My immobile phone
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My mobile phone is decrepit. I've had it for years. It's a Sony Ericson w810i and I got it when that particular model was still new. These days it's practically ancient. For one thing, it still has buttons as opposed to a touchscreen, and you can't even download an app that makes it look like you're flipping open a Zippo lighter on it. But it's not the phone's age that's the problem. Functionally, it still does everything it did the day I got it. The matt finish may appear somewhat more buffed on the edges these days, but that aside, it's still working as it was designed to.
The problem is that over the years I've noticed that some of the design wasn't as well thought out as it could have been. I'm talking about software here. In terms of hardware, it's fine. The buttons have always been a little small, but you get used to them, and I have thin fingers anyway. The general aesthetic is as stylish now as it was back in the day and, while a little dated compared to today's models, it's still quite attractive in its own way and certainly nothing like the embarrassing bricks of yesteryear.
The first issue with the software is that it's ageist. Yes, you read correctly. It discriminates against anyone older than a certain age—specifically anyone born before the 1st of January 1971. If you were born before this date, then I'm sorry, but your birthday will not go in my phone's calendar, and frankly there's a high likelihood I'm going to forget it. I don't mean to. If you've told me, I can probably remember your date of birth when asked. I've just come to rely on a little help to remember it at the time. I like having a reminder in my calendar. But so long as I have this phone, please forgive me if my best wishes arrive a little belated.
Another issue is that it sometimes gets confused about the text messages stored in its inbox. If you just have a few in there, that's fine. I'm the sort that likes to keep important or sentimental messages so I can re-read them later, and once I hit a certain amount (the exact amount I haven't yet figured out), things get tricky. Sometimes it will hide random messages. Sometimes it will shuffle them up so they don't appear in the order in which they were received. Other times it will go completely mad and start merging messages together, or attributing them to someone in my phonebook other than the original sender. Brilliant! (Not.)
Another issue is that it struggles with things like the alphabet or common sense. Predictive text is a genius invention and one I use a lot. When it works, it's wonderful and speeds up the process of typing a message. But when it doesn't, it's both infuriating and (if one sends the message before realising the error) sometimes embarrassing! The order in which it suggests words is frankly bizarre. One would think it would opt for a list based either on alphabetical order or the most commonly used. But no. It's about as accurate as a blind darts player. If my phone is to be believed, "shaking" comes before "picking" and the alphabet starts "A, C, B".
I suppose I shouldn't grumble too much. A mobile phone should, after all, be a mobile phone. That all of these extra features are included is a bonus rather than a curse. It's just that, since they've now become the norm, one would think that they'd have been better thought out. I've coped with my current phone's idiosyncrasies for years now so they obviously haven't been all that off-putting. But its days are numbered. When the next version becomes available, I'll be getting myself an iPhone. I'll probably give the Zippo lighter app a miss though.