NotSoThoreau

I’ve been reading a lot of cell phone reviews lately. We replaced Lon’s old Razr in December, after a brief try to replace it with a Chinese Razr. The Chinese Razr did have a perky ringtone “Hello Moto!” which caused us to answer the phone with the same. It didn’t hold up the way his original one had. Bad hardware, you could say.

And so, I started reading reviews. I read the ones on AT&T. On those reviews, no matter what phone, someone will say “This is the worst phone I ever had. DON’T BUY IT!) I read the reviews on CNET and a lot of other sites devoted to cell phones. What I have discovered is that cell phone reviewers are the worst sort of techno-snobs, counseling people to buy only what they personally love and sneering at the bulk of the phones out there. This is not helpful, to say the least.

I am a geek of sorts. I run Linux Mint exclusively on this old laptop. I use a command line program “Task” to keep track of events. I keep up with technology as part of my job, since people love to have us walk them through setting up mail on their iPad or Droid. I’ve had people bring in their iphones so I can configure them. I have a lifelong love of different interfaces and operating systems. Yet I am not a cell phone geek. For the longest time, I preferred to keep my PDA and phone separate. I carried a Palm and a basic prepaid Nokia phone. This is still the cheapest way to go, by the way. My Tungsten C cost me $75 at FreeGeek. It does wifi and still amazes me. But I moved to a Samsung Propel 2 years ago, when my boyfriend added me to his cell phone plan (that modern day equivalent of engagement.) I read reviews before I bought the Samsung, and I wasn’t looking for a smart phone at that time. I almost replaced it in the first 30 days, as there is a problem with the keyboard. I have to pop the battery to turn it off most of the time. Sometimes the keys on the keyboard will type just one letter and not the one it’s supposed to do. I kept the phone and soldiered on. I wasn’t ready to type much on a phone. It does webpages, but really, who wants to surf the web with such a tiny screen.

I narrowed things down, when looking for Lon’s phone. I made myself stop looking at phones I found interesting. I knew Lon liked Motorola and I wanted a phone with a large keyboard. He hadn’t been able to text with the Razr. I thought he might learn to do that with a keyboard. I looked at the Backflip, the Flipout, and Flipside. I had him buy the Flipside. Reviews of the phone were anemic. They called it second class, not worthy. Better to go buy that iphone! They judged the phone on things like web browsing, picture taking, or number of apps. Yet the phone consistently got high marks for call quality. The reviewers liked Motoblur to some extent. Lon has used that a bit during a stretch when we didn’t have internet and he likes it. But he doesn’t like reading email on the phone, and I turned off the email updates. He’s never looked for apps, as he hasn’t yet looked at the ones installed on the phone. The keyboard makes it worthwhile as he can now add people to his contact list and text message his son. He likes seeing pictures of the person calling, when it’s one of his friends. All in all, he’s happy with the phone. If I’d listened to the reviews, I would have wound up with an overly complicated phone that was frustrating to use.

The Flipside is not without problems, of course, It freezes occasionally. The touch screen is, well, touchy. I’d been considering a Backflip, thinking that it would be good to have interchangeable charging equipment. I read the reviews and considered ignoring them and forging ahead. I had time to think it over and started looking at other phones.

I started looking at Palms. I do like the Droid OS. I happen to stumble across a review of the Palm Pre and WebOS. I loved the idea of WebOS. It’s sort of like betting on one of those great applications they came out with in the early days of tech, the applications that failed because the company that created them had a lousy marketing department. WebOS may go the same way, although it looks like HP is committed to it. But again, the reviews said these were second class smartphones and you’d be better off to buy that iphone. One frustrated Pre owner said that the main complaint about the Palm Pixi was the 2 megapixel camera. Why should that be something you even consider when buying a phone?

Now I don’t have an answer to all of this. I’m going to be upgrading to the Pixi. I have no use for iphones. I don’t sync with iTunes. I can’t even run it on my computer. I’ve found Apple to be a restrictive company, hell-bent on making technologies obsolete, bound to determine what you can install on your equipment and quite capable of turning out poor hardware. (Anyone remember the antenna problems?) I’d urge you to take those reviews with a grain of salt. Buy the cell phone that fits your style. Don’t get something too complicated for your purposes. Above all, keep in mind that you are buying a phone, something you will use to talk on. Make sure that it gets decent call quality. Look at how easy it is to save phone numbers. If the reviews indicate that the phone hardware has quality issues, look elsewhere. Don’t let someone else tell you what you need, based on the latest fad. Above all, don’t be concerned with how many “apps” are available. That’s the last of your worries. Maybe someday, we’ll see cell phone reviews that are more balanced. Today, there’s a lot of nonsense out there.