Gutenberg Lampoon » Mike Tobias

Yes­ter­day the hul­la­baloo was all about the new Google mobile device, Nexus One. It was atop the head­lines of Huff­in­g­ton Post and New York Times, Mash­able, and in the blo­gos­phere and Twit­ter in gen­eral. This is a great deal of hype for a phone, which is now the lat­est con­tender against Apple’s iPhone.

It just makes me imag­ine the cell phone indus­try is now a 1970s Samu­rai film, where iPhone sits atop a tall moun­tain. Chal­lengers come from dif­fer­ent vil­lages to show­down with the iPhone. They have clever tricks like slider key­boards and wire­less charg­ing, but ulti­mately the iPhone cuts them down by hav­ing multi-touch and a unmatch­able app library.

And for all this talk about a great phone, I still have a Motoral RAZR. Not because I like the piece of shit, but because I’m a broke grad­u­ate. Its fea­tures are it can dial and it has a screen.My 9 key has stopped work­ing, so I can only call friends who were already in my address book, friends whose phone num­bers don’t include the num­ber 9, and if I’m being mur­dered I have to hope that blank-1–1 will get me someone.

Even if I did have the money, I’m not sure I would invest in a fancy phone like the Nexus One or iPhone. I might just get another sim­ple device. There’s some­thing scary about some­one hav­ing the abil­ity to reach me via 6 dif­fer­ent ways:phone, text, email, Twit­ter, Fbook, and a clever pigeon with a note on its leg. If you have a smart­phone you’re guar­an­teed to be con­tacted by the for­mer 5, and some­times it’s bet­ter to have less ways for the ass­holes in my life to reach me.