Smartphone

I purchased a smartphone last year and joined the 69.5 million Americans who own smartphones as of the end of February. I anxiously awaited the ability to upgrade my Razor, purchased the Motorola Droid when my previous contract expired, and since then have been quite happy with the phone. I have downloaded some apps, all but one was free, and some of them I don’t think I can live without. The best part is the calendar and email capability and the fact that it is constantly synced with Google.

However, I think my smartphone is getting dumber. First of all my battery seems to be losing the ability to hold a charge as long as I thought it used to. The battery has always been a sore point. I supposed I expected it to be much better designed considering the potential usage and the fact that most people utilize many aspects of the phone for the majority of the day. There is no way I could use my phone as an MP3 player and expect to still make calls after about an hour. Additionally, if I use the navigation on it, I have to plug it into the car battery charger or I risk the phone going dead once I have reached my destination. And don’t even get me started on playing Angry Birds and battery consumption. I am just glad I have a charger cord wherever I am; work, home, and car. I even got a solar re-charger unit for when I am biking. I haven’t really used it too much, but I tried it once when I was on the MS150 bike tour and while it kept my phone charged, my GPS tracking app flaked out.

The second part is the slowness of the unit which is beginning to be very frustrating. My phone used to go from screen to screen and load things up lighting fast, but now not so much. I haven’t researched why this is happening, but I suspect there is something running in the background that I have to kill or maybe the phone has some kind of bug in it. Whatever it is I get really frustrated loading up apps whenever I want to use them. The other day I wanted to post something on Facebook when I was at an event and it just took forever to load.

But despite these annoyances, I really like my smartphone. I have it with me constantly and if I do go out without it I feel as if a part of me is missing. I anxiously await a new phone with better battery power when I upgrade next time around. But on the other hand I kind of hate being so attached to a piece of technology. Such a quandary I am in.