Tuesday, May 6, 2014

A little bit smarter?

I have been willing my lovely purple cell phone to remain alive, which I have had at least three years (because I had it on my trip to Kyiv in 2011 to see this sweet family). I knew I had to replace it because it wasn't holding a charge very long but was thinking about taking the plunge to smart phone land (yes, I'm one of the last two people one earth that didn't have one)...but I didn't want to deal with that while studying. So, Saturday, this is what happened...


While I honestly would have been perfectly fine with a free "smart" phone I could have received (after paying the upgrade fee), since I have a brother that works for Apple, purchasing any other brand would be considered treason. :)  And, it is really easy this way because every person in my family, including spouses has one of this "i" devices, so we can do Facetime (Apple's version of Skype) and my pictures and videos and songs are SUPPOSED to share themselves between the phone and iPad.

Insert skepticism. 

I have only just now gotten the ability to receive voicemails after having this "phone" in my possession for 3 days.  It seems the "smart" phone was not intelligent enough to record a voice message, which my old lovely purple non "smart" phone was perfectly capable of doing.  So after 2 trips to the AT&T store and 2 calls to them, I can finally receive and retrieve voicemail messages.

And, I don't know why I didn't get the white one.  Why did I think it would get dirty when it would always have a cover on it?  This bright lime green is horrid.  Too late.  (The black/silver ones were $100 more and I certainly wasn't going to do that.  Blue is what my Mom has.  Pink and yellow were too flashy as I might have this out in a meeting at work...) The picture above does not quite capture the brightness of the green...*sigh*...oh well!!! At least the girl found me a cover that basically makes the phone look purple...

I know I will come to love this handy gadget in my pocket, but right now it's caused me more time and angst than it's helped me.  I do not intend to use much data because I don't want to pay for it, so it will basically be when I'm traveling and don't have access to wifi that I use it like a smartphone.  You should have seen the look on the little boy's face at the store when I told him this.  Like I said the world was ending.  Really.  I can live hours - and days!  without reading Facebook or even the news.  As long as I can get in touch by text or email or phone with those I love...that's really all that matters.

Whether I'm smarter or not as a result of this new device remains to be seen...though my SS teacher did tell me about the "gas buddy" app that will pull up the prices of gas stations around you and show you the cheapest one.  That is something I can use.  And am willing to pay for. :)

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