Every couple of years I have a joyous, yet annoying day where I get a new cellphone. Most recently, it was this past week when I snagged a fresh-off-the-line Pixel 2 by Google. It's my first non-iPhone since my old Blackberry went kaput in 2011.
It's joyous because I have some of the newest, best tech (and with Pixel, very affordable compared to the high-end iPhones or Samsung's). The camera is insane, the screen is rad, it has moving background wallpapers and with Google Translate, it can translate audio around you instantly. Seriously, Google Translate makes me feel like I'm sitting in a UN meeting when in fact I'm just watching the French film "Blue Is the Warmest Color" for the third time.
The annoying part of switching, however, is getting all those things off your old cellphone. I understand a lot of tech and can navigate most things fairly easily, but I also know that I am a fool who knows next to nothing about it all. Call me novice-savant. It sounds better than poser anyway.
Photos, videos, recordings - those were easy. But five days later my Android and Apple are still not jiving when it comes to my contacts. And is there any way I can save my notes and text messages? What about all the progress in my games I used with the Apple Game Center? I hit level 1,000 in Farm Heroes two years ago but re-downloaded it on my new phone and had to go through the entire intro again.
My first cellphone in 2001 was easy to deal with. There were no games. There were no contacts. In fact, I couldn't even send text messages. Oh, I could receive texts, but not reply. Also, those received texts on the old Sony Ericsson didn't have a return phone number. I felt left out of so many get-togethers in high school because somebody would text, "Hey, are you coming over to Lindsay's tonight?" or "My car broke down, can you call dad for me?"
I always assumed that second one was my brother but never did find out for sure.
After the Ericsson, I upgraded to a Motorola V. I'm sure each phone was probably somewhere between a penny and a buck in cost. You could charge more for them today for the nostalgia factor alone.
My favorite thing about the Motorola was the contact list and the text messages. Sure, all my friends could play Snake on their Nokia, but I was just happy to be able to save phone numbers.
By the time I went to college, I had a Kyocera, and that thing was amazing because it had Breakout. I played Breakout more often than everything but Tecmo Super Bowl.
But after each of these phones, I had to have a running Word Doc on my computer listing all my contacts. I left it on my PC, because I know I would have misplaced a rolodex.
From the Kyocera came the Sony V Cast, which was my first flip and camera phone. I wasted all 10 allotted photos on filtered portraits from my college bathroom. A toilet paper roll on a tile floor next to basket of shower necessities never looked so artful than when filtered with Sepia. Later, the LG enV was a godsend. It opened horizontally and could search the internet. The year was 2008. The tragedy was it falling out of my pocket on the road and a car running it over in Fitchburg. That led to the Blackberry and three years of my life I will never get back.
But through all these, my contacts never saved. Game progress was lost (I scored over 600,000 on Blackberry Tetris!). Photos needed to be uploaded to a PC and then never made it back to a phone.
But then came my first iPhone, the i4, in 2011. And for each new iPhone I got (mostly because I kept dropping them) my information would upload through either my cloud or through iTunes. But now? For some reason my Android and my Apple components are not jiving, no matter how many "OK Google ..." searches I do.
So, it looks like I'll have to re-open my Google doc and start plugging away at my contact log. And start a brand-new SimCity. And wonder when Google is going to get back to working on Google Glass, the smartphone glasses that I not only want but need in my life.
And while I will miss talking to Siri, I can still do some pretty awesome voice searches. Like this one, which I apparently asked 97 times this weekend: "OK Google ... What was the Chicago Cubs score?"
"The Chicago Cubs lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in their last game 11-1. The Dodgers advance to the World Series."
I guess I can smile after all.
- Adam Krebs is a millennial who is surprisingly inept with technology. He's also a reporter for the Monroe Times and can be reached at akrebs@themonroetimes.net.
It's joyous because I have some of the newest, best tech (and with Pixel, very affordable compared to the high-end iPhones or Samsung's). The camera is insane, the screen is rad, it has moving background wallpapers and with Google Translate, it can translate audio around you instantly. Seriously, Google Translate makes me feel like I'm sitting in a UN meeting when in fact I'm just watching the French film "Blue Is the Warmest Color" for the third time.
The annoying part of switching, however, is getting all those things off your old cellphone. I understand a lot of tech and can navigate most things fairly easily, but I also know that I am a fool who knows next to nothing about it all. Call me novice-savant. It sounds better than poser anyway.
Photos, videos, recordings - those were easy. But five days later my Android and Apple are still not jiving when it comes to my contacts. And is there any way I can save my notes and text messages? What about all the progress in my games I used with the Apple Game Center? I hit level 1,000 in Farm Heroes two years ago but re-downloaded it on my new phone and had to go through the entire intro again.
My first cellphone in 2001 was easy to deal with. There were no games. There were no contacts. In fact, I couldn't even send text messages. Oh, I could receive texts, but not reply. Also, those received texts on the old Sony Ericsson didn't have a return phone number. I felt left out of so many get-togethers in high school because somebody would text, "Hey, are you coming over to Lindsay's tonight?" or "My car broke down, can you call dad for me?"
I always assumed that second one was my brother but never did find out for sure.
After the Ericsson, I upgraded to a Motorola V. I'm sure each phone was probably somewhere between a penny and a buck in cost. You could charge more for them today for the nostalgia factor alone.
My favorite thing about the Motorola was the contact list and the text messages. Sure, all my friends could play Snake on their Nokia, but I was just happy to be able to save phone numbers.
By the time I went to college, I had a Kyocera, and that thing was amazing because it had Breakout. I played Breakout more often than everything but Tecmo Super Bowl.
But after each of these phones, I had to have a running Word Doc on my computer listing all my contacts. I left it on my PC, because I know I would have misplaced a rolodex.
From the Kyocera came the Sony V Cast, which was my first flip and camera phone. I wasted all 10 allotted photos on filtered portraits from my college bathroom. A toilet paper roll on a tile floor next to basket of shower necessities never looked so artful than when filtered with Sepia. Later, the LG enV was a godsend. It opened horizontally and could search the internet. The year was 2008. The tragedy was it falling out of my pocket on the road and a car running it over in Fitchburg. That led to the Blackberry and three years of my life I will never get back.
But through all these, my contacts never saved. Game progress was lost (I scored over 600,000 on Blackberry Tetris!). Photos needed to be uploaded to a PC and then never made it back to a phone.
But then came my first iPhone, the i4, in 2011. And for each new iPhone I got (mostly because I kept dropping them) my information would upload through either my cloud or through iTunes. But now? For some reason my Android and my Apple components are not jiving, no matter how many "OK Google ..." searches I do.
So, it looks like I'll have to re-open my Google doc and start plugging away at my contact log. And start a brand-new SimCity. And wonder when Google is going to get back to working on Google Glass, the smartphone glasses that I not only want but need in my life.
And while I will miss talking to Siri, I can still do some pretty awesome voice searches. Like this one, which I apparently asked 97 times this weekend: "OK Google ... What was the Chicago Cubs score?"
"The Chicago Cubs lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in their last game 11-1. The Dodgers advance to the World Series."
I guess I can smile after all.
- Adam Krebs is a millennial who is surprisingly inept with technology. He's also a reporter for the Monroe Times and can be reached at akrebs@themonroetimes.net.
