Last Friday, I dropped my LG G5 in an Olive Garden toilet. I wish my phone’s death had more dignity than that, but this is the real and honest truth.
I had cracked its screen over the summer while I ran with it tucked into the waistband of a pair of leggings. My G5 fell onto the concrete and a chunk was taken out of my screen. I had been trying for months to protect it from water, but it wasn’t safe from a shallow pocket and the restroom facilities of a pseudo-Italian chain restaurant.
I had been an Android user since I’d gotten a smartphone. I’d had a few Samsung Galaxies and that one LG, and I liked them. I really did. I didn’t feel like I was settling for anything less than what I deserved. But the people in my life with an allegiance to a certain autumnal fruit just could not let me have my self-assurance.
Every Android user knows that there’s a certain smugness that people with iPhones have. They condescendingly marvel at how large your screen is. They complain about how grainy the pictures you take are. They ask to FaceTime you or AirDrop you something, just to smirk and say “Oh, wait.”
The worst is when you ask for a charger. The ripest Apples in the orchard will at least pretend to feel sympathetic to you. The bad Apples will simply laugh in your face, calling you by your device’s creed. “Android.” Your identity as a person is gone. You are simply your dying machine.
I have an iPhone now. She is small and rose gold because I am basic. My friends are teaching me the fun things you can do with messages, the relief of Do Not Disturb mode, and all the special features the community of Apple users share.
But I, as a former Android user, vow never to treat anyone differently based on the brand of their phone. I will never say that “it would be easier if everyone had an iPhone.” The free market, flawed as it may be sometimes, allows us to make our own choices. I take deep issue with one company controlling my life. I take deep issue with all these Justin Longs treating me like a John Hodgman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PwiljBN5-8
By the way, I am still using my huge-ass dinosaur PC laptop. It’s my one last act of rebellion, and I will not give it up.