Lest you fall into the trap of believing I am anything remotely resembling a profound thinker, I have to let you in on the secret of what I have been grateful for lately.

After years of getting whatever baseline cell phone that came for free when I renewed my contract, I dipped one tenative toe into the digital revolution.  My husband’s phone chose exactly two days before our contract was up for renewal to die irrevocably (and here is where I interject “LG, piece of shite”), and we found ourselves unexpectedly buying ourselves new phones for Christmas.  Merry Christmas to us.

Two things happened that made me realize that I really, really do have to access my email from my phone:

1.  My new job requires long periods of time when I am “on-call.”  While I rarely (in fact, almost NEVER) have to come into work off-hours, I must be accessible (by federal regulation, no less), 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

2. I travel for work.

The combination of the “and” and the “or” of the two above circumstances forced my hand.

I really, really wanted a Samsung Blackjack.  I can’t believe I am truly enough of a geekette to deem any piece of electronic equipment “sexy”, but, damn.  Blackjacks are sexy.  But I just couldn’t justify it.  The upfront cost wasn’t really much more than I ended up paying, but the monthly data service forced me to do a reality check.  There’s need, there’s convenience, and there’s just plain luxury.  We were tipping into the luxury with the Blackjack, no matter how bad I wanted a QWERTY keyboard.  Folks, I have an unbelievable typing speed.  Me and QWERTY, we relate.

But, considering the state of our budget, and my serious aversion to being in debt, I ended up with this:

 

A Cingular 3125 Smartphone (otherwise known as QTEK 8500). 

And, well, I couldn’t be happier with it.  Even sans QWERTY.

It runs Windows Mobile, so the navigational interface is familiar, and it has the added bonus that when my project manager emails me an appointment, it automatically integrates into the Calendar on my phone, because it is all, essentially, Outlook.  Email setup, even to my corporate server, was quick and painless.  Multimedia messaging, either phone-to-phone, or phone-to-email, is integrated.  And it synchs with the Outlook on my laptop, which means I don’t have to enter all my contact information tediously on the phone’s number pad.  I can enter it in Outlook on my computer, and send it to the phone via USB.

It does everything I need, and a couple things I don’t.  It has a built-in MP3 player, which I am too addicted to my iPOD to use.  Right now, it will only hold 20 songs, but a quick memory card upgrade will change that.  If my audiobooks were compatible with it, it would be more useful, but they aren’t right now.  The cameraphone has been fun to play with, but, frankly, it’s not exactly a career necessity.  It will also do video, which makes my mother happy, because I can email her videos of cute Harry tricks, but, again, it’s a perk I could have lived without. 

But, I can blog and check MySpace straight from my phone, anywhere.  How cool is that?

(Geek.)