I've had a few cellphones in my day. Since I got my line in the winter of 1998/9 I've used at various times a Sony CMD-500, Qualcomm QCP-800, Sony CMD-Z1, Nokia 8260 (in all three colors), Samsung SCH-850, LG TM-510, LG-VX10, Kyocera SE47, Samsung SCH-a670, Motorola RAZR v3c, and LG VX-8700. Whoof. That's probably 3% of the earth's electronic waste right there. And you know what? The only phone I was actually truly happy using was the 8700. The other ones all had their flaws: the Sony/Qualcomm phones were all the same chipset and based on mid 90s tech, the Nokias kept on fucking breaking (I had three in the span of 10 months), my first Samsung inexplicably had no texting capability, my first two LGs were the cheapest-feeling phones I ever owned, the Kyocera was awesome except for its weird egg shape and nub antenna, the external display on the a670 clouded up so bad it wasn't readable, and the RAZR was great for about two months till its shitty build quality let me down completely.

But what the Mac mini did to my computing habits amd attitudes, my VX-8700 did to my cellphone tastes. You could tell once you picked this beast up that it was built well and was meant to last. I loved that thing to death and swore that I wouldn't get another till I was able to get a non-ATT iPhone.

Until the screen started glitching out.

Sure it still makes calls. And as long as you don't do anything requiring a lot of graphics (games, fast menu navigation or mobile internet) the screen is mostly okay. But my experience in electronics has taught me nothing if not that when one part fails, the others are doomed to follow. So I bit the bullet, called Verizon and used my contract expiration credit to order an env3. I hope this one lasts.

Labels: mac, personal, tech