After alot of farting about, I have finally shifted over to Vodafone and got myself a new phone that *will* actually pick up my email. Not only that but I have just realised (not for the first time) that I am living in the future – the future that was hilariously documented every week on TV in Tomorrow's World, the future where amazing things are the norm. Yes, I have the Nokia 9300.
I do occasionally – usually when hungover – marvel at how I can communicate with someone on the other side of the world using a tiny device the size of my hand. It would take you 28 hours using the best technology that currently exists to physically get you there but you can talk to them instantly by pressing the correct series of buttons on a mobile handset.
My new phone however does all the extra stuff I ever wanted it to do. I can – if I want – call any of the people that I know, whether their home, work or mobile numbers very quickly, very easily. And I don't need to do it while holding the phone to my ear. I can rest it on a surface and talk into it – saving on brain tumours.
I can also, however, send emails, text messages and even documents to whoever I want using the phone. And it is the right size. Fits firmly in your pocket, but opens up to a proper keyboard that you can actually use with your fingers, rather than fingernails. It has everything you need. It also adds a video player and a music player just in case you want one, but makes no fuss about it. Most wonderfully it *doesn't* have an extremely poor camera built in to it.
It is basically the phone that an adult wants. It is the phone that we should have dozens more of but thanks to the mobile phone industry going off on a self-created MTV-style tangent we now have dozens of phones the size of a stamp that take crap pictures, ring with extremely low-quality tones, play extremely poor-quality games and generally make a big wow and fuss about doing everything quite badly.
Christ knows how we ended up here but I am delighted that someone at least remained true to the original possibilities of phones as digital communication devices. My Nokia 9300 really is the strange wonderful future now present.
The big question is: where have all the predictions of tomorrow's future gone? How do I know what to look forward to?
