Finally shelled out money for a phone

In February, I bought a new phone after talking about it for some time. My then current phone was dropping calls, turning off at random and looking awfully shabby. Ordinarily these would not be good enough reasons to change my phone.

Infact, I have owned only 2 phones in my life before this one and the only reason I changed the first one was because I moved to the United States, well, and because I seemed to have misplaced it 1 month before the move. I had that phone for about 6 years. My policy with regards to cell phones has always been, aim for the cheapest and most durable. Camera phone? No need for that. Colored screen? What for? I didnt care much for polyphonic ringtones much less mp3 based ringtones. All my phone needs to do is to make and take calls and send text messages. And maybe also fit in my pocket.

But, despite all of this, for phone number 3, I ended up buying a T-mobile G1. This is by far the most expensive phone I have every bought. I got my previous phone for free and the one before that was probably quarter the cost of the G1, even in 1999 dollars.

The G1 has a camera, mp3 playback support, a touch screen, 3G internet, GPS and compass, accelerometer, bluetooth and wifi support. It has a maps application, a desktop, and it has a google search box on the desktop. I dont really consider this phone a phone at all, it is more like a pocket computer.

The other day, I took a walk with my new phone and it dawned on me, what it means to be constantly connected to the internet. If I was hungry, I could do a location search to see where I could go to eat and get turn by turn directions of how to get there. I could find a nice tree to sit under, turn on some good music and read the news or a book. If I wanted a particular song and didnt have it, I could go online, purchase and download it (almost, the G1 is limited to only being able to dl music over wifi). If I caught sight of some interesting fauna (I saw an aligator and a snake once), I could snap a photo and upload it to my favourite picture sharing service, picasa, flickr, facebook or even twitter. This I gather is the motivating factor behind me finally becoming an semi-early adopter. The value-add and the potential disruption of life as we know it is profound, interesting and even sometimes disturbing.

Of course, not everyone sees owning such a powerful device worth the money. I can understand that, I was in a similar position for many years. Many people worry that being always connected to the net is a bad thing. I agree! and I also disagree! What I agree with, is that it is disruptive but like it or not, it is the emergent trend, which I think will continue to emerge and grow. The prices will come down, it will get more secure. Being constantly connected to the net, I believe will become second nature in a future world. It's a bad thing and its a great thing. I would love to get into more specifics about what I mean by this, but that will require multiple blog posts. I may just spell out my thoughts as time goes by.

I think some of the hottest new technologies are the location based (tom-tom), touch based(microsoft surface), space based applications (Wii). I think that the combination of these technologies and others will lead to increasingly natural form factors. Think no more sitting down, hunkered over a keyboard, peering at a computer screen. I can't wait to get completely free of the computer as we know it. It has done its time.

Buying the G1, for me was like a dream come true. To me it represents the beginning of the kind of technology I was excited about when I was aged 8. This is the future I envisioned I would one day be able to see.