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So, I despise certain kinds of advice. The one thing that they have in common is that they're personalized advice... I don't mean it gets personalized for me, I mean it's been personalized for the person for the person giving it.
You know... "I heard you've been having headaches, so let me tell you about the root extract that cured my aching spine!"
That kind of thing.
So, the other day I did one of the worst things imaginable for someone who doesn't like getting other people's advice: I mentioned that I'm having problems with my phone/will be shopping for a new one.
I know from experience that saying "Please don't give me advice." will have little effect beyond causing even more comments prefaced with "I know you said you don't need advice, but..." so I'm going to try something a little bit different and actually explain what my needs and preferences are, in order to take some of the guesswork out of things.
My favorite phone that I've ever had was actually a succession of Treo x00s from Palm, running the old Palm OS. These things were a brick. If you dropped one on the sidewalk, it would scuff the edges up a little bit in the process of denting the sidewalk. They had a battery on them like a packmule, if packmules had batteries. They simply don't make smartphones like that anymore, but if they did, that's what I would be looking for. Something resilient and too thick to easily lose track of, something that can run off a charge forever.
Anyway, in the absence of that sort of option, I actually need very few things out of a smartphone.
The first is a physical keyboard.
I can actually type faster and more accurately on a virtual keyboard than the average computer-using person can type on an actual full-sized computer. What I can't do is type without looking or thinking about it, which makes it useless because when we get right down to it I don't want this for typing, I want it for writing. As long as they keys have a definite physical presence and are in the QWERTY configuration, it doesn't really matter how small or awkward they seem to be, I can write on it.
The second is some means of storing text, and then getting it off the phone to the computer. At one point in the past when I was trying to save money off my monthly phone bill, I actually bought a non-smart phone that had a full keyboard for texting in it, thinking that it had to have an email program and I could use that... before I got on board with Google Documents, emailing drafts to myself was my main method of backing work up and sharing it among workstations.
It proved to be unsatisfactory for my needs, but only just barely. The point is that I don't need anything in particular for storing text. I don't need a decent interface with Google Apps. I'd prefer an office-type suite, but I can do great things with a notepad program and the ability to share documents via email.
For entertainment purposes, the most important thing is the ability to run a Kindle app. I have an actual Kindle but I dislike carrying it around with me. I tend to keep it near where I sleep, so I don't lose it and so I don't have to get up in search of reading material. Being able to read books on my phone did the same thing for my reading habits as discovering the joys of Kindle/e-books did in the first place. Reading on my phone means I always have a book at hand.
After that, there are other things I might enjoy about a phone, but everything becomes more and more distantly optional.
I occasionally take a picture with my phone, but why do I need a good camera? I don't have a good eye and I don't have good hands, so what am I going to do with a good camera? I don't use my phone to stay connected to social media (though I might Tumbl a bit more with a phone that has a physical keyboard) because I am not, by and large, a social person. When I had my old Treos I ran a NES emulator on them but I don't, as a rule, use phones for gaming. The disparity between gaming on a full-fledged computer or console vs. gaming on a phone is a lot wider than the disparity between reading and writing on one.
Any concerns rooted in call quality are making an undue assumption about my habits and purpose in owning a phone.
Please, no one take this post as a call for assistance and think that you'd be helping me out of a jam by finding the perfect phone for me. The upshot of all of this is that it actually isn't going to be that difficult for me to find a phone that suits me.
My current phone is problematic because I got the cheapest smartphone available to fill a gap when my last phone bit the dust. Literally, my carrier shows a picture of this phone underneath a promotion aimed at people who need a phone to tide them over to their next upgrade.
Before that I had a Palm Pre running the WebOS that I bought out of brand loyalty and optimism rooted in how great my experience with the Treos had been. Let me tell you two things about the Pre. One is that it was not a great phone for me and the operating system had terrible app support for reasons that anybody who knows anything about the history of smart phones already knows.
And the other thing is that it worked fine.
It suited my needs just fine.
These are my needs: a phone I can write with. I'll look at the reviews because things like spotty battery life or a tendency towards crashing can make it less useful for my purposes. As far as being a phone goes, I don't need it to do anything more than be a phone, a function it will only very occasionally be called upon to perform anyway. I will probably get an Android-powered phone because that's what I'm currently most familiar with and because I know the apps I like for it, but OS is not a dealbreaker either way.
