Everything Ain't for Everybody

"You know what they say..... everything ain't for everybody.... but I tried anyway......"

I have been a Blackberry user since 2007.  I remember when I first got my Blackberry Curve I got teased by one of my friends because he said my phone was so "corporate".  I couldn't get the iPhone I wanted (and the reason I switched carriers in the first place) because it wouldn't work with my firm's enterprise server, so I was stuck with a Blackberry or a Treo (been there, done that). At first I resented the little bastard..... I wasn't "corporate", dammit!! (even though I was working as an associate at the largest law firm in the city at the time)  I wanted a sexy phone, too!  But ultimately it became an issue of utility over form and I dealt with it.

Since my first Curve 8300, I've had a Curve 8350 (well, the guts of it anyway, after my friend spilled a pint of Blue Moon on my 8300 and another friend gave me his 8350 with a cracked case, so I got out my little screwdriver set and swapped out the body.... easy stuff), a Bold 9000 (which I LOVED), and now a Tour 9630.  I don't know if someone was smoking crack while the designed the Tour or whether I just have really, really bad luck with phones, but I am now on my 4th replacement Tour (so 5th phone total).  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result, then apparently I am stark raving mad.  But this past weekend made one thing abundantly clear to me: I'm just a Crackberry fiend lover.

So, my 3rd replacement Tour, as all the others before it, started effing up.  Freezing up, screen delay when turned on, trackball lags, just acting a plumb donkey.  Sprint (bless their souls) is very good about replacing phones on warranty versus making you use your insurance, and their policy is that on your third replacement you get to switch to a different model. Unfortunately, the Tour is currently their best Blackberry, and the Tour 2 won't be out for months, so on my 3rd replacement I decided to forgo that option.  However, on this 4th time I was just fed up.  I lucked up and got Ben the Assistant Manager this go around and he offered to let me pick any phone I wanted. *cue hallelujah chorus*

Let me back up.  My beau prides himself on his ability to get things for free.  And one of the things he's been able to get has been not one, but TWO phone upgrades at no cost.  His latest and greatest triumph came in the form of the HTC Touch Pro 2, currently Sprint's most expensive smartphone with a retail price of about $600.  And it does everything.... walks your dog, tells you how great you look, signals alien space crafts, all the bells and whistles.  We would have races to see who could look up some random bit of information faster between his HTC and my Blackberry, and yes, he would usually win.  He would always mockingly (but jokingly) point out some cool feature that his phone could do that mine couldn't.  It was sleeker, sexier......and not corporate.

Back to Saturday and Ben the Assistant Manager.  So I wouldn't come off as trying to get over on anyone (which I wasn't) I feigned ignorance and acted like I was just *so* put out by the fact that they couldn't offer me another Blackberry and asked him what my options were, when in my mind I knew exactly which damn phone I wanted: that Touch Pro 2, so finally, FINALLY, I could shake my smartphone inferiority complex.  I pretended to browse down the row of display phones before finally saying to Ben the Assistant Manager, "Well I GUESS I'll try out that one."   And of course the first message I sent was to my beau with the "neener, neener, neener, lookie what I got!" text.  Victory in the form of a sexy phone was finally mine.

But then I got home.  Actually first I was trying to play with it in the car (kids, don't try this at home) and damn near wrecked a few times because I couldn't manage to work the touch screen right and the keyboard is so long it can't be used one handed.  Ok, I told myself, I just have to get used to it, set it up, customize it.  I started doing the set up and customizing my settings, and slowly began to realize that while it did all these great fancy things, it didn't do what I needed it to do.  No push (i.e. real time) e-mail, no custom notifications (I couldn't use my Perry the Platypus sound for texts (!!), or vary the vibration types), no Google Talk application, no Pandora app (?!!!?!!!), and no Twitter application that seamlessly integrated the camera and media on my phone.... really no Twitter app at all.  Navigating through the phone wasn't as easy as it was on my Blackberry, and admittedly when it comes to my phone usage I'm an OCD ADD user.  I need everything I need, right there, easily accessible, functional, and admittedly..... basic. 

Then there was the issue of it just being wrong.  The weight of it felt wrong, the keyboard slide out and two hand usage felt wrong, and it just looked wrong in my possession.  I'd glance over at it sitting on the table and think "That's not my phone, that's HIS phone."  I had already mentally associated it with my beau, and it was his identity, not mine.  It worked for him and the way he used his phone, which I now appreciate is very different from the ways in which I use mine.  I realized that while it is a great phone, it was no better than my mildly attractive "corporate" Blackberry.... just different.

So despite his insistence that I just had to get used to it, the next day I took it back and asked for another Tour, this time brand new out the box instead of another refurbished replacement.  I'm hoping that makes a difference because I have a feeling that the problems I was having were common to all these refurb Tours and I was simply getting someone else's recycled crap.  And if not, and it's truly a piece of crap, I'll just keep swapping it out until the Tour 2 gets released and get my hand on one of those.  I've just accepted that this is a small price to pay (or not pay, thanks to Sprint) for what I'm comfortable with and satisfies my needs.

Of course there's a bigger life lesson here, which was so aptly summarized by Jilly from Philly at the beginning of this post.  It doesn't matter how great someone else tells you that something is, or what you should want, or how great something works for them.  In the end it's about YOUR needs and the life choices you make to meet those needs.  Too many people go through life seeking what they should want-- in a career, a mate, a lifestyle--not what they actually want, only to be sorely disappointed when they wasted their time on someone else's ideal.  It's not that you were misled or that the other choice is inferior.... it may just wrong for you.