Early on Memorial Day morning, I tried to charge my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S5. However, I couldn’t do so because I then realized a piece of the charging port came loose and broke. After several attempts, I gave up trying to charge and asked for my dad’s help.
This scenario happened once before, in which we had to go online and go over several steps to solve the charging issue. It turned up to be quite small, but my dad warned me about being careful next time.
This time, I wasn’t careful, and he couldn’t fix it. To temporarily remedy this issue, he pulled out the small slide phone from the cabinet and suggested I use that for the week. My mom thought I should borrow her smartphone for a little bit, as she found less use for it than myself, but it was already decided.
For the next week, I had a mid-2000s phone.
Based on the photographs I’ve taken, the last time I used the small phone was during my sophomore year in high school. My parents saw using a smartphone as a privilege; when I used too much data or otherwise abused the phone, I would be relegated to such a phone.
Personally, I didn’t think it was that bad using that type of phone. Recently, I find myself surfing The internet on my smartphone, even in the bathroom, depleting of its battery and the time it needed for me to change. I even neglected brushing my teeth for a little while so that my roommate would knock on the bathroom door and have to use it before I managed to brush my teeth.
Also, other than a camera, I didn’t have any other apps on the phone to worry about, so my battery remained high. When I would come home at the end of the day, the battery would remain substantially high, requiring little charging at the end of the day.
Despite these advantages, along with the ability to recognize my surroundings more, I saw some disadvantages as well.
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One thing which irritated me is despite the addition of my SIM card, I didn’t have that many of my contacts on my smartphone transferred onto the other phone. My dad thought of this as the least of my concerns, as I would only have to use my cell phone for emergencies or to contact my mother during the day. But when I wanted to contact my other friends, the only numbers on the phone were those from people we barely interact with anymore.
Another inconvenience is texting. As someone who frequently texts via screen to go back to numbers was a little bit difficult. I switched my phone language to French, which meant autocorrect couldn’t help me when I had to write texts to other people. Therefore, it took me a little bit longer to write them. I also received some multimedia texts which didn’t exactly translate into text.
Finally, one thing I did adjust to is photography. As it is a smaller phone, it can only hold a limited number pictures at a time; not to mention, I couldn’t upload them onto my computer when they were done. But I had a camera, nevertheless.
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Ultimately, I got my smartphone back, albeit with a wireless charger instead. On the one hand, I can have my phone again, yet I wouldn’t be able to charge it whenever I liked.
As a child coming of age in 2015, of course, I missed my smartphone, with all its whistles and bells and high-speed everything. Yet at the end of the day, there are some things I appreciate with the slider phone I’ve had for a few days.