Welcome To Your New Phone
That's the message I got after turning on my new mobile phone earlier this week. For me, it was the beginning of hell.
I have always embraced new technology. When personal computers became available to the public, I bought a Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80. I was so excited to hook it up to one of my old televisions and enter the world of computing. It was pretty crude to say the least. I rote code to create a stick figure to walk from one side of the screen to the other. It took hours to write that code to make it work. It was then that I decided that was not something I want to continue to learn to do.
When mobile phones came about, I embraced that technology. Well, this is when the prices came down. I didn't have one of those huge hand held phones, but I did have a bag phone that looked cool in the car and taking it with me to show off. The problem was, it was big, clunky and cell service was very spotty.
As mobile phones became more streamlined, I would purchase the best that I cold afford. When the first phone came out that offered colors on the screen, I traded it in for the new model. Wow, that was cool.
Mobile phones have evolved to such in the past 20 years, that now they are basically tiny computers in the palm of your hand. And they've become expensive. Last week, my mobile phone developed a problem. I've had the phone for about 3 years and am happy with it. I had no intention of trading up anytime soon.
As I do everyday, I hooked it up to the charger. But a couple hours later, I noticed that it wasn't charging. I tried a couple other chargers. Still not charging. It's not one of those mobile phones that you can easily open up and replace the battery. So I watched it slowly die out. And that was all she wrote.
I had never hard of a phone that just stopped charging, but I must live in a bubble because everyone else around me had experienced it at one time or another. So, I opened up my wallet and grudgingly paid for a new phone. Upon it;s arrival I excitedly turned it on, got the welcome greeting and began a long, painful setup.
Fortunately, my contacts and pictures were in the cloud, so I was able to get them back, but it was a nightmare getting back all the apps, email addresses, and other miscellaneous stuff I had on my old phone back up and running on this new phone. There were usernames and passwords to enter. I couldn't remember half of them. Then all the stuff I had to check off to accept before using whatever app or phone feature was daunting.
As of this writing, four days into using my new mobile phone, I'm still setting stuff up and figuring out how other things work. I miss the days of being the guy that my friends and relatives would go to for questions on how to operate their new mobile phone. Now, I go to them for help. Either mobile phones are getting too complicated or I'm getting to old. Or maybe both.