My Sprint Qualcomm phone was the best cell phone ever.History I have never been the person who spends hours on the phone. I have never been a chatterbox or gossip queen. All my communication with people has been very short and concise. In the late 90s, I noticed that cell phones were becoming increasingly popular. A few of my friends had them - and they all had that big Nokia phone. Everyone who had these phones had their plan through Cingular. They all had a bit of trouble paying their bill too. So the whole idea of owning a cell phone kind of turned me off. I was in college anyway, and I didn't need to be constantly bothered. Eventually, I graduated and I got a job. I also had broken up with girlfriend a couple years prior. Now that I had more free time to hang out and meet people I started to notice to the benefit of having my own cell phone. Especially, since you didn't want people to call you on your work line. With a cell phone you could casually step outside to take calls. Oh yeah, I was also running a small business on the side, so the necessity of making phone calls without using the work line was very important. A Sprint representative came to my work one day and had a pretty good deal on cell service. The deal was: free phone, %20 discount off my monthly bill (I guess it was a company volume thing), and like $50 a month for plenty of minutes. So I took it. This would have been in 2000 or 2001. The Benefits Aaahhhh...Life became so much easier. Now, I had all my phone numbers in an electronic device that I carried with me all the time! I didn't need to find that piece of paper on my bedroom floor anymore. Also, you could never miss a phone call from a girl! How convenient is that? It all made so much sense! Plus all my voicemail and important notes could be stored on it. I could almost operate my entire life from this little device. The Qualcomm Phone I was a little dark green Qualcomm Phone. The first thing I noticed about this phone was that it was really sturdy. Some phones feel delicate in your hands. Some phone you are afraid to drop. Not this phone. I flung thing around in fits of rage all the time! It just bounced back. Never broke once. It has a really strong cell phone cover made out of a thick hard plastic. Very little flexibility in the structure. Phone calls were clear! I could hear people fine. There was never a static-y connection. No buzzing. No "Can you hear me now" was ever said on my part. It also dialed fast. You were connected to people almost instantaneously. The user interface was the easiest of any phone I have yet to see. It was so intuitive from the second I got it, that now I still hate all other phones. I have been spoiled by how easy this phone was. This Qualcomm phone should be the standard interface for all phone made now. Basically this phone ruled. Friends who also had this phone I had two other friends that had the exact same phone as I did during this period of time. My friend Omar had the phone first. We both commented on how this phone was the best etc. To this day we will occasionally remind each other about how bad ass this phone was. My friend Carlos got the phone a year or two later and also agreed it was the best phone he ever had. I think I even had a co-worker with the same phone who was also very pleased with its performance. The one problem The only thing that was bad about the phone was the desktop charger. It was really hard to get the phone to charge. I think it was easier to charge the phone in my car than on my desk. In order to charge the phone on the desk, you had to carefully balance the phone on two little brass looking contact and wedge some folded up paper behind it. This carefully balance of positioning somehow allowed the phone to charge properly. I still don't understand the magic behind it - but it was definitely annoying. Ironically, these days my only thing that was bad about the phone was the car chargers never work, and my desktop or wall charger work all the time. Strange how things change. Why did I get rid of it? Oh yes, this part is hilarious. So one summer evening, my friends were going to move out of their college apartment near UC Irvine. I was hanging out there on the last day, and I told them I would help them move out. One of my friend's who was sub leasing an upstairs room was to come home that evening from 2 weeks of Marine Corp training the desert. Apparently it was 120 degrees the entire time he was out there, and they purposely dehydrated him and kept him sleep deprived. On the way home he said he was hallucinating and he actually called his parents to arrange a wedding for him in India. He is now married to this person because of this phone call. Anyway, when he gets home, he wanted to catch a nap before all the strenuous moving started. At some point I was order to go up stairs and wake him up to help move the refrigerator. So I ran upstairs, blasted into his room and yelled his name. He woke startled, and immediately got into a fighting stance. He became to call my name and ask me if I was who I was, and started to kick and punch at me. It was one of the strangest things I have ever experienced. I asked him; "What wrong with you, it's me, Sean". He landed a devastating blow to my thigh, and subsequently broke my cell phone's display. So that was the end of the greatest cell phone ever made. I guess I can blame the United States Marine Corp for this one. I stayed with Sprint, because at the time they seemed to have the best service and reliability of all the cell phone companies. But I kept getting these junky Samsung phones. It was from that era of silvery flip phones. These phones would turn off if you squeezed them to much, they always dropped calls, had lousy reception. They just stunk. I eventually moved over to Cingular because my girlfriend used them and we got on the family plan. I now use a Nokia phone which is very mediocre. |