My iPhone 13 Saga

5G

A simple number and letter.  That cost me a ridiculous amount of money, buying a new iPhone 13.  It had to be a 12 or 13 to be able to access the new 5G when 3G goes the way of dinosaurs, tv tubes and Howard Johnson restaurants.  Maybe I could have gotten away with something a little cheaper but I figured if I get top of the line now, I won’t have to buy another for a very long time.  Yeah, yeah, I know—in technology time, that’s probably 3-5 years, if I’m lucky…

Is it just me or is technology getting harder?  The Husband had to get a new phone, too (he insists on Android, no offense, but UGH!).  Up till now, I’ve been able to change over phones with very little stress and only a cuss word or two.  This time, I just couldn’t navigate switching his over.  User unfriendly!  So, we had to take it to a Boost location and pay them $35 to get the new one up and running.

This week, my new razzle dazzle red phone came in.  I guess I should have prayed to the patron saint of technology or Apple or something…  I quickly realized that if I wanted to switch over all my apps, I would need wifi.  Which we don’t have at home.  So, I made a reservation for a study room at our local library and used their wifi to make the switch.  It took an hour for my old phone and new one to talk to each other and the new phone to download all the mysterious stuff it needs to function.  Woo hoo!  Success!

Until I had The Husband, sitting across from me, call me.  The old phone rang.  Text me, please.  Old phone.  Can’t scream since I’m in a library…

Another $35 to Boost to switch over the phone and text functions…  Can you say nickel and diming?? 

Great—phone and text are working.  Whew.  Time for a quesadilla.

Sit down with my dinner at Del Taco, access Instagram.  No Internet Connection!!  Back to Boost, where I had to argue with the service guy, who swore I was at my data limit and the phone was just “slow”.  Uh, no, it says right there, No Internet Connection.  Finally, he got it and said he’d call Customer Service, could we come back in a half hour.  Did some grocery shopping, came back to a big smile—Customer Service did something on their end, working now.  But, he said, try it before you leave, which I was about to do even as he said it.  Actual Success!  Everything Working!

Spent the next little while reloading my apps and updating the ones that needed the passwords re-entered.  A couple of fun things—my old, sadly lamented phone (I was really upset to have to give it up) had fingerprint tech, but this one has facial recognition.  I had to aim it at my face and move my head around until the lights surrounding a frame had all gone green.  Kinda spooky but fun to have my phone recognize ME.  Also, there’s an emoji of me that I’d set up on my old phone that I can now make into a text video, including my voice.  C’mon, that’s cool!

I haven’t really explored the new camera stuff yet.  There’s something called Cinematic Video and I’ve already seen that new pictures include all the camera lens info, MP’s, MB’s and mm’s, whatever they are.  I have to say, though, that the picture quality on the whole is immaculate, whether social media apps or streaming apps.  The size of the phone is just slightly smaller than the old one, which is fine.  I took a look at the 13 mini, which was cheaper, but that was way too small. Still getting used to not having the button at the bottom of the screen–now I have to swipe up to close an app but that’s ok because it allows the entire face of the phone to be available graphic space.

And, of course, I had to get a new case for it.  In the end, the possibilities came down to two—sea life in white, including a narwhale, on a clear frame or multi-colored celestial on clear.  My purse is a Vera Bradley quilted sea life pattern but I went with the celestial because I’ve drawn stars since I was little and that’s just more me.

At our weekly meeting a few Fridays ago, my coworkers and I were talking about how a few of us are constantly looking for where we left our phones and the majority of us have them with us at all times.

*Shoots hand into the air, shouting Me! Me! Me!* 

When cell phones were in their infancy and were truly just phones, I couldn’t understand how people carried them around everywhere and couldn’t bear to be without them.  In my defense, now they are hand held computers, the future portrayed in Star Trek, come true.  Rarely used as an actual phone, it serves as Oracle (Google), friend conduit (Instagram, Facebook), boredom reliever (Spider Solitaire, Wordscapes), library (Kindle), financial connection (banking apps), communicator (texting, Marco Polo), list maker (Sort It for Movies, Lists To Do), health monitor (apps for Kaiser and my mother’s MyChart), and entertainment (Hulu, Britbox, Amazon Prime, YouTube).  Can’t remember that actor’s name, check IMDb.  Need to check email, tap AOL.  Need another word for anxious, call up Dictionary,com.  Before bed, I set the alarms for the next day and bring up my Calm app as a night light.

So, there’s my iPhone 13 story in a very large nutshell.  Any stories or thoughts you want to share?  I’ll be watching the post on my iPhone 13 for comments!