It doesn't seem that long ago when 'calling someone' meant that you either sat at home with a massive earpiece attached to the side of your head while you were anchored to a dial-up phone stuck on a wall, or you found a public phone box and stuck your finger in your ear whilst trying to chat to the person on the other end of the line!
These days telephones are far more advanced! Or so I found out when trying to purchase a brand spanking new one on the weekend!
Words like WAP, SIM, 3G, Next G, GSM, UMTS and the like are commonplace (and if anyone can tell me what they all mean, you get a brownie point!!!). And a phone is no longer just a place to speak to someone far off....it's also a hub of music, photos, messages and internet services.
In fact, the language and uses of mobile telephones has become a thing of the 21st century and beyond.
Of course, once you decide on a phone that you want, you then have to look at service providers (hmmmm...or should that be the other way around??!!). Costs are no longer as simple as a 50 cent phone call to a local area. You also have to consider flagfall, talk costs per 30 seconds, costs of text messaging, costs for internet connection, costs of message retrieval etc etc etc.
And once you finally find a carrier whose service appears close to what you are looking for, then you have to consider whether or not they actually get good service in your work and home areas!
So with all of that headache in mind, I set off! For the past couple of years, I have had a Sony Walkman 810i phone. A great little phone and one that the Superteen has had his eye on for a while! Now that it's out of contract however, a long and involved internet search had me obsessed with telephone companies and making up comparison charts on costs and provisions. I knew that I really wanted an upgraded version of my old phone...something slimmer, with a larger viewing screen and perhaps with a slightly better camera.
Finally, I found the phone I wanted with a plan that sounded ok to me. I settled on this little beauty! A Sony Ericsson W575. I spent last night playing with it and oh my goodness.....I feel like I have a whole new world to explore!
So now, as I sit here marvelling over my new mobile, I can't help but wonder....how did we ever survive without them!
