New Phones

Jake's phone has officially had it. It had died and somehow for about 2 weeks (or longer) he managed to resurrect it long enough to read a text or return a phone call but usually somewhere in the middle the screen would fade out and it would shut off. Luckily for us this place called Car Toys was having a huge sale. Free smartphones (after mail in rebate) so we drove down to take a look; or if this were Jake's story to buy phones.

Jake has already decided what phone he wanted, the HTC G2. It has a slide out keyboard which works great for him since he has "man sized" fingers.  (He tells me they are fat but then changes to man sized when I say something to someone else.)  I was debating between 2 phones and still not exactly sure I wanted a new phone. Don't get me wrong, I love having nice, new things especially when they are fun to play with. At the same time, I only really need phone calls and texts. My other phone has an awesome music player in it and it still works fine. I have survived in this world with out ever owning an i-pod. I ended up getting the Samsung Vibrant.

It has been fun trying to figure things out but here are a few pet peeves (if you know how to fix any of them, let me know):

1. Contacts cannot be placed into groups and given separate ring tones unless you move them off the SIM card and on the phone memory.
2. Although it syncs with facebook, you can't post stuff pictures or videos directly to facebook. And you are very limited on what you can look at on facebook.
3. More than half of the application pre-installed on the phone (the calendar) won't work unless you already have or sign up for a gmail account.
4. The users manual is the shortest I have ever seen and really doesn't have useful information, just the super basics of turning on and off the phone and moving, adding, or deleting apps.
5. At a pre-set time the screen turns off and the phone becomes locked. Extending this time drains the battery but to unlock the phone you have to press the power button and then either slide the screen or input a password.

I do like some of the features on the phone:

1. There is a 5mp camera and a postcard app that allows you to take funny pictures.
2. The camcorder is HD, but you do have to manually change a setting if you want to be able to send the video via message.
3. The swype texting feature is pretty cool. I just wish sometimes it had better guesses at which letters you were pushing.

Is having a smartphone really worth it?