For many people the smart phone has become a way of life. Checking in, verifying prices and reviews, directions, calling cabs, mapping out a local coffee shop, looking up long lost friends, and on and on. All of this, and, all for a price. And, I've discovered that I have grown tired of paying that price. In fact, I'm tired of always being connected.
I'll preface the rest of this post with this statement: I'm not naive enough to think, that other than a very few individuals, people would ever switch back to a feature phone- and luckily so for the cellular companies. As a recent article on CNET pointed out, even feature-minimized phones are a relatively low cost option for a simple smartphone running some flavor of the Android OS. That, and I'm sure that at some point in the future there is a yet-to-be-made smartphone with my name on it. That I assume is almost inevitable.
The price I was paying for my original Droid (which I got the day after they became available) was $39.99 for the account, $5.00 for text, and $29.99 for a true unlimited data plan - so $75 + assorted E911 fees and taxes, nearly $100/mo, $1,200/year, and $2,400 for a two year plan.Wow.
I say true unlimited because I signed on with Verizon when data was still unlimited and unlimited meant unlimited. With the plan I could stream video, listen to music, connect my laptop, all over 3G. I far exceeded 1GB, hell, even 20GB and still paid $30/mo for the service. Those were good times.
Alas, times are tight. We've had a few medical issues in our small family of two humans, two dogs, two cats, and a mortgage (also part of the family), and even with good insurance (for the human contingent) times are pretty tight. I started looking for simple ways to save money. The most obvious low-hanging fruit were cell phone data plans. So, two weeks ago, I called up Verizon (you have to call to cancel a data plan), and talked to a very nice woman who insisted it was a terrible thing to get rid of the plan I was on, but in the end, she did as I asked.
I re-activated my Moto Slvr L7 and went to work updating the contacts and learning how to text with no keyboard (takes for ever to send messages by the way), all for $50/month (still seems like a lot when I write it out). The first thing I noticed, I didn't check my email before bed or right when I woke up (to be honest, I do have a Xoom tablet, but it is staying tucked away at night - nowhere near the bedroom). The second thing I noticed, I couldn't tweet when I was drinking a very good beer. Third, my God, I had to actually wait to read the news. Oh, and my Latitude account will forever (until I update it with the Xoom) say that I am at home. Sorry, Boss, you can't verify my location without checking my office (or calling).
My lack of connection didn't change the world over the last two weeks, I never thought it would, - but it is changing me, just a little. I can still tweet and stay connected - just not that connected. My SAR has decreased, a little, so maybe cancer, heart problems, or plain old age will take a little longer to get to me in the end. All of this and I'm saving about $1,200/year, which isn't bad (that's one extra mortgage payment or a vacation).
Over the past two weeks, I have realized that the idea of needing a smartphone, plus the fact that the cell companies are bending us over the proverbial barrel and giving it to us in the pocked book for "unlimited" data, is pretty short-sighted. Sure, it opens up another world, or maybe some would say, it opens up the world, but it certainly shuts us off from other, more immediate and human and physical components of the world. At least I think so.
So, I've rejoined the ranks of the feature phone crowd. At least I still have a cell phone, I guess. Luckily for Verizon, they still get that little chunk of cash from me each month, dammit. Maybe one day they (cell companies) will realize that they will have to reduce the overall costs of data. Of course, why would they do that when most people are willing to shell out the bucks?
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