Alone and Unobserved

The LCD screen on my Motorola flip-phone died about a week ago. I wasn’t too broken up about it because I’ve hated that phone since very shortly after I bought it two and a half years ago. (The screen was merely the last in a long line of features or parts that had failed or had never functioned.) I was broke, though, so I endured for a week.

It was an interesting experience figuring out how to dial out on a cellphone with no screen. How did I know that I had pressed the correct digits without the visual feedback? How could I be sure the call was connected?? How did I know if I had really hung up at the end??? It was like being transported back to the ’80s—an alternate-reality ’80s that had miracle phones with no wires that I could hold in the palm of my hand, and which dropped calls a lot.

Texting (reading, writing and sending) was impossible without a screen, but that didn’t keep my phone from constantly buzzing every time I received a Twitter update or Facebook notification I couldn’t read. I probably had fifty text messages sitting on my phone, unread, at the end of the week.

What finally broke me was the fact that what I really use my phone for is as a watch—i.e., I shell out $80 a month for the privilege of always knowing approximately what time it is. But with a busted screen, my phone was useless even for that. It was obviously time for an upgrade.

So when payday came, I walked into the local Apple Store and walked out an hour later with a brand-new iPhone. It is sexy and sleek and I can’t get enough of it. But it can also be incredibly irritating; everything I had learned to do and was comfortable with on my old phone I am having to relearn.

All the complaints you’ve heard about the iPhone 3G are true, by the way: 3G coverage is spotty, and it drains the battery like nothing I’ve ever seen, so usually I’m crawling along on the old Edge network. The phone gets pretty hot when it’s thinking hard, the GPS has variously located me in rural Minnesota and Pennsylvania, apps (including the Safari browser!) will sometimes crash, and occasionally the phone will start running REALLY REALLY SLOWLY. Realize that these are issues I’ve run into after only a couple days of owning the thing.

AND YET: I love it. I’m pretty sure after a week or so I won’t be able to imagine living without it.