I meant to post this a little while ago, before it became a moot question:

College choice?

Harvard, for the anti-competitive atmosphere – 6

23%

Yale, for the excitement of New Haven – 2

8%

Princeton, for the school colors – 2

8%

Columbia, for the calm, peaceful surroundings – 8

31%

Dartmouth, for the weather – 6

23%

Brown, for the conservative student body – 2

8%

Total votes: 26

So that’s that. New poll, coincidentally enough related to the subject matter of this post.

So a month or two ago I got a text message from Sprint, informing me that I was eligible for a free upgrade for my cell phone. Since my old phone was (according to the review sites I checked out, anyway) an utter piece of shit by most standards, I was eager enough to upgrade to a phone that would offer some added useful functionality: mainly a speakerphone, but I thought an externally-visible screen would save me the trouble of opening my phone whenever I wanted to see who was calling.

After some prodding of Sprint’s website I managed to get a look at the phones up for view. After some painstaking research, I ended up narrowing my choice down to two: the Samsung A640 for nothing, or the Motorola RAZR V3m for $50. Although I had previously vowed to never spend money on a cell phone when one could be had for free, I decided that the generally poor public reception of the speakerphone on the former made the latter the more functional choice and thus the better value.

So as it so happens, my current cell phone is now the same one often hailed most for its fashion than for its solid operation. Yet, its purpose in my pocket is entirely functional in nature–I need a phone that makes phone calls first, and the rest of it (or perhaps none of it) later.

Yet, products like the iPhone continue to pervade the mobile device marketplace, which leaves me somewhat confused. Perhaps people are secure enough in the battery life of their respective devices to shamelessly use their cell phone as their iPod one moment and as their communications device the next. I, however, remain in the camp that believes that the integral purpose of a cell phone is to act as a phone, and that the extra fluff does more to endanger that purpose than it does to enhance the value of the device.

But maybe that’s just me. My cell phone doesn’t see much use, anyway.

Comments (1) | Geekish, Poll Results