I've written about my cell phone before, and with this post it finally dawns on me that the phone reflects something of my personality. Which is embarrassing.
AT&T is my carrier, and when I got the phone late last summer, they didn't have much of a selection of Android phones (it's a Samsung Galaxy S, which AT&T brands as the 'Captivate'). It's not a fantastic phone, but it was lightyears ahead of what I had. But the shine wore off fairly quickly as I discovered some of its flaws and quirks.
Happiness loomed on the horizon, however: the phone shipped with the 2.1 operating system, and 2.2 purportedly would give the phone more zip, improve battery life, and a host of other small improvements. The update was supposed to come out in October, then November. Then the end of February - that one was released, then promptly withdrawn. Apparently I could get a bootleg copy of 2.2, if I didn't mind that the phone would only work in Norway.
Then, a few days ago, I found out that the 2.2 upgrade was officially out, and had been for a few weeks. The instructions didn't seem all that daunting, but they suggested backing up everything on the phone, as there was a chance that a factory reset - returning the phone to what it was like right out of the box - might be required.
This gave me pause. Of course, I thought of my contact list, with names and email addresses spread between Gmail, my work email account, and the SIM card on the phone. Cleaning all that up would be a daunting task. And I had a few apps that I'd have to re-install, but that wasn't a hairy deal - although I was sure that I was close to finding a couple of golden eggs in Angry Birds, and all those hours of effort would be lost.
But then I thought back to the previous weekend. It was picture day for Quinn's baseball team, and as the other parents pulled out their cell phones and cameras, I found that my phone had inexplicably turned itself off (something it does about once a week). By the time it was powered up, the kids had scattered, and the moment was gone.
So I started backing going through my contacts. Thankfully, I don't like people much, so my contact list was relatively short. The effort required to combine accounts helped to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I resolved that I'd be OK with losing many of the contacts that, well, really weren't any more.
Next, I copied a few dozen photos from the phone to my PC. I don't take a lot of photos, as I'm rarely happy with how they turn out. However, Quinn likes to set up elaborate battles with his Star Wars action figures, and when it's time to put the toys away, he'll ask us to take a photo so he can re-create the battle at some point in the future. So of the photos I have, about half of them look like this:
Finally, I made a list of apps that I'd have to re-install, which was longer than I thought. I mean, there's Angry Birds Seasons, after all.
I figured that was it, and the upgrade began. I sweated that for about an hour, start to finish, and when it was finished... it worked. The phone does seem snappier, and the battery life less erratic. The first time a new email came in, the phone vibrated madly - apparently 2.2 felt the urge to turn the 'haptic feedback' setting to the maximum, which makes for a hell of a rattle when the phone is sitting on a wooden desk.
As for the factory reset... it didn't happen. Everything was just as it was. Which is good, because I had forgotten a couple of little things. In the Memo app, I had made notes on the model number of a Star Wars set Quinn wants, a dehumidifier that I was thinking about buying, and the name of a Riesling that Jenny really liked. And then there's a note from a few months ago, when Quinn and I were farting around with the text-to-speech capabilities of the phone, and Quinn said:
quinn is quiet and smart I love you
I had completely forgotten about that one. Apparently there's more on that phone than I thought.
