by Keith Staines

Created on: January 04, 2009

A cell phone buff is not a name anyone in their right mind would use to describe me. I only got my first cell phone about 4 years ago, and I'm in my early thirties. I used it to make phone calls and send the occasional text message. And I rarely even managed to do either of those. I didn't download ring tones, I didn't download wallpapers, I didn't even download games and I'm a huge gamer.

And my phones? Oh yeah, those. Absolute technological marvels I tell you. I've had three phones over the years and the prices I paid were free, 10 bucks, and free. And the last one was a used one someone else gave me six months ago. That was the first phone I owned that had a camera in it, could play videos, and had the capability to access the Internet and email.

Of course, I didn't do any of that.

So enough of that garbage. Did you hear about this fancy phone that came out a couple years ago, the iPhone? Yeah, I know, everyone has heard of it. Everyone I know jumped on it right from the beginning, a lot of them right when it came out for $600. I mocked them mercilessly for this. Seriously, over half a thousand dollars on a stupid phone? I don't care that Apple made it. That's ridiculous.

But the strangest thing started happening a few months ago. And it would go like this:

We'd be out and needed directions. "If I only had an iPhone...".

We couldn't figure out where to eat. "If I only had an iPhone...".

We didn't know if a store was open or the number to call it. "If I only had an iPhone...".

I really wanted to know the hockey scores. "If I only had an iPhone...".

I was too lazy to get off the couch to check my email. "If I only had an iPhone...".

A couple things happened in 2008 with the second version of the iPhone that was released in the summer. They got it hooked up to the 3G network, which was a huge speed increase. I had watched all the early adopters stare at their fancy touch screens as a webpage loaded. And stared. And stared. I remember right after it came out when my friend bragged about how he could order our movie tickets online from Fandango while we were at the restaurant. Forty-five minutes later he'd almost pulled it off.

The second thing was the price almost became reasonable. Two hundred dollars is still a ton of money for a phone to someone like me who always just used it as a basic communication device. All of this is pretty strange as I'm actually quite a fan of gadgets and have all kinds of little toys. But a fancy cell phone never interested me at all. I was

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