For years I have been a holdout against the new mobile devices, feeling ever more curmudgeonly as everyone around me has a “device” instead of just a phone. I’ve been ridiculed. My phone has been ridiculed. I admit, it is a relic. It is so old that the outside color (once black) has been worn away to the point that it is a “see through” phone.
Seriously.
I really haven’t minded being out of style or being ridiculed. I took some solace in the fact that I am probably not as readily traceable and monitorable as all of these people whose every move is recorded online and in real time, as well as the fact that I don’t have emails and Facebook notices beeping at me all the time. What did get inconvenient was the texting. My old plan charged me five cents per text, and over time, as more and more of my friends texted me instead of calling, the expenses grew. So did the wear and tear on my eyes and fingers as I struggled to keep up with texting. I grew jealous of the ability of people to simply wiggle their fingers a bit and generate text, while I had to laboriously enter each character through the keypad of my phone and then correct errors. But even that I put up with.
What finally caused me to cave and surrender my principles was money. I discovered to my horror that for less money than I am paying right now, I could get unlimited data, unlimited text, and unlimited messages.
So they got me!
(As to why it would suddenly be cheaper to have a data plan than a regular cell phone plan, that’s probably one for the paranoid conspiracy folks to figure out…)
Comments
5 responses to “They finally got me!”
It takes fewer bits to send text than it does to send voice. That means less connection time. Time IS money.
I resisted until about 6 months ago. But, at some point I had to catch up or become irrelevant.
The “phone” can do some amazing stuff (although I still leave my personal tracking device behind sometimes).
I still use a phone that can’t handle anything but calls and texts. No camera, no data. I bought 5 for $8 each over a decade ago and I still have 3 spares left. One of my daughters put me on her “plan” which includes unlimited text and I pay her bill once a year. Works fine for me.
What’s interesting about this change in plans is that they don’t even require you to have a data-capable device. I could go on using my old clunker indefinitely, and be paying less money for unlimited minutes — simply by purchasing the data plan! I’m almost tempted.
Most plans include the cost of a new phone spread over two years. Like medical insurance, a ‘plan’ that truly suits you, probably doesn’t exist.