Back when I first got a cell phone in September of 2001, I got it mainly for emergency purposes. To that end, my cell phone service has more than paid for itself, based solely on an incident in October of the following year when Dad called to tell me that my car was leaking transmission fluid, and that if I’d tried to drive it I probably would have wrecked the whole transmission. There have been other times over the years when I’ve had to use it for emergency purposes, although I did use it for social purposes a few times back when I was at UT. More recently I’ve been using it for work purposes — although I still prefer to communicate by e-mail whenever possible — and now I’d like to start using my phone to keep in touch with someone I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with lately. (Tease me about it and I’ll delete your comments.)

Unfortunately, I’m once again at the point where I need to buy a new phone. I first bought a real brick of a phone from Verizon, but a couple of years later the battery contacts on the phone went out, and it kept powering down out of nowhere. I switched to Virgin Mobile after that — they cost less to keep active — and my first phone from them served me well, until I broke the pin in the phone where the AC adaptor hooked up, and Virgin Mobile told me that it would cost less to buy a new phone than to repair the old one. My current phone is one of their flip camera phones — I figure having the camera feature qualifies as an "emergency" application since, for example, I could use it to snap photos if I get in a driving accident — but now the battery just won’t hold a charge, and it doesn’t always detect when I plug in the AC adaptor. I’ve had the phone go out on me suddenly during non-emergency use, and the last thing I need is for it to die when I really need to use it.

I’m probably going to stick with Virgin Mobile for now, if for no other reason than because I have a huge bank of rollover minutes built up, and it still only costs me eighty dollars a year to maintain. However, I can’t deny feeling a bit of tech envy when it comes to the phones that other carriers provide. All throughout the year I’ve been hearing that phones that don’t have full keyboards are "so three years ago" or what have you, and I still text more than I place calls on the phone, so a full keyboard would be nice. However, Virgin Mobile only offers two phones with keyboards, and both of them only hold fifty text messages. If I’m going to get more active with texting here, then I probably need something with more storage. At the very least, though, I’d want to use up my accumulated minutes on that phone before switching to a new carrier, which makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just get one of the ten-dollar phones Virgin offers to use before switching providers.

Realistically speaking, I shouldn’t get one of the new super-phones, as they cost so much more to maintain, and I’d have limited use of the extended features. Still, I’ve been looking at T-Mobile’s Android phones and experiencing a good bit of tech envy. I’ve seen them in use more lately, and as much as I don’t necessarily all the cool features they have, I’ve seen them in use enough to know that they wouldn’t just be toys for me; some of the applications have very useful purposes that mesh in well with my needs. Still, I would be looking at $75 a month at least for my service, when I’m not even spending a tenth of that right now on my current plan. My brain tells me that I should just stick with Virgin Mobile for now, put up with the relatively small inconveniences of having a phone that doesn’t bake bread and trim my fingernails, and wait until the prices and plans for the super-phones go down. Paying my student loans off and finding a full-time teaching position in the meantime would be nice as well. Still, I can’t deny there’s a part of my heart that’s eager to get something new and shiny and all whiz-bangy. I thought I’d moved past this phase of my life. I guess I’m feeling like a kid again in more ways than one right now.