I am not ashamed to admit that I have gone backwards.
Last fall, my brother gave me a cell phone of his that he was no longer using. My trusty seven-year-old Nokia had finally gone to its final reward, and I was glad to receive his hand-me-down. It was a Motorola phone and over the past few months I have systematically proven that I am just not nearly as tech-savvy as it is.
I can answer it, and I can call out on it, but that’s about it. I know it has a lot of wonderful features, but I’ve never learned how to use them. It can store multiple numbers for one name, which is useful, but it doesn’t tell me I have a message until 48 hours later. That can be a little frustrating, especially for message-leavers who never gets a call back from me. Then the battery started falling off several times a day, and at that point, I began to think that maybe somewhere out there a better phone for me could be found.
Scott and I were window shopping for a phone for Katie’s birthday – HER trusty Nokia (same vintage) also being on its last legs and having gone AWOL in Virginia – and he wanted to get me a better phone, too. I think he wanted me to have something like a Blackberry Pearl or an iPhone, but really, for me, those would all be overkill.
I need a phone with that doesn’t flip open and can perform these (and only these) functions:
1. Have real buttons with numbers big enough for me to see and press
2. Store up to 150 names and numbers
3. Make outgoing calls
4. Receive incoming calls
5. Receive voice mail AND alert me to the existence of messages
6. Show me the time of day
7. Be loud enough for me to hear
That’s it. Really and truly. No joke.
I don’t need it to access the internet, take pictures, or play music. (I have a computer, a camera, and a radio that do those things very well, thank you very much.) I don’t need it to shoot video, play games, or display information in languages besides English. I don’t need it to be my alarm clock or my calculator. I don’t need it to send or receive text messages or provide mobile email. I just need a phone that will be a phone, that will give me my messages within a few minutes, and whose battery I don’t have to retrieve off the floor all day.
As we browsed options at the Mart of Walls, I was shocked to learn that it is possible for one to spend as much as $300 (or more) on a cell phone!!! Even for Katie’s gift, we weren’t about to invest anything like that, and for a simple phone for me. . . well, since I didn’t want it to whistle Dixie in four-part harmony, surely we could find something more economical.
Then the friendly Wal-Mart associate pointed us – perhaps with some mild disdain – toward the display of $20 Go Phones. For me, it was love at first sight, but Scott was skeptical. To him, the phone looked cheap. It didn’t have a zillion features (that I didn’t want or need). But it was a Nokia, the Toyota of cell phones, if you ask me, and the blurb on the package indicated that it would do everything I could ever want a cell phone to do.
We bought that puppy, and I am so incredibly happy. I finally have a phone that works the way a phone ought to work. Its functions are intuitive for me, and on MY phone, that’s what matters.
I am presently working on entering my names and numbers. I have learned that in a cell phone, you can store names and numbers on the phone (which I inadvertently did with my brother’s Motorola) and/or on the SIM card (which I am doing with my Go Phone). Then, when this phone dies in seven years, I will have all my necessary information on that teeny tiny chip, ready to load into my next Nokia.
At the time David gave me his former phone, he had told me that there was an interesting trend developing among some purchasers of new computers. People were buying new machines that came pre-loaded with the “new and improved” Windows Vista operating system, but then they were paying extra fees to have Vista uninstalled and replaced with the older XP system. In essence, they were paying more to downgrade.
We paid only $20 to downgrade to my nifty Go Phone, and despite the innate shame that such a move engenders in a techhy 21st century family, I’m fully convinced I got the best end of the deal.