Despite working in tech, I am not a terribly techy person. I am not an early adopter. I don’t have a lot of gadgets. I may have three monitors on my desktop computer at home, but I’m not one of those people who constantly upgrades to get the most performance. I didn’t have my own cellphone until 2005, and I always believed in getting the cheapest phone I could. Smartphone? No way. But I finally broke down and got one, and color me an instant convert to smartphones.
I got an Android-based Motorola Cliq XT from my current carrier, T-Mobile (an iPhone was out of the question, both because I don’t much care for Apple and because I hate AT&T with a passion). I was very interested in Android, being an open development platform as opposed to Apple’s closed system, and the Cliq XT seemed to be a pretty good choice, so that’s what I picked out when my contract was up. Aside from a few minor annoyances, I love it.
The phone itself is a good size, about the same as an iPhone. It doesn’t have a keyboard, only a touchscreen, which works fine. Motorola’s MotoBLUR, which takes your contacts from everywhere and puts them on your phone, took some getting used to. I typically did not have 400+ people on my phone, but when you add up Facebook, Twitter, my Google contacts, all of which I now have access to, it’s a lot. I miss having ringtone profiles, which means to put it on silent mode I have to turn the volume down all the way: this is a pretty big oversight, one that I don’t get considering that my past two stupidphones have had it. But it’s not a huge deal.
What’s there to love about the phone? Plenty. Widgets, for one. Calendar widgets (actually, two calendar widgets, one for work, one for Google calendar). Weather widgets. Time widgets. Widgets everywhere! Then, of course, the app store. Not as full as Apple’s app store, but still more than enough to keep me occupied. There’s Sportypal, which tracks where you go when biking or jogging via the GPS. There’s Google Sky Map for looking at the sky. There are silly apps. There are thousands to choose from.
I’ve only had the phone for a few days, so I’ve only begun to see how I can use it in my daily life. Given how much I’ve used it so far, though, it’s pretty clear that my life with a smartphone will be significantly different, and better, than life without it. I’m not sure if I can go back.