You know... "I heard you've been having headaches, so let me tell you about the root extract that cured my aching spine!"
That kind of thing.
So, the other day I did one of the worst things imaginable for someone who doesn't like getting other people's advice: I mentioned that I'm having problems with my phone/will be shopping for a new one.
I know from experience that saying "Please don't give me advice." will have little effect beyond causing even more comments prefaced with "I know you said you don't need advice, but..." so I'm going to try something a little bit different and actually explain what my needs and preferences are, in order to take some of the guesswork out of things.
My favorite phone that I've ever had was actually a succession of Treo x00s from Palm, running the old Palm OS. These things were a brick. If you dropped one on the sidewalk, it would scuff the edges up a little bit in the process of denting the sidewalk. They had a battery on them like a packmule, if packmules had batteries. They simply don't make smartphones like that anymore, but if they did, that's what I would be looking for. Something resilient and too thick to easily lose track of, something that can run off a charge forever.
Anyway, in the absence of that sort of option, I actually need very few things out of a smartphone.
The first is a physical keyboard.
I can actually type faster and more accurately on a virtual keyboard than the average computer-using person can type on an actual full-sized computer. What I can't do is type without looking or thinking about it, which makes it useless because when we get right down to it I don't want this for typing, I want it for writing. As long as they keys have a definite physical presence and are in the QWERTY configuration, it doesn't really matter how small or awkward they seem to be, I can write on it.
The second is some means of storing text, and then getting it off the phone to the computer. At one point in the past when I was trying to save money off my monthly phone bill, I actually bought a non-smart phone that had a full keyboard for texting in it, thinking that it had to have an email program and I could use that... before I got on board with Google Documents, emailing drafts to myself was my main method of backing work up and sharing it among workstations.
It proved to be unsatisfactory for my needs, but only just barely. The point is that I don't need anything in particular for storing text. I don't need a decent interface with Google Apps. I'd prefer an office-type suite, but I can do great things with a notepad program and the ability to share documents via email.
For entertainment purposes, the most important thing is the ability to run a Kindle app. I have an actual Kindle but I dislike carrying it around with me. I tend to keep it near where I sleep, so I don't lose it and so I don't have to get up in search of reading material. Being able to read books on my phone did the same thing for my reading habits as discovering the joys of Kindle/e-books did in the first place. Reading on my phone means I always have a book at hand.
After that, there are other things I might enjoy about a phone, but everything becomes more and more distantly optional.
I occasionally take a picture with my phone, but why do I need a good camera? I don't have a good eye and I don't have good hands, so what am I going to do with a good camera? I don't use my phone to stay connected to social media (though I might Tumbl a bit more with a phone that has a physical keyboard) because I am not, by and large, a social person. When I had my old Treos I ran a NES emulator on them but I don't, as a rule, use phones for gaming. The disparity between gaming on a full-fledged computer or console vs. gaming on a phone is a lot wider than the disparity between reading and writing on one.
Any concerns rooted in call quality are making an undue assumption about my habits and purpose in owning a phone.
Please, no one take this post as a call for assistance and think that you'd be helping me out of a jam by finding the perfect phone for me. The upshot of all of this is that it actually isn't going to be that difficult for me to find a phone that suits me.
My current phone is problematic because I got the cheapest smartphone available to fill a gap when my last phone bit the dust. Literally, my carrier shows a picture of this phone underneath a promotion aimed at people who need a phone to tide them over to their next upgrade.
Before that I had a Palm Pre running the WebOS that I bought out of brand loyalty and optimism rooted in how great my experience with the Treos had been. Let me tell you two things about the Pre. One is that it was not a great phone for me and the operating system had terrible app support for reasons that anybody who knows anything about the history of smart phones already knows.
And the other thing is that it worked fine.
It suited my needs just fine.
These are my needs: a phone I can write with. I'll look at the reviews because things like spotty battery life or a tendency towards crashing can make it less useful for my purposes. As far as being a phone goes, I don't need it to do anything more than be a phone, a function it will only very occasionally be called upon to perform anyway. I will probably get an Android-powered phone because that's what I'm currently most familiar with and because I know the apps I like for it, but OS is not a dealbreaker either way.
