valencia kid rant
I feel like such a douche for ranting about this, but I need to vent.
My dad got me a phone for christmas two years ago which was really more of a present to my mom than me b/c I had been on her plan until that point and the phone that I got wasn't that cool. It is the LG that everyone and their mother has/had. It was the first cheap one with a camera. The problem, the interface fucking sucks. After having a nokia, whose buttons are in the right and whose menus make perfect sense and in which I can find whatever I want very quickly, I didn't really want an over featured but under designed phone. So I spent two years more or less hating my phone. I can list a dozen major-little things about that phone that I disliked, little things that are the hallmark of mediocre shoddy designs aka new korean manufacturers. What I want out of a phone is very simple, and shouldn't be very expensive. I just want it done well. What I want:
1. interface that makes sense. I'd love my new phone to be as easy to use as my first three which were all nokias or my 2 computers which have been apples. I'm a big fan of well designed interfaces because I'm used to them and unlike most people I don't get used to stupidities in design and get over it, they just bother me more and more everytime. A decent interface shoudn't add much to the cost, you just have to get a great design team to draw up one design and then produce 10 million units. Given the scale, this shouldn't be hard.
2. camera. a good camera would be nice, but it's not a deal breaker. It just has to make a crappy little jpeg when I meet joss whedon and need a snapshot.
3. sync with my address book on my computer. I don't want to lose all my numbers everyime I get a new phone/lose an old one. It'd be nice if it synced wirelessly via bluetooth, but this is also not a deal breaker. I'd be fine if it used usb. just talk to my computer and keep my contacts safe.
that's it. I don't need video viewing, video watching, web surfing, song purchasing, car integration, tax preperation or whatever the fuck it is that phones do nowadays. Given criterion number 1, LG is pretty much out. Like all companies that are run like real companies, to make the cheapest product and sell the most of them, they just aren't well made. No one ever picks one up and says, you know what, someone cared about this phone. Someone thought about what it should do and how it should do it. They just threw together some shit that the marketing dept said people wanted. Motorola did a decent job of caring about their product with the RAZR. It's not my favorite phone but it is well done. It has a great camera and it will sync with my computer. Nokias always have great interfaces and I'm sure I could find one to meet my other criteria if verizon offered mroe than two nokia phones. Goddan wireless carriers locking hardware out. I want what I want and I don't want to switch companies to get it.
So I do some research, look at my options, and decide to get the razr or one of the nokias, depending on what my options are after the stupid game of contract sign ups, online discounts, rebates, instant and otherwise, and whatever credit verizon gives for my other phone which had insurance on it. I am in the worst financial shape of my life right now, which since I am the other male in my family who understands how money works and that things have to balance at the end of the day, isn't that bad. I'm not licing on maxed out credit cards, but I won't be able to pay it off in full this month and I don't like that. I was going to get this phone anyway because in addition to hating my phone for the past two years, I've hated hating it. As if it knew how I hated it and stayed around just to spite me. Having the phone I want, especially considering I've proven I can keep a phone for two years, is worth stretching myself thin until a couple more week's worth of paychecks come in and my dad pays me back the hundreds of dollars that he owes me.
So I file a police report saying it was stolen (which it was. someone took it from my friend's apt, made a call at 330am and then fell off the face of the earth) cuz my dad tells me if I need a police report number to claim the insurance policy on it. So I do that and was all ready to ask my dad for my money, which he has owed me for no joke, 7 months, when he sends me an email saying he's already ordered me a new phone and it's on it's way. Coming from some parents, this would be an excellent thing. Coming from my dad it means, I didn't want to wait to get the insurance credit, I signed up up for another two years and got whatever was free with that sign up, another cheap poorly designed asian phone should be shipping soon. I was going to go buy myself a razr tomorrow because I am dying without a phone. FUCK FUCK FUCK. I'm sending him an email asking what model it is, and I'm contemplating asking him to cancelt the order, unless he decided to make up for the fact that he owes me hundreds of dollars by getting a good phone, which I highly doubt. I know my dad pretty well. FUCK FUCK FUCK, but I repeat myself.
