Taking a bite out of the bigger apple

I like to think of myself as a technologically advanced person. I love my smart phone beyond reason. So much so that I kept my last phone for more than three years. This, in smartphone time, is prehistoric.

Operating system upgrades, time and the sheer cunning of telephone manufacturers who plan obsolescence to happen about 5 minutes after you purchase your phone or tablet, (I’m talking to you fruit phones!) all take a toll on even the fastest technology.

Toward our end together my smartphone was like a faithful pet. Slow moving but ever faithful, it struggled to keep up and often faltered. Still we soldiered on. Internal issues. Memory lagging.

Finally, one day it just began shutting down. Admitting that maybe it was time to let go, I wandered into the mobile phone store intent on getting in and out with a nice, serviceable little phone that would be just like the old one.

So I walked in, enjoyed the moment where they all gathered around to gawk at my current phone as something rarely seen outside of a museum, and walked out half an hour later with a phone that is easily the size of a billboard.

Supersize

That may be an exaggeration but honestly, when did mobile phones get so big? I am now old enough for technology to have gone full circle. I remember bag phones and their giant brick sized predecessors that we carted for much of the 1990s. Slowly but surely mobile phones downsized to the point where I was forever digging around my purse for a telephone the size of a Chiclet.

There was a point in time where mobile phones came back around to being big enough to be visible with the naked eye, but not so large that you couldn’t slip it in your pocket. Those were the glory days! Sure, once in a while someone jumped in a swimming pool or washed a phone in their favorite pair of pants when they forgot it was in a pocket, but overall, those were good times.

I use my phone for banking, documents, directions, casual photography and sharing cute photos of my cat, mostly. As you can see, it is very crucial that I have my phone at all times.

Store

Standing in the vast and very shiny space of the phone store, the new phone didn’t look so big. I mean it was bigger than what I was used to but I figured I would get used to it. So they loaded it onto a dolly and handed it over to me.

Only when I was out in the world did I realize I now suffered from a distinctly spoiled, first world problem: I had purchased a telephone that requires two hands to operate.

Slippery

My new phone is lightweight and slippery — it’s like talking on a bar of soap. I went from someone who could basically function in the real world, to a woman clutching a wafer thin phone with both hands and talking into what looks to be a turkey platter.

In the quest to make technology ever larger, yet lighter, they have now engineered very sensitive (and expensive) devices that weigh slightly less than a puff of air. So that’s fun. That aside, I do enjoy reading on it. I can pin more crafts I’m never going to attempt and recipes I am never going to prepare than ever before!

I can also take lots of photos of my hand (usually covering the lens in a white knuckle grip) or particularly horrifying close-ups of my nostrils if the forward facing camera is inadvertently turned on. As I age, I find that they keep making the print on everything smaller (why is that) so the larger screen is definitely a nice addition, even if it is working on my last nerve. Of course the very definition of luxury is being able to have a computer that doubles as a telephone in the palm of my hand — or in this case — two hands with a very good grip.

Now, I need to make a phone call. Can somebody grab an end?