Life at the Cellular Level

     No, this isn't some esoteric treatise on biology. It's about my experience with cellular telephones. The first time I had access to a mobile cellular phone was as a field supervisor for a security company. Because we had a contract with an alarm company to provide armed response, and no central dispatch, the field supervisors got to lug around this hefty piece of technology that was almost the size of a military man-pack radio like the AN/PRC-77 we used in Vietnam. 

AN/PRC-77 radio                   

       

Nokia Senator 21 lbs.

     In the military, there was usually someone to tote the 13+ pound PRC-77 around for you. I got to carry my own phone. We weren't supposed to use it for anything but alarm response calls, but since it was our only link to the office, it got used, with explanations and justifications, for other things as well. When I went to another security firm, that anchor was a part of my past.

     I by-passed the classic brick phone for a Motorola MicroTac, which looked like the communicator in Star Trek. (Not an accident, I later learned. A Motorola engineer I met doing tours told me that they used the familiar form factor to make adoption easier.)

Classic '80's brick phone  

     We started using the Motorolas in the Institutional Police and officers were able to get them for their own use at the same price and with the same deal as the City, so I ended up with two of them, one for department use -- all of us on "special details" got one -- and one for personal use. When I left the IP, I quit using mine and it sits in a box somewhere with a couple of spare batteries and the charger.

     I managed to live without a cell phone for a few years, but I did buy a Palm III to keep information, calendar and so forth upgrading to a slimmer Palm (actually a Handspring Visor Edge, a Palm-compatible device. Handspring was acquired by Palm shortly thereafter.) I got a great deal, since they were offering a deep discount if you gave your older Palm device to someone and they filled out the paperwork. I gave mine to my girlfriend Ana (now my wife) but she never used it.

     And then I was forced back into the cell phone world. When I started driving for California Jeep Tours, the boss was surprised to learn I didn't have a cell phone. I told him that I had been encumbered with a radio and two cell phones as well as a couple of pagers when I was a cop and wanted no part of the tethered world, thanks all the same. One day, he handed me a small cell phone the size of a bar of soap. I was back in the cellular world

    At some point, I realized that carrying two electronic devices -- my Visor Edge PDA and the cell phone -- made little sense, and I bought a Palm Centro, their latest smart phone, in 2007. I had expected that I could just port all my Visor Edge information over to the Centro, but that wasn't going to happen since the OS on my old Visor was one generation too old for that.

     I kept the Palm Centro-- and the service -- even after business slowed down and I was seldom needed to drive. I will confess to a rather selfish act. I kept the service with AT&T even after I moved to New Mexico, meaning but never getting around to changing over my service and getting a New Mexico number. And then, a month ago, my service ended. I wasn't all that surprised and can't fault my former boss for terminating my service. I had what I called my "Census burn phone" a Virgin Mobile phone I got when I was taking census back in 2010, so I bought some minutes, reactivated it and began the search for a new service and solution.

     I wanted to keep my Palm Centro. I had a lot of information on it, much of it no longer relevant, but enough that was to want to keep it in use. My old service -- and Ana's -- was with AT&T, so we looked to them first. Now, the serious drawback to the Centro is that it has a terrible browser, so I never used it to search the web. But because it is a smartphone, AT&T made a data plan at $20 a month mandatory. There was, apparently, no way around it. They also wanted a chunk of change to move Ana's service from California to New Mexico with a delay of a week or more. Needless to say, we were both . . . miffed, perhaps? Only more than that.

     One of the providers would sell me a SIM card to unlock my Centro, but, again, since it was a smartphone and technically capable of going on-line, they all wanted to make me take a data plan, even if I never used it. If I was going to have to pay for a data plan, I wanted to be able to use it, and that meant a phone with a significantly better browser. I was looking at Android phones, but they were pricey. And then I saw the LED signage at the "cricKet" store near us advertising "Free Android Phones." Well, free under certain circumstances. And it looked as if it would apply to us, although it wasn't going to be free for the phone I wanted. But at the discounted price, if I ported my phone number from Virgin, it was a good deal.

     Well, for some reason, which no one can explain, my number wasn't portable. But, I was told, the discount will hold. We'll see. It seems that one of the salespeople and the manager are of different opinions on the matter. And when Ana decided to upgrade to an Android phone, we got a run-around and she decided against it. 

     So, I find the Samsung Vitality smartphone I chose is pretty amazing, compared to what I was used to. When I came out from California with my stepson, Chris, he with an iPhone, I suffered a bit from phone -- and app -- envy. The Samsung does most of what his iPhone does, enough for me, at any rate. It is so far in advance of my old Palm Centro that I don't care that it lags behind the curve and isn't cutting edge. It does what I want, cost -- it would seem -- a reasonable amount and has enough "coolness" factor to keep me happy for some time.