I remember going batshit over the iPhone back in the day. Way before Maxis brought it in. Back before there was the iPhone 3G. When it was still actually cool to own one and do multi-touch gestures with your photos or surf the net on your phone.
My hunger for it then was indescribable. I would go through my daily routine and start wondering at various points ,"You know what would be perfect right about now? An iPhone."
Of course, back then, the iPhone wasn't so readily available as they are now. Grey market imports cost a ton, well RM2500 to be exact, but it was a lot of money for a student who lived off his part time jobs and ahem, doesn't like to go to mummy and daddy to get him toys.
There was a loophole though and that was that in the US, you could actually buy iPhones off the shelves without signing a contract. That means you could get subsidized phone prices without committing to a 24 year phone deal. The reason was that the phone didn't work until you activated your contract at home. Hackers managed to find a crack, though, and that meant RM1400 iPhone's for everyone!
I had friends in the US and I would always ask once every few days if it was alright for them to get one for me, to the point of being an irritant. Trouble for me was, that was in March-April and they wouldn't be back for another couple of months, and when you are a tech geek who has a serious gadget craving, it's WAY TOO FUCKING LONG!
The source of much misery in Early 2008.
So I spent days upon weeks trawling through the online forums looking for ways to avoid being taxed if I got one of my friends to ship it home. There wasn't a way though and that meant I always had to try to get over my obsession with it and fail miserably. I would go to the Apple page every day and just stare at pictures of it or go to Youtube to watch videos of it in action. I didn't even know a girl for whom I obsessed that much over! Well I did actually, but that's a story for another day...
Finally, about a few days before I would have gone insane, out pops a saviour. Sharon's sister who was an air stewardess was flying to the US for a couple of days and very generously agreed to help me buy one! She got one for herself too in the end, probably by seeing how jubilant I was by my unexpected fortune and wondering what all the fuss was all about.
I got it off her the night after she came back and spent the entire night trying to unlock and activate the thing. It wasn't as easy as these days where you just plug your phone in, click a few buttons and be done with it. It was relatively more tedious back then, and there was also a danger you might brick your phone. I was frustrated the entire night and didn't actually succeed in getting it to work until 6 am the next morning, yes, I stayed up all the way!
Of course, my shit luck was existent even back then, I dropped it on the road 4 days after I got it, and there were huge dents over the back of it. I was actually in shock for about 30 minutes after that happened but I suppose it's good to get that first bump out of the way.
So what does this entire, boring I'm sure, back story to my 1st generation iPhone have to do with the actual topic of the post? Well, nothing actually, I just thought I'd say something about how I got it and I just veered off track. Massively.
So anyway, fast forward till 2 days ago when I finally had it with the iPhone as a phone and changed back to my old Samsung D900 and I have to say I never realized how much I missed having a dedicated phone phone.
My old baby.
It seemed hard to believe now that there really were days before the iPhone but really, I'm enjoying using my D900 more than I am the Jesus Phone. So my iPhone is basically now just a rich man's iPod touch with unresponsive, faulty buttons. My, how out of love have I fallen with it.
You see, the D900 is a phone first and foremost, and all the other fancy stuff are just things it happens to do, whereas the iPhone is a great entertainment and internet device but quite frankly, is a piece of shit when it comes to this dialing/calling business.
Consider this,
To make a phone call:
iPhone: Press home button, slide to unlock, press phone button, go to favourites/contacts, flick until name is present. press name, press number.
Samsung: Slide open, press contacts, search number, press call.
To dial a number:
iPhone: Press home button, slide to unlock, press phone button, press keypad, press numbers.
Samsung: Slide open, press numbers.
To answer a call:
iPhone: Look at phone, slide to answer.
Samsung: If you can't be bothered, just slide open to answer.
To hang up:
iPhone: Look at phone, press end call.
Samsung: Slide close to end call.
Get my drift? And this is not considering all the waiting you have to do during the menu transitions on the iPhone and the unresponsive home button which is a hardware defect that eventually happens to all iPhone's. There are just too many steps to make a phone call and sometimes when you're in a hurry, it really gets on your nerves!
The Samsung is a small, lightweight phone that doesn't make my jeans feel heavy nor cause a huge bulge on it (This is not a euphemism for anything!). And it's allowing me to actually enjoy making/receiving calls again.
I heart my Samsung D900. Welcome back, buddy. I missed ya!
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