This is more or less a rant on something that has always bugged me: cell phones. Perhaps not in general, or the way people use them (though that rant might be too long), its more or less about features, or the abundance there of. Let me explain.

For some reason it has suddenly become necessary a phone to do everything, except go to the bathroom for you, though I suspect that day is not far off. As December approaches and many of the cell companies realize my contract with Verizon is up soon and theyll get a shot at me as a customer I constantly am asked what phone I want. I do take some amount of joy when I ask for a flip phone with NO features. Thats right nothing, I hate phones that make themselves out to be the swiss army knife of phones, yet cant even get a signal everywhere I go. For me its more important that I get service everywhere then my phone being able to play a movie off of YouTube.

I have always said, if I want to watch a video I will wait till I get home and use one of my four computers. If I want to take a picture Ill use a real camera and not settle for trying to use my phone. I am a minimalist, but more then that, I am about being able to do something well consistently before you move on to bigger things. I try to do my job well so when I got to buy that TV I know Ill have a constant stream of money to pay for it. Before I create a fancy data access application, I learn how to do data access properly.

Now I am not saying that phones should do nothing, I think GPS is quite interesting and I am sure the information you can get from the internet is useful in some cases, movies times, weather, etc. But I do need to see some guy breaking his nuts on skateboard on YouTube. We have devices for this which are far from complete, yet we seem to want to through everything together and worry about making it work properly later.

Some may wonder about my commitment to technology, and as someone who works with technology everyday, I can find far more interesting things to worry about rather then what features my cell phone has and doesnt have. I just dont like being forced to buy what I really dont need. I would have no problem if a wide range of phones were kept around so that I could have a choice, but because Americans are so superficial and the retail industry is driven by demand, to buy a decent phone I have to spend $300 or be locked into some obscenely long contract with a carrier that could turn to be terrible.

So right now I am searching the internet for my perfect phone – no camera, no mp3 capability, flip phone, gps and internet ready, and with a powerful attena, maybe Ill find a good one and Ill be able to avoid getting raped when I go to determine my new plan, cause I am not going with my current carrier