MyFirstSmartphone.com

Big up me! I finally bought my first smartphone.

I have been the proud and very satisfied owner of a Nokia 6310i for a number of years. For many recent months, however, I have been one of society's outcasts, shunned and ostracised because of my old phone.

Like an eighty-year-old man with a pretty eighteen-year-old bride or a pretty eighteen-year-old woman with an eighty-year old husband, I have had to live with the open mouths, the wide eyes, the stares, the pointing fingers and the taunting children.

My poor old Nokia was valiant to the end. Thanks to life in the same pocket as a large set of keys, the sleek, metallic colouring (Lightning Silver) of the case was largely rubbed off all the edges, lending the phone an authentic air of "I've been the only thing between my motorcycle-crashing owner's hip and the road surface. More than once!"

When I "acquired" my trusty old "Nokers", it was easily the premium business phone on the market. Tri-band operation, infrared AND bluetooth, WAP 1.2.1, GPRS and dial-up modem functionality, a gigantic address book, support for Java MIDP apps and THE MOST AMAZING BATTERY LIFE. EVAH.

I'm not kidding about the battery life. I gifted two new Nokia 6310i to friends and for weeks afterwards every time I visited them, they rave about how "this damn phone's battery is $%(%#$*%$# amazing!!" When new, a single charge on that phone was good for some three weeks' standby time. Easily.

That was then (2002) and this is now. The poor old 6310i is showing the age of its design. What's worse is that my example is looking like the mobile phone equivalent of a once-stunning Hollywood starlet who's moved to Palm Springs, given up acting and thrown her new-found weight into gin and tonics.

The 6310i still has a hardcore of fans, thanks to its rugged construction, the fact that its big enough to hold comfortably while talking, its battery life and its awesome user interface.

However, MY beautiful head-turner has turned into a not-so-beautiful stomach-turner. Where once there were the rapturous applause of an adoring crowd and the popping of paparazzi flash bulbs, there are now desperate sighs of concerned friends and the constant sight of mothers tugging at their children's arms and adminishing them not to stare.

In my next posting, I'll cover the exciting saga leading up to the dramatic and heart-touching moment when I cast my old partner aside and replaced her with a younger, more stylish and much more satisfying model. Or at least that's what I hoped at the time.....