About a year ago, I sat with my normal texting phone, a slider called the LG Chocolate, and struggled to send messages to keep up with my more modernized, text-happy friends and family. For every message I tapped out with keys that had to be pushed multiple times to reach the right letter, 3 messages delivered by smartphone would reach me. Multimedia messaging was even worse. Where my email loaded slower than molasses and picture appeared grainy (if they appeared at all), my friends sent and received multimedia messages as easily as they talked on the phone. And the Internet? That wasn’t even a contest.
So, a bit over a year ago, I decided to stop bringing a knife to a gun fight and get myself a weapon. I picked up the Blackberry Storm, and while it’s had its fair share of criticism from various circles, I managed to finally keep up with my fellow geeks. Email, multimedia, browsers, and apps – these were now all at my disposal on my new phone, and I finally felt like I had a handle on the whole cellphone thing.
Cut to a year later, and I’m now behind again in the arms race. This time, I have a gun, but several people have rocket launchers in the form of Droid-powered goodness and iPhone generational hotness, with new models like the Nexus One just waiting for people to popularize them. I’m doing passably well, but the veritable Swiss Army knife of apps from GPS finders to barcode scanning nonsense has me being run around in circles yet again.
Honestly though, I’m not really saddened by this – not surprisingly, I’ve learned to laugh if not adapt to the whole hilarity of it all. Why is this? Well, as a geek myself, I’m well aware of the arms race of technology, and it’s not just limited to phones. Computers are seemingly not the new hotness after mere months, video game systems have become increasingly advanced with the amount of power they can deliver, and household devices such as TVs and appliances get better and better. The continuous need to upgrade or keep up is a sign that the market for tech is alive, well, and not willing to sit on its heels, and the extreme competition has only served to benefit the consumer, because they get to try out all the new toys.
Will I succumb to the Droid when my contract is up in a few months? Perhaps – and even if it too becomes a bit old and crotchety in a manner of months, there’ll always be something new to look forward to. Besides – a lifetime of the same stuff is just so boring, right? The ever-changing tech that’s in front of me will always be endearing to me.