Hooked On Phone-ics

During our vacation out west, Helaine threatened to kill me – using my new cellphone as the weapon! OK, maybe I’m a little obsessed.

If you didn’t follow my earlier travails, I have moved to a Samsung Blackjack “Smartphone.” It’s a Swiss Army Knife phone that takes snapshots and video, browses the Internet, retrieves email, chats on IM and SMS… oh, and it’s also a phone.

The first thing I did was buy a skin for it. A skin is a hard plastic, form fitting, case. When I drop the phone, and I will drop it, it now has some protection. The skin is a rich deep red, giving the phone a metrosexual look.

The problem/fun presented by a phone like this is how much of it is customizable. I’ve already downloaded some programs which automatically send my photos to Picasaweb and my videos to Youtube (both automatically flagged as ‘private’ ). There’s also an Instant Messenger client (which routes all my text messages through India).

The real customization is saved for the homescreen. With a little rudimentary programming, it’s possible to make the homescreen look almost any way you want and display all sorts of cool (read: nerdy) data.

I’m working on that now, putting Google through a major test as I try and find more and more sites that have inside tidbits. There are lots of fans for this type of phone and many do have websites.

I really like the phone, though it is by no means perfect. The keyboard is incredibly small. My fingers are not. I often hit two keys at once, or move off a page because I’ve pressed the wrong part of the round navigation control.

Two of the phone’s most useful controls are built for right handed people. I’m a lefty.

There more I use the phone, the more I understand why people get hooked on them. Having this additional access to the Internet and messaging is an amazing thing.

When Steffie called me, looking for subway directions from Penn Station to Lincoln Center, I was able to figure it out, even though I was standing in the MGM Grand Poker Room in Las Vegas at the time.

I give it another week or two of obsessive behavior before I’m able to move this phone into the normal rhythm of life. Until then, I’ll try and use it when Helaine’s not watching.

One thought on “Hooked On Phone-ics”

  1. I hear ya Geoff, I’ve had the iPhone for about a month now (first smartphone for me) and I still can’t put it down – much to my wife’s dismay. I thought she’d be happy that I liked it so much (because of how much it costed). NOT!!!

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