Cell Phone Upgrade

I don't even recall how long I've had my current cell phone. But, if I had to guess I'd say about 2 years? It has worked fine for my cell phone needs - which are not many or varied. I have service through Tracfone and I just make sure I buy a prepaid wireless card every sixty days to maintain my phone number. It's cheap, there are no service contracts, and the phone itself was free. The coverage on my original phone was only so-so. I had areas (like my house where I generally don't NEED to use the cell phone anyway) where coverage was scant at best. If I walked to a window at the right time of day just after a full moon when there are wild turkeys roaming the yard I might get a single bar, but generally the phone did have its dead spots where no amount of finagling would get me any signal and attempts at using the phone were futile. The phone is also quite large compared with current standards. In fact, last spring my brother and his family were visiting and his kids looked at my cell phone on the counter and had to ask if it was a cordless phone or a cell phone. They couldn't believe that any cell phone in existence could be THAT big. Unlike those young'uns, I can recall the day when cell phones looked like this:


I thought my "little" cell phone was not nearly the mark of the luddite that they considered it to be. But I have since been informed by my neighbor that, in fact, there was a time not that long ago when her daughters were actually embarrassed by the size/make/model of her cell phone and pretty much refused to carry it anywhere unless it remained well hidden and essentially for emergency purposes only. She upgraded a little while ago much to their relief! Who knew that I had the potential to be such an embarrassment to my future teenage girls. I'm actually looking forward to it!

In the meantime, I was online the other day and I went to the Tracfone website to see about adding some time to my phone before the December 15th deadline. It turns out they were having a deal on a reconditioned Nokia phone. Essentially, I could pay $20 for a prepaid wireless card that would add 60 minutes of airtime to my current "behemoth" or I could pay $20 and get double minutes AND a new/ reconditioned phone. In the process I hoped that a slight upgrade in technology might also gain me some better signal coverage.

My new phone arrived yesterday - in plenty of time to keep my old number and just transfer it to my new phone (phew). It's not a flashy phone by any stretch...and it's pretty much *just* a phone - it doesn't take pictures, double as a PDA, or shoot high-powered lasers that reduce my enemies to a pile of ash in a matter of seconds. But, it sends and recieves calls and even has a text messaging feature...much to my chagrin, especially when I found out that Tracfone might occasionally send me text messages that I will be charged for if I bother to read them. (Note to self: read manual to figure out how to delete messages without reading them!) When I saw the phone I was amazed by it's small size - of course, it's still probably considered a behemoth to some. But, check out the reduction in size from my old, clunky Nokia to my shiny, happy new one:



And so skinny too!


And when I powered up and got this puppy activated I found that sitting here at my computer - a full four or five feet from the nearest window (with nary a turkey in sight) I had THREE bars on my little attenna icon! Well, now, isn't that special!? ;-)

And lest I start feeling all hip about my new phone here's a review that basically knocks me down a peg because it refers to this particular model as being "made for older people, being conservative consumers. This means the sort of people who will buy a phone once, holding on to it as long as it works."

Yep. Sounds about right. Go ahead. Call me an old fart. Just make sure you call me!