Saturday, March 7, 2009

A weekend without the iPhone

So just for the hell of it I decided to switch back to my old Nokia 6500 Classic on the weekend, to see if I could really live without the iPhone, which I've come to rely on as my phone, MP3 player, and portable map (Google Maps).



I think I did pretty well, but after the weekend was over I was glad the switch was only for the weekend, and not for the reasons I thought.

The two surprising things I couldn't live without were:
  1. Threaded txting
  2. Full sized qwerty keyboard



I guess I knew in the back of my mind how useful threaded txting was, but it wasn't until I had to switch back to non-threaded txting that I realised just how much easier it was to keep the thread of the txt conversation going without having to constantly switch between the inbox and sent items.

The full sized keyboard I've found (even though it's virtual) is infinitely faster to type on than a numeric keypad, and the best thing is when typing out the txt, the threaded txt history is still visible.



An added bonus is that because the entire screen is touch, going back and correcting mistakes is just a touch away (as oppose to multiple taps on the arrow keys).

A few little things which I liked about going back to the 6500 classic though:

It's slimmer, lighter, and just better for pocket dynamics. And you also don't look like a dork putting the phone to your ear when making a phone call.

I don't miss the MP3 player or mapping application that much. I thought I would miss the maps, but I always knew where I was headed, and to be honest, it was almost always a comfort thing to load up my current location and make sure I was on the right track.

Of course, checking Facebook, twitter and going through RSS feeds is also a comfort thing, but to be honest I've been finding myself a exhausted checking up on everything lately, and sometimes it's best to take some time out and do nothing.

Oh and the best thing is that because my MP3 player and phone aren't the same device, I can play music in the other room AND not have a phone call / txt interrupt music play and force me to go into the other room :)

About Me

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Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Jerrold is a recently migrated Melbourne based software engineer with roughly 5 years experience developing in Java and the web technology stack (HTML, CSS, DOM, JavaScript, etc). More recently, he's started developing in Python (well, Jython, but close enough) and is unsure if it's flaws outweigh its advantages of having a more sugary syntax. He is currently working at a small South Melbourne based company which specialises in sales incentive management / reporting software, and is being schooled in the finer points of small company operations.