A new phone

I bought myself a new phone the other day. My existing phone had been playing up for months, constantly insisting it couldn't find a SIM card, when I knew for a fact that it was just there, underneath the battery, and the phone clearly wasn't looking hard enough.

Eventually, I bit the bullet and decided to go in and replace it. I didn't want a new phone contract, just a new phone, so I thought it would be easy.

Oh how naïve I was back then.

Obviously, the first thing I did was to go online. I'm not an idiot, I know that if I go into a mobile phone shop, the last thing I can expect is mobile phone advice. They're all on commission, so naturally they'll just try and sell you the thing they get paid most for. Luckily, the web is full of mobile phone comparison sites, and of course they're all reviewing things out of the goodness of their hearts, so I decided to go to these for a completely free and unbiased opinion.

Then, I hit my second snag. £500? For a phone. I can buy a new fridge freezer for less than that. I could eat out at the top Michelin starred restaurants in the country one a week for a month, and still be paying less than it would cost for latest Samsung, Sony or HTC. But the reviews were all telling me that only the top of the range phone would do. All the others were, apparently, rubbish. No processing power, slow charging, crappy camera, and worst of all, nowhere near as pretty. All of these phones were so bad that, in last years reviews, they'd only been place at the number one position and described as 'the only phone you'll ever need'. Apparently forever is a lot shorter than it used to be.

In fact, one of the rubbish phones was the same model I currently have. I loved that phone. It did everything I wanted it to. In fact, I'd only ever had two problems with that phone. Firstly, the on board storage was a little too small – I kept on running out of space in the middle of a download, and even an additional memory card didn't help. The second problem was the fact that the phone didn't seem to know what a SIM card looks like.

So, I did my research, and narrowed down the options, convinced myself that the current phone fault was a manufacturing error in one batch of phones, and therefore wouldn't affect me if I bought a new one, and checked the prices I could get online.

Of course, if I got one online, I'd have to wait 4-6 working days, which means two weeks in real terms and, due to the fact that I needed a working phone straight away, realised I'd need to go into a physical shop to buy one. This adds about 20% to the price but I didn't really have a choice, so I headed in.

In the shop, I headed over to the SIM only display and browsed the models. The phone I wanted was there, but annoyingly my subconcious had been doing some thinking on the way over and had decided that even my existing model was more than I really needed given the price. I don't really take pictures, don't really use social media, don't watch videos and don't run any but the most rudimentary of games. In fact, all I really use it for is making phone calls, checking my email, Google Maps and iPlayer.

I perused the phones. They all seemed capable of making phone calls. I ticked that off my list of requirements. I was able to narrow it down even further by eliminating all phones with a display smaller than postage stamp. However, the main requirement was online storage, and none of them seemed to have this listed. They all listed MHz of processing power, Gigapixels for the camera and exactly which level of cache was used on the motherboard but things like MB of storage was apparently not relevant. I asked a handy phone store guy.

“Hi,” I said, “I was wondering how much space I had for downloads on these phones. This one for instance.” I pointed at a random phone that looked nice and cheap.

“Hold on. I'll check.”

The bloke disappeared behind his desk. I waited patiently. Eventually he came back.

“That one's got 8MB.”

“Okay, that's probably a bit too small for me.”

“Hold on. I'll check.”

As I waited I checked out his name badge. He was the assistant manager. This was promising. He must have been there at least two weeks.

Finally, he came back. “Yeah, that's one's eight meg as well.”

“Okay, well I probably need more than that. Do you have anything larger.”

“Oh, those are all more expensive,” he told me.

“I'll cope.”

“Oh, right. Are you sure? Some of them come with expansion slots. You can add extra memory. It's dead good.”

“Okay,” I played along. “Does this one come with an expansion slot.”

He paused. I could almost see the steam coming off his brain as he thought about it. Finally, the cogs stopped spinning and he turned back to me.

“Hold on. I'll check.”

In the end I got the one with the most Gigapixels. It just seemed easier.