I remember my first phone in the same way I remember a lot of other ‘firsts’ in life: with fond memories, nostalgia and a vague sense of ‘what was I thinking?’. It was a Motorola V220 in baby pink, and it was perfect. It was a flip-phone design with camera, colour screen and a cute little aerial for optimum reception. I’ll never forget the first night I spent with my phone. My parents had strictly ruled ‘no mobiles past bedtime’, but I had reached a new level of maturity now and no parent was going to tell me what to do. So I stayed awake until the early hours, engaged in a riveting text conversation with a school-friend of mine. What we spoke about has long since escaped my memory, but that wonderful feeling of being in constant communication with someone, equally able to answer someone immediately or spend time constructing a reply, that feeling is something that is still with me eight years later.
Phones have come a long way since then and I have probably worked my way through a good five or six now. Notable items on the list include the fabulous LG Shine (a girls’ best friend complete with pink casing and a screen that doubles as a mirror when on lock) and the Nokia Xpress Music (my first venture in to the world of smartphones, and the one that saw me provide an eclectic range of youtube-ripped music as entertainment during free periods at college). It was here that I realised the real capacity of phones. They are not just for making phone calls, as my Mum frequently tries to tell me. They are for entertainment, procrastination and convenience. How many times have you offered the phrase ‘I don’t know, let me Google it’ while reaching for your phone? How often do you alleviate the boredom of a two-hour lecture with regular Facebook checks? How great is it to be able to Snapchat a photo to the handful of friends who would ‘get it’, avoiding the hassle of uploading it to Facebook instead?
We are so reliant on our phones, and I have always loved that. Sure, I have the attention-span of a fruit fly now that I am used to being constantly engaged in something. Anything. Even if it means I’ve seen every post by Cats Wearing Tights on Facebook.
So when disaster struck, I felt cold fear in my bones. I’d had my Samsung Galaxy S2 for about 3 years. I loved it like a child. Or at least a favourite hamster. I’d scrimped and saved while at College to afford it, and it was so worth every penny. But I knew it was coming to the end of its life. One day, it simply ceased to charge. I watched the battery run down before my eyes. It was a slow death.
I went through all the stages of grief. Denial: ‘I can fix it, it probably just needs a new battery’. Anger: ‘WHY, CRUEL FATE, WHY?’. Bargaining: ‘I’ll pay to get it fixed, I don’t care how much it costs. How do I extend that overdraft again?’. Depression: ‘There’s nothing left for me in this world’. But finally, I reached Acceptance. It was inevitable and I had to move on.
The issue was where I was moving on to. Which was this beauty: the Samsung E1200. I borrowed it from a friend who had such a habit of losing phones that she’d built up a fine collection of bog-standards. Features include SMS text, a calculator and Super Jewel Quest. While I was grateful to have a means of communication, I resented this device. Key annoyances included: having to delete texts once the inbox reached its capacity of 60 messages; lack of any form of internet, and the need to re-enter time and date every time I dropped the phone and watched battery, back and body fly apart in a minor explosion that screamed ‘look at me, I have an awful phone!’
For a couple of weeks I struggled on, wondering if Facebook Mobile had changed at all since I’d left it, or how many Snapchats I was accumulating as the days passed. But gradually a change occurred in me.
It began around the third time I dropped the little thing. It suddenly came to me that it had been quite a while since I could drop a phone so ferociously and see no lasting consequences. Smashed screen? None of that! Dented exterior? Do be serious. This thing was invincible!! Similarly, I charged it about once a week. If I forgot to put the S2 on charge overnight, I was doomed the next day – it could last a day of regular use or half a day of intense use. My new phone was like a mini powerstation, and it was great!
Far from wearing off, my love of this phone only increased. At the time I had about five friends who were in the same situation as me, most of them with the same phone (it’s the next big thing, I’m telling you). One of our favourite games was ‘Strike a Pose for the Crappy Cameraless Phone’, which was even more fun when played with unsuspecting strangers on nights out. Nights out that were now free from the frequent panicked self-pat-down (‘OMG where’s my phone I’ve lost my phone where is it’) and the end of the night ‘Great, my phones died and I’ve lost EVERYONE’.
The simplicity of the thing was beautiful, and about a month in to this blossoming relationship, I had an epiphany. I had been changed. I didn’t WANT a smartphone anymore. I didn’t WANT to be constantly connected. I actually LIKED that I couldn’t check for notifications every half hour. The fact that I could be reached through a text or call was enough. And the limited capacity of my inbox meant that lengthy text conversations were out of the question, leaving more room for quality face-to-face conversation and catch-up instead.
Of course, when the opportunity to upgrade arose, I jumped at the chance. Apparently I wasn’t quite as changed as I had thought. The excitement I felt upon receiving my new internet-enabled, camera-incorporated phone felt like coming home, but better.
But I had learnt an important lesson through all of this. Firstly, we are not twelve years old anymore. There is not a social stigma attached to not having an expensive phone. I felt no shame when I had to reveal my little brick to the world. It was a novelty.
Secondly, we really are too connected. When was the last time you intentionally turned your phone off? We all know that short-term feeling of dread that comes with a dead battery. It’s as if you are on your own all of a sudden, and it’s scary. This is bad. We need to be less reliant on our connections to other people in order to become independent, confident individuals.
Technology has given us so many opportunities, and we use these to our advantage every day. But we need to learn where to draw the line between convenience and necessity.
(And where am I in the world of phones now? Well, I dropped the shiny new smartphone about a week after getting it. And yes, it smashed. I could almost hear the tinny ringtone of my rejected Samsung brick, like mocking laughter. That’s karma, folks!)