September 12, 2010
New phone for Claire
Considering you see kids in elementary school with cell phones, it has been an unending source of annoyance for Claire not to have a phone now that she's in high school. Many a lecture between Michelle and Claire has ensued between about 6th grade and now about kids having cell phones. Insert cliché lines about "but all of my friends..." and "but when I grew up we never had..." Michelle asked me to help in the selection, but without any intention of me ordering her an über-smart Android or BlackBerry. Considering I work for Qualcomm, I showed restraint.
It came down to phones like the Palm Pixi, the Samsung Seek, the LG Rumor. I looked at the overall ratings and then buried down to see what people were saying about them. I have to say that the individual reviews were almost useless!! On any of those three phones you could see back and forth between "absolutely love it" and "hate it, don't buy it!", often on consecutive reviews. It left me wondering.
For comparison I looked up the reviews of my former Palm Centro. It wasn't without the occasional glitch, but to this day I still think that was my favorite phone of the past several years (not including my current HTC EVO 4G). That Centro was a tank, it had a keyboard and a touch screen and was pretty easy to use. With a single button push I could call Michelle. Another would open a text to Michelle. Another would open up Twitter. Another Facebook (when I was on Facebook). It wasn't what I call "swooshy" but it was graphical enough to be efficient and get the job done. It had a lot of little touches that led me to believe Palm had years to think about how to Get Things Done.
Just what were the reviews? Just like the three phones I was eyeing for Claire, the Centro reviews were all over the map. From "hate this phone" to "better than a BlackBerry". For a phone that I thought had worked out well for me and continues to work fine for Michelle, you'd never know what to think by looking at the reviews.
With Claire's agreement I chose the Samsung Seek with the floral pink design as shown above. It's a touch screen phone with slider keyboard. That style is very popular with today's texting teens. And because we already had a generous family shared plan, adding Claire will cost $20 per month even with the 3G data and unlimited texting. Sprint is always very affordable in that way. The phone ships tomorrow and should arrive in a couple of days.
Michelle has already warned Claire not to switch her nagging to "the need" for a car. My concern is how long before it is misplaced, forgotten, or the screen cracks...