Friday, May 15, 2009

A tale of two cell phones - why reliability is important

I loved my Palm Treo when I bought it. At that time iPhone was not available and getting a smart phone with a touch screen was all I wanted. And then I broke its screen (thanks for tossing a TV remote on the Bed). I was sad but resilient to fix it instead of buying a new one. Thanks to eBay bought a Palm touch screen and replaced it. While doing so I dropped its mic and for the sake of not taking any more risks I decided to buy a Bluetooth headset so I could continue using the phone. I so loved the phone that I also configured twitter with it. And then one day it decided to breach my trust and apathy. The phone decided to divorce the bluetooth headset. Even though there was a problem with the headset as well but even after getting a replacement it just did not work. I so wanted an iPhone. The price and thanks to the economy I decided to buy a $50 3G Samsung flip phone instead. Moving back to a non-touch-screen phone was hard. 3G was good but my current plan does not have an unrestricted data plan so watching ESPN on phone was not something that I could do. Good enough phone and except a few times going to Apple website to watch an iPhone I decided to settle down. It was like after a failed relationship while on the bounce unable to get any attention from that darn rich beauty deciding to get married to somebody else. The Samsung phone just worked with nice handy features. I stayed happy till the day when I needed reliability more than features. Had to be on a conference call all day for 12 hrs, I plugged the phone with a charger hoping the battery will remain available while I talk. No it did not. It failed the reliability test. The battery died in the middle while I was talking. The charger should have worked while the phone was busy, or at least that what I assumed. Then my old Palm saved the day. Flipped the SIM hooked a cheap Walmart wired headset and I was ready to go. The best thing while I talked, the phone charger continued to charge the battery and for the entire session the battery signal remained green. Features, bluetooth, touch screen was not on my mind. When it comes to saving the day its the battery that matters.

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