To Buy, or Not to Buy a Smart Phone

iphone

I have an older ‘dumb phone.’ At the time I obtained it a couple years ago, I thought it was overkill. It had an MP3 music player and camera built in as well as smart spelling for text messaging. It even had this neat rotating circle of five friends on the main screen. I’ve never used the MP3 music player as I have an iPod for that. I’ve never used the camera because I have a nice digital SLR and honestly have never figured out how to get the low quality pics off the phone and into my computer.

Strangely, I do have about 80 pictures in the memory of my phone which have never been downloaded. Actually, I didn’t even know I had 80 pictures until I was clicking through menus and saw them. I promptly deleted them because they are pictures of my pocket. Apparently the button to take pictures is on the side of the phone which rubs against my keys. Delete… no great loss in removing those pictures.

Everyone around me seems to have a new iPhone, Google Android, or Blackberry. It must be peer pressure to keep up with the Joneses. I feel compelled to get one. But why? I take my laptop with me when I go out to coffee shops in the afternoon. I just doubt I’d really use a smart phone over my laptop. I can type 90 words a minute here and one of the things I hate about my current phone is text messaging. I really hate it. I spend a minute to two minutes just to send a text message when I could have called and been far more articulate. Text messaging drives me nuts and I don’t think it will improve much with a smart phone.

But, then I see all those shiny, high tech smart phone around me. Friends who map out locations while we are walking down the street or GPS stuff. Now, that’s something I really feel could be useful! So, what to do? Is it really worth spending $400-500 for a smart phone (that’s the real cost when you factor in inflated contract fees). Is it worth raising monthly fees from $40 to almost $100? These are the questions I ask myself. Somehow, I know in my heart it’s not smart and way too expensive for how much I would use it. On the other hand, I’ve been searching online for the last three months for features comparisons on smart phone trying decide which might be best for me. Sigh.