My dad got me a phone for christmas two years ago which was really more of a present to my mom than me b/c I had been on her plan until that point and the phone that I got wasn't that cool. It is the LG that everyone and their mother has/had. It was the first cheap one with a camera. The problem, the interface fucking sucks. After having a nokia, whose buttons are in the right and whose menus make perfect sense and in which I can find whatever I want very quickly, I didn't really want an over featured but under designed phone. So I spent two years more or less hating my phone. I can list a dozen major-little things about that phone that I disliked, little things that are the hallmark of mediocre shoddy designs aka new korean manufacturers. What I want out of a phone is very simple, and shouldn't be very expensive. I just want it done well. What I want:
1. interface that makes sense. I'd love my new phone to be as easy to use as my first three which were all nokias or my 2 computers which have been apples. I'm a big fan of well designed interfaces because I'm used to them and unlike most people I don't get used to stupidities in design and get over it, they just bother me more and more everytime. A decent interface shoudn't add much to the cost, you just have to get a great design team to draw up one design and then produce 10 million units. Given the scale, this shouldn't be hard.
2. camera. a good camera would be nice, but it's not a deal breaker. It just has to make a crappy little jpeg when I meet joss whedon and need a snapshot.
3. sync with my address book on my computer. I don't want to lose all my numbers everyime I get a new phone/lose an old one. It'd be nice if it synced wirelessly via bluetooth, but this is also not a deal breaker. I'd be fine if it used usb. just talk to my computer and keep my contacts safe.
that's it. I don't need video viewing, video watching, web surfing, song purchasing, car integration, tax preperation or whatever the fuck it is that phones do nowadays. Given criterion number 1, LG is pretty much out. Like all companies that are run like real companies, to make the cheapest product and sell the most of them, they just aren't well made. No one ever picks one up and says, you know what, someone cared about this phone. Someone thought about what it should do and how it should do it. They just threw together some shit that the marketing dept said people wanted. Motorola did a decent job of caring about their product with the RAZR. It's not my favorite phone but it is well done. It has a great camera and it will sync with my computer. Nokias always have great interfaces and I'm sure I could find one to meet my other criteria if verizon offered mroe than two nokia phones. Goddan wireless carriers locking hardware out. I want what I want and I don't want to switch companies to get it.
So I do some research, look at my options, and decide to get the razr or one of the nokias, depending on what my options are after the stupid game of contract sign ups, online discounts, rebates, instant and otherwise, and whatever credit verizon gives for my other phone which had insurance on it. I am in the worst financial shape of my life right now, which since I am the other male in my family who understands how money works and that things have to balance at the end of the day, isn't that bad. I'm not licing on maxed out credit cards, but I won't be able to pay it off in full this month and I don't like that. I was going to get this phone anyway because in addition to hating my phone for the past two years, I've hated hating it. As if it knew how I hated it and stayed around just to spite me. Having the phone I want, especially considering I've proven I can keep a phone for two years, is worth stretching myself thin until a couple more week's worth of paychecks come in and my dad pays me back the hundreds of dollars that he owes me.
So I file a police report saying it was stolen (which it was. someone took it from my friend's apt, made a call at 330am and then fell off the face of the earth) cuz my dad tells me if I need a police report number to claim the insurance policy on it. So I do that and was all ready to ask my dad for my money, which he has owed me for no joke, 7 months, when he sends me an email saying he's already ordered me a new phone and it's on it's way. Coming from some parents, this would be an excellent thing. Coming from my dad it means, I didn't want to wait to get the insurance credit, I signed up up for another two years and got whatever was free with that sign up, another cheap poorly designed asian phone should be shipping soon. I was going to go buy myself a razr tomorrow because I am dying without a phone. FUCK FUCK FUCK. I'm sending him an email asking what model it is, and I'm contemplating asking him to cancelt the order, unless he decided to make up for the fact that he owes me hundreds of dollars by getting a good phone, which I highly doubt. I know my dad pretty well. FUCK FUCK FUCK, but I repeat myself.