Though I’m not much of a phone talker, it’s a bit frusterating to have to stand in one place in my apartment to have a conversation, and even then it can cut out on you.  Every time I switch providers, it’s to get better service in my apartment, and then something happens within a few months, and it’s no longer the best provider for my apartment (a cell tower is taken down, a fire happens and we have to move…).

But this switch (and quite the upgrade to a better phone), has me thinking of how much phones have improved in a relatively short amount of time.  I received my first cell phone for my 19th birthday (I actually went a whole semester of college without a cell phone…that would have been weird even a couple of years later!).  That first phone was one of these (because really, what other phone was there to have?):I thought it was so cool, with my 100 minutes/month, in Kansas/Oklahoma/Missouri/Illinois only (yeah, I don’t get why those 4 states were in a  regional plan together, either).

A couple of years later, I upgraded to a flip phone, because of course that was cool.  Then to a color flip phone, and then to a flip phone with camera.

And now, I have the enV Touch, with touch screen, flash camera, and QWERTY keyboard.  (sorry, no picture, but it’s a little difficult to take a picture of a phone when the camera’s IN the phone!) These were three things that would have seemed so crazy back in 2001 when I got that first phone.  Makes me wonder what phones will look like in another 8 years!

What futuristic features would you like to see phones have?

However, this apparently is not the norm of the American people, or at least the people that use the same model of phone I use. Only occasionally do I find a word that Blogger doesn’t know, and even less common do I find a word that Microsoft Word spell check doesn’t know (it especially happens when writing seminary papers…clearly Word has never been to seminary), but I find words that my phone doesn’t know (specifically the T9 predictive text function) on almost a daily basis.

Words that I’ve recently discovered were not in my phone’s vocabulary:

Bawl
Yeppers (I said I had an extensive vocabulary, haha)
Roomie (Blogger doesn’t recognize this nor “yeppers,” sigh)
Blog (I know!)

Another question about the T9 function: it’s supposed to give me the words in the order of most frequent use, right? How come when I go to type “jen” (a word I have to use pretty often) does it give me “ken” and “leo” before “jen?” Aren’t there like 40 bazillion Jens out there, many more than Kens or Leos? I mean really, I only “know” one Leo, and that’s only if you can count famous people.

What words have you been surprised is not in your phone/blogger/word processor?