Category: Life

I killed my phone.

Correction, someone, or some entity, built an evil virus and attached it to a link that I must have clicked on at some point, because one day, my phone flickered, flashed and basically lost it’s computer mind. It’s zeros and ones programming became a jumbled mess that not even my phone’s very intelligent brain could decipher.

In other words, my phone caught a virus.

Everything I clicked on popped up a Temu ad, (hmm … coincidence? You tell me), and once in a while, a message would show up, “You have 287 viruses – click here to clean them off.” Yeah buddy, fool me once…

Of course I didn’t click on it.

The damage was done. I officially became the proud owner of a pocket-sized piece of junk.

Cool.

So, I started researching how to reset the phone back to factory settings. Wipe it clean, start over. I wasn’t too terribly upset by this, I’ve had the phone for five years, it was probably time to wipe the dirty slate clean and start over but … hold on …

I’ve had my phone for five years. When we went on our last Norwegian cruise I was unable to downlaod their app because my phone was too old … so maybe I needed to skip the wipe and upgrade to a new phone, instead.

I started looking for a new Android phone. Yep, I’m an Android robot kind of girl. I loathe Apple products. No disrespect to my Apple readers out there, but Apple is GROSSLY overpriced and then you’re FORCED to buy their products, and their products only, if you want to continue using your Apple phone. And then, because you’re forced to buy their products in order to make the Apple device work, you’re also forced to spend a stupid amount for said product.

No thanks. I like options.

I’ve never owned an Apple and I never will. I’m sure they’re great – people wouldn’t buy them if they were junk, but I can’t help but wonder, is the product really that superior or is it because it has a cute apple icon on the back?

It doesn’t matter – you do you.

I knew I would have to spend some money, but I was not willing to pay more than $500, if I could help it. And luckily for me, I found some options.

Kevin has been using a Motorola for a few years now and he loves it. He has one of those phones with the cool stylus, even though he rarely uses the stylus, he likes having the stylus in case he wants to use it. Ha! Which, even though the writer in me is drawn to a phone with a stylus, I knew I would never use so it was best to just not worry about that feature.

And I knew if I went into a Verizon store, they would show me all of their shiny, impressive phones with a hefty price tag and I would be tempted, perhaps even walk out of the store with one and, no, I didn’t want to be tempted when I could likely find something just as cool without the price tag.

Amazon, here I come.

And as usual, Amazon didn’t let me down. The heavens opened up, the Angels sang and I found my new phone.

I bought a Motorola Moto G Power and she’s a beaut.

I’ve had her, (yes, she’s a her), about two weeks now and I’m loving her so far. There is one thing I’m not real happy about, the headphone jack. To my surprise, there are quite a few phones nowadays without a headphone jack at all. I guess the manufacturers are assuming people will just use wireless/Bluetooth earbuds. Which, are nice, but I’m old fashioned, I like my headphone jack. I try not to use very much data, I’m always on WIFI if I can help it, so, I haven’t had the best luck with my Bluetooth earbuds working all of the time. And I know, Bluetooth is supposed to work whether your connected or not, but I’m an idiot and am probably doing something wrong but … I like having a backup plan, okay? 😀

The phone jack on the phone is too big for any of the headphones that I own. I mean, it works, it’s just super loose and loses connection so when I’m on the treadmill and the music cuts off abruptly, I get ticked. Who wants to walk on the treadmill to begin with, let alone with NO music? Um, no. So, in a huff, and pretty annoyed, I thought, “FINE. I’ll buy a pair of Motorola headphones, ya big buttheads” The headphones came and they still didn’t fit!! I think Motorola thought, “ya’ll are complaining so much about not having a headphone jack, fine, we’ll put a jack in but we’re not happy about it and we don’t care if it doesn’t fit.”

Rude.

But, Kevin being the clever man that he is, found a workaround. He bought an adapter. It’s a USB C to a headphone jack adapter, to be more precise and it works like a charm.

So THERE Motorola. haha

The data transfer itself was a breeze. I went from a Samsung to the Motorola with nary a hitch, just transferred the SIM card from one device to the other, said yes, you have my permission to transfer data, (though I was worried it would also transfer the viruses, – it didn’t) and badda-bing-badda-boom, my data transferred over and I was now an official Motorola user.

Now that the dust has settled, I got to thinking about cell phones in general; about how much we rely on these little suckers and how our children really have never known a world without cell phones.

I’m a Gen Xer so I remember a world without cell phones. (Actually – if you want to get technical – I straddle the line between Baby Boomer and Gen X – but I digress).

I vaguely remember the days of rotary phones. Oh yes, I used them, back in the day. I remember stickling my finger into the hole and pulling up and around the dial. I remember the sound it made as it turned. It was always fun when you were dialing a number with a nine in it. If you made a mistake, you had to hang up and try again, and it took 30 minutes to dial anyone, but eventually, it happened.

I remember our family phone with the long cord so you could take the receiver with you into the next room for privacy. I remember that cord becoming so stretched out it would coil in on itself and it was hard to untangle, and especially annoying when you were trying to make a fast exit from the room, for privacy, but the tangled cord prevented you from going as far as you wanted to go.

It was always a gamble to call someone because you never knew if the person’s family member would answer and then you would have to shyly ask if so-and-so was home and then wait to hear them loudly call throughout the house that they had a phone all. There was very little privacy back in those days – your family pretty much always knew your business.

Back in those days, you sort of had to hope your loved one got to where he was going and wait for that confirmation phone call that he made it in one piece all while nervously chewing your fingernails.

Or, if you were expecting a call, you had to sit close to the phone all night so you wouldn’t miss it. There was no text me when you’re ready! If you missed the call, you were SOL. Shouldn’t have gone to the bathroom.

I remember the days when you had to memorize people’s phone numbers, or carry an address book around so that when you had to call someone, you had their number close. I couldn’t recite our sons’ phone numbers now if my life depended on it.

Then came the cordless phones. How cool! You could easily carry the phone around with you, or go into another room, without having to worry about strangling yourself in the cord.

We were late to the game as far as buying a cell phone. I had a flip phone, (loved that thing), a slide phone, (a keyboard!) and then finally a smart phone.

I remember getting rid of our landline and feeling squeamish about that as we were now fully depending on technology to communicate with the outside world.

Now, the thought of having a landline is almost laughable.

I remember the days when a phone was used JUST as a phone, now our phones do our thinking for us.

I remember using ACTUAL maps – the kind we spread out over our dashboard and ran our fingers across as we traveled. Now – our phones simply tell us which way to turn and we blindly obey.

Remember ACTUAL cameras? With interchangeable lens and film we had to physically take to the store to get developed?? Now anyone can be a decent photographer, just point and tap. It’s virtually impossible to take a bad picture with your phone – especially when there ware so many filters to make it look even better.

When you think back, and really pay attention to the timeline of phones and the method of communicating with one another, it’s really quite astounding how much progress we’ve made.

We somehow survived without a cell phone “in the old days”, now I can’t imagine life without one.