New Phone!

This past Spring, we finally got around to changing cell providers, and Nick and I each got a new phone. With our old phones, texting was a bear- there wasn't a keyboard, so we had to tap each number key multiple times for a single letter. Needless to say, I didn't get the appeal of texting.

The phone I picked out in the Spring had a full qwerty keyboard, though, and with a bit of scheming on my husbands part, he and his co-worker, a girl I hang out with sometimes, both got me texting quickly. Now, of course, I love it! What's not to love? I'm not a talker. I'm a typer. Even in high school, I wasn't the girl who tied up the phone line for hours on end. I would just prefer to type than talk, so texting was perfect for me.

Over the summer, my cute little cell phone took a tumble. Not a big one. We were at the beach, and I had leaned down to get something out of the trunk, and it slipped out of my purse and fell not even a full foot to the ground. Of course, it had taken other tumbles, even tumbles from a greater height. But of course this time, it hit a rock just right, and BAM, my screen was cracked. -sigh-

The nearest (and only, apparently) tech repair location was in TEXAS! TEXAS! Which meant shipping it, and being without a phone for a week or two. Not an option, so I've lived with it.

Well, with the kids getting older, and Raegan staying home alone or with one of her siblings more often now, I've been considering a home phone. We always leave Rae with a phone, but it leaves one of us without. I've been watching AT&T's website for the free phone deals, and finally found one today.

It's only $9.99 to add 1 more line, so our bill will only go up by $10. We're already not using our allotted minutes- we've accrued over 1200 roll over minutes, and we're on the lowest plan at 550 minutes a month shared between two phones. The ONLY time we came close was the first month, but during that month, there were health concerns in my family, and lots of phone calls checking in on people.

Anyway, today I finally found a phone I liked. Actually, I found MY phone was finally free, and ALMOST re-ordered that one, in a different color. Then, I started reading the reviews. I've had my phone about 6 months, give or take a few weeks. It's had it's issues. Well, as I was reading, most everyone had the same issues, and most said it got worse the longer they had it. I didn't read a single review of someone who had kept that phone longer than a year.

When we bought the phone, the display model was broken, and because it has 2 slides (side slide for qwerty, and up slide for keypad), it was able to open sideways AND up, so both slides were open. As I was reading today, I found that several people had that problem after the slides were getting loose. Mine are loose now, so I suppose it's only a matter of time before it pops open both ways.

It also has an annoying habit of the screen freezing up when you slide it, which is a new problem on my phone, and it doesn't happen every time, but it was a big complaint in the reviews. Another complaint is that it occasionally clears the screen during a text, losing all the info you typed in. This has happened to me several times, and usually on the texts where I type in a LOT of info. It's annoying!

So, I looked at two other qwerty phones. One was free, and one was $19.99. The $19.99 one had some crap reviews about key size, battery life, hard to use features, etc. The  free one had some great reviews, but I wasn't sure about the size- it's a square phone, not rectangular, or flip open, so the size was bothersome.

I did a websearch and came across a website that did it's own technical review of the phone- including more photos! They showed a photo of a woman's hand, with it in his palm, to show size. It actually almost filled her entire palm. I did an estimate on size from my hand, and held the fingers up to my ear to see how far it would come down on my cheek when it's closed (it has an up slider for the qwerty), and it should come to just below my cheek bone.

It's the Motorola Karma, and the reviews on the keyboard were great, too. The keys are each raised from the phone, and rubberized to make texting easy. Battery life is good. It has a camera with higher resolution than my phone has now.

I talked to a rep, and they will assign the new number to the new phone, then all I have to do is swap the sim cards from my old phone to my new phone. Yay!

I'll lose all my ring tones to the old phone, but most of them were free anyway, and I can reaquire most of them easily. I'll also lose my Tetris game (which I bought), and my Monopoly game (which was free), but that doesn't mean I won't be able to get one or two for free again.

Yay!

Here's some pictures of the new phone