A Lot On My Plate

This week I'm very busy, what with several just-completed band trailer repairs, a 3-day weekend of shows coming up, and figuring out how to work this thing:
This is my first "smart" phone, the Samsung Fascinate.
What strikes you right off is the sheer size of it.
(Remember when phones used to get smaller every year?)
It's posed on a $20 bill to illustrate it's dimensions, including just how wafer-thin it is.

The "Super AMOLED" screen is 4 full inches tall (or wide) depending on how you hold it--works either way and auto-rotates the image. 800x480 pixels. From my limited testing so far I'll give it a rating of Gorgeous/Accurate/Holy Crap!
Makes the backlit LCD on my DSLR look small and weak, and it was nearly state of the art a few years ago.
I haven't watched any movies on it yet, but a couple of games looked superb, as do my own photos--which incidentally just showed up on their own after I signed into my Google account.
It looks like every pic I've ever uploaded to all of my blogs past and present are there.
Creepy.

I only thought I might want a smartphone for the bigger and better screens so I could carry around a compact digital portfolio of my work, but I have to admit that the mobile internet and apps and games are already catching my fancy.
Sylvia said "Since we have to pay for the data plan every month anyway, use the shit out of it!"
No problem, baby.

I also like that it has a standard 3.5mm jack, so when I want to use it as an mp3 player or watch videos, any earbuds or headphones will work in stereo. Our last phones were mono.
And it came with a 16gb microSDHC card already installed.
It's like Samsung was reading my mind!
Every feature that was important to me is here, but I have to admit that Sylvia picked the Fascinate and I just got really lucky.
A quick Google of the specs and I was totally on board.


We had always assumed that since we're Verizon customers, going to their stores and/or website would be the place to get the "best buy".
Nope.
The Big V still has the Fascinate at $200 each, plus you have to deal with a bunch of double-talk and poorly answered questions when it comes to your bill.
We expected an even worse experience at BB, but within 15 minutes the automatic doors parted and we felt like Bonnie and Clyde.
(Speaking of BestBuy...
Unlike a lot of people, I don't hate them.
It helps that I've never needed knowledgeable salespeople, although I fondly remember when you could go into any Sears and find someone in every department who had a firm grip on the facts. The internet, and before that catalogs and writing letters to the right people, worked pretty well.
When they have the lowest price on something I've already decided to buy, that's where I go).

Which would YOU choose--$400 or Free?
I guess Verizon will still make an obscene amount of money from our new data plans over the contract period, but all those pictures of Ben will cover more than 25% of it.
Don't even know what to make of the published MSRP of $600 each. As a portable media player, internet device, gaming unit, photo portolio, phone, vid/still cam, etc, they might be worth it.
As long as we don't go crazy and start spending money on endless downloads of content and apps that add to our monthly bill, it's a sweet deal.
Just being able to check weather radar before loading-out of a club has me excited, in the unlikely event that it ever rains here again.

My job right now is to figure out how to convert and transfer the music, movies, and photos we already own to the new devices.
Now that Sylvia has Angry Birds on hers, I probably have plenty of time.




PS: So far, the 5 megapickles camera looks pretty good. It actually focuses on specific things!
Hope I don't get sucked into the current iPhone wormhole of leaving my "real" camera at home and using apps to try and make art out of snapshots, but we'll have to wait and see on that.