to look into stuff even more closely.
What carrier are you with, Matt?
Verizon.
I love my Blackberry Storm II w/ touch screen. Love it.
How does it handle the Internet, Dominique? Does it do a fair job of loading and displaying the pages?
I must say Larry…I’m a bit behind the times. I use my cell phones to make and receive calls. Maybe send some pictures and text and nothing more. I’m comfortable with that I guess. Good post.
Thanks, John. That is the main thing I use mine for also. I do check the weather radar when we have storms coming in, if I am not at my computer. As I said in the post, the social media side of it all, I just do not get.
Haha! great post… I do still use my phone for, shockingly, calling people! I also text some but I don’t like texting very much at all…
However, I just upgraded and since i’m getting into blogging a little I thought, Hey lets get some internet capabilities, so…. I got a Storm and I actually love it the internet works great when I’m some where and bored (read wedding, car rides, etc.) Overall I love the phone and the actual phone part works great. I still use that function the most…
I love my Blackberry Curve, I would feel lost without it. I use it for internet access, at every work break I feel the urge to check out the latest news and to check on my blog. I find the Blackberry browser to be lacking, but I downloaded the Opera mini browser app and love it.
I think that it is a great way to stay in touch with what is going on in the world and to find topics for my posts at night. Of course texting and Blackberry IM comes in handy at times– sometimes people you want to contact may be at work and unavailable, this gives them a great option to get back to you as soon as possible.
All of this is in addition to actually using it to make calls. I just think that all of the options we have today to stay connected is wonderful.
I will be upgrading soon also, and I mught just take the plunge into a touchscreen, we will have to see what is out there when I am up for upgrade.
Larry,
I am thinking that if you are not getting an iphone on the ATT network, that you might look at other carriers also. I have been with Spring about 12 years and think they have a better flat rate than att. Everything with 2 phones is 129 plus taxes per month, with 1500 minutes included which I never use even though it is my business phone. I was using a HTC touch pro for the past 18 months but dropped in during a downpour and have been using the Palm Treo again. The HTC has a good variety of smart phones, and I am thinking about switching to the EVO with 4G. Problem with Sprint on the 4G is that they have the service in the KC market but not many other markets. Personally in some ways I would like a simple phone that cost about $19 without a plan, and if you drop it you can just go spend $19 for another. If you need the smart aspects you can open your laptop. I do really like the GPS on the HTC touch pro, which I had been using my laptop with a GPS program, but with the laptop, when I hit a bump, the computer would crash, and I might be in downtown Tulsa.
Warren
Thanks for the comment, Warren. I have seen some of the advertisements for Sprint and other carriers, but I have been with AT&T for so long, I hate to change. Nearly everyone I call is with them and we get mobile to mobile for free. You are right, though. It is higher than other carriers.
Well Larry this is where I stand on cell phones:
In 1991 I sold and installed some of the first (in car) cellular phones in our city. In 1992 my store was the first store to give bag phones away for free with a 1 yr. contract. In 1996 we sold the very first StarTAC flip phone for $1995.00.
2010 – I hate cell phones, and only carry my phone so that my wife and/or daughters school can contact me.
HTC Google phones are great. I have the HTC Touch but you need to get one of these batteries… they extend the life per charge by up to 100%. The one I got is no larger than stock size but gets 30% more life:
http://www.mugenpowerbatteries.info/epages/es109514.sf
They are expensive but much better than the stock battery.
I ditched my contrast in favour of Net10 but I still have a really super Samsung T401G qwerty phone with all the bells and whistles and it cost me $79.99. Have a look at http://www.net10laughoff.com for more details on their phones and special offers such as texting at 2.5c per minute!