If I were a movie character, I would be Sid from Toy Story.
My things have a weird habit of burrowing into the bottom recesses of my satchel whenever I’m fishing around for anything like keys, a brush, or a tube of lip balm. Inanimate objects tremble in fear whenever I move to pick them up. I’m klutzy, I drop stuff all the time, and I’m not the best phone caretaker in the world.
It doesn’t start out that way, of course. Like all relationships, phone ownership always starts out with a ton of love, care, and understanding. With a brand new phone, I exercise extreme caution, treating it like a baby – fed, burped, cleaned, prodded, cooed at every day. Every little bump and possible mishap elicits frantic apologies, and maybe even a few neurotic kisses.
It grows on me and then, as is usual in a relationship, things start getting taken for granted, and the slow slide towards eventual destruction begins.
My first phone was a Nokia 3210. It was an awesome piece of work. Slim enough to slip into a back pocket, streamlined enough not to look like a tragic bar of soap, hardy enough to keep going for days on a single charge.
These days, that kind of battery life is a myth.
Anyway, I dropped it by accident way too often than was healthy, and it got to a point where it would literally fly apart each time it hit the floor. Its battery would be on one end of the room, the casing on the opposite side, the keypad somewhere under the couch. Took a licking and kept on ticking, that 3210. It was basically Chuck Norris.
It seemed prescient when Nokia announced they were bringing back their classic 3310. I was pretty stoked about this, because a return to “dumb phones” seemed like a refreshing change of pace. Being plugged in 24/7 can get exhausting.
In my head I figured they’d dust off whatever boxes of phones they didn’t manage to move 20 years ago, and just offer those up for sale, but no. The new 3310 shares a passing resemblance to the old one, but this is not the phone of yore. It’s a pimped-out imposter dressed in a similar outfit. It’s got a camera, data capabilities and Snake, except Snake is now in colour. I wanted the phone of yesteryear, no bells, no whistles, no rear camera, but I suppose nostalgia can only go so far.
Now, my Galaxy S3 is a few months shy of its sixth year, and the truck driver who gives me a lift from work thinks my phone is a piece of crap. It’s certainly seen better days — beside the gleaming polish of his iPhone 6, it looks like a candidate for the junk heap — but I don’t care. I glory in the broken-downness of it. I complain about its stupid auto-correct, and I think it’s gotten as slow as all get-out, but deep inside, I love my S3.
You know the moment you lose an iPhone 6S that you’ll never see it again but you can’t say the same for a cracked S3. (I wouldn’t be surprised if someone paid me to take it back.)
When it comes to tech, I apply the same strategy my father has for his house slippers: use it into the ground until it conks out, maybe try to resuscitate it with lots of duct tape and a prayer, then when it becomes painfully obvious that it’s given up the ghost, set it aside for the next big thing.
I’ve been fortunate in my choice of phones so far, but the end may be nigh.
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Author’s Twitter: @nikkajow
