The Next Generation of Addiction

It is long past time to write about something BESIDES pregnancy and childbirth!  (Holy shit, my apologies to some for my one-track mind lately!)  Gawd forbid I become one of THOSE people who only talk about their children.  You know, the kind I swore I would NEVER - I mean EVER - be! 

You will recall - or perhaps not if you're a new reader to this blog - that I have a serious addiction to my phone.  (You can catch up on things here and here if you wish.)  It's no secret to my friends and family that I'm one of the probably millions of Verizon users who have been patiently waiting for the claims of "the iPhone is coming soon" to be true while the dates come and go and it is still not available.  Remember, I am NOT a patient woman so the fact that I actually carried around an archaic Blackberry that didn't even have a camera on it far past my "new every two" upgrade window without bitching about it on my blog or on my Facebook page is a personal miracle.  I am also a very selfish person so I had the best phone in the family and my darling husband got, well, my leftovers usually.

This selfish, addicted smartphone whore finally had enough!  (And I mean ENOUGH!)

On top of this, my darling hubby who picked a shitty phone to upgrade to because "whatever" really wasn't okay when he let me pick his new one based solely on battery life specs online (and had to go back to the old phone that wouldn't hold a charge longer than about 12 hours) had finally had enough, too.

The stars were aligned on that fated day in early January when I got curious after playing with my friend's new phone she'd gotten for Christmas.  We are in a recession.  And the mass consumerism season that falls between Thanksgiving and "the winter holiday" must have been pretty dismal.  For I got a killer deal on a pair of new HTC Droid phones for us both.  We're talking a pinch-me-because-I-must-be-dreaming kind of a deal where you feel like a thief and just a little smug at the same time.

OH BOY!

I thought I was addicted before... but the Blackberry was small potatoes compared to this baby.  It fully integrates with everything in my Google account.  It links my contacts to their Facebook profiles!  And their Twitter accounts!  It has a camera - that INSTANTLY uploads photos to Facebook without having to go to the browser even!  (My purse is lighter by at least a pound now that I don't have to carry a digital camera separate from my phone!)  It is like freebasing on pure {enter your drug of choice}.  Okay, *sigh* it feels like what I think that might feel like since I was always too scared to try anything harder than the occasional pot in college, but you get the gist, right?  It is supposed to be just like the iPhone only ALREADY ON VERIZON and with a cheaper data plan AND works as a phone when you actually need it.  Of course we all know that's just what people without an iPhone say to make themselves feel better that they have the cheaper imitation but I'm sticking with the "I don't know firsthand what I'm missing so I can delude myself" defense.

Best of all, the hubby got the phone he deserves and is also addicted which means he will never complain again about my addiction to my smartphone.  Of course it took him a while to get over the fact that it would cost him the price of a monthly data plan to reap the benefits of the smartphone (he's such a penny pincher about some things but not others...).  Going from a basic phone to a very advanced smartphone in one giant step does have it's learning curve.  His is still a love/hate relationship while he gets used to the quirks of a smartphone.  Like the first day he used the browser to research a brand of cheese in the aisle at the grocery store without having to call me to google it for him - that was a love moment.  But there's a ton of hate moments, too, when the touch screen keyboard types words he did NOT mean or the phone won't read his mind and re-display at every whim and he threatens to throw "the piece of shit" across the room.  I quietly remind him that he's right - he should definitely go back to his old phone - which was really my old phone before the Blackberry - because that was a much better unit for sure... and roll my eyes!

I still can't believe I thought the Blackberry was the epitomy of a great phone.  Or that I waited so long to upgrade to a better smartphone!  If you're on Verizon and unwilling to wait indefinitely for the iPhone, the Droid is truly a piece of heaven.  And I only kind of miss my qwerty keyboard which I could have had if I'd sprung for the Motorola model anyway...  guess I'm a cheapskate at heart, too - who knew!?