Grandma Goes G1, Cell Phone that Is

I was really happy when my son wanted to upgrade his cell phone to the new T-Mobile HTC HD2 phone. I'm completely happy with this hand me down. I'm too cheap to spend hundreds of dollars on a new cell phone. Still I really love the T-Mobile G1 phone. It took me a couple of days to get used to it, but I think I've mastered it now. I was using a blackberry phone before. You can still purchase the G1 from T-Mobile for about $100. Not a bad price for all the features that this phone has.

I still haven't figured out how to tether this creature to my laptop so I can use it as a modem when I'm travelling. The only definition that I knew for tether in the past was to tether an animal, like a horse to a hitching post. I have also heard of tethering an astronaut to a space vehicle for a space walk. Isn't it interesting how the meaning of a word changes throughout time? I was able to tether my Dash just by plugging it into my USB port and enable internet sharing on the phone. I think now I have to download something that will allow me to do this. If anyone knows of an easy way to accomplish this, please let me know.

One of the places a tether would be useful would be at the airport. Some airports offer free wireless internet and others can't be bothered with it. They shuffle this service off to providers who want to charge too much for it. Since I don't fly that much I guess it's not much of an issue. I just need amusement as I'm sitting there waiting to board my plane. I have to admit though that people watching in an airport is pretty amusing. I do have unlimited web on my new phone. So that should keep me occupied.

I guess I must be what you call a geeky grandma. Not in the clumsy sense, but in the technology sense. I love gadgets. I've wanted a cell phone that has a touch screen. I love the touch screen on this cell phone and now that I have my gmail account set up I can forward all my mail through my gmail account and get it all on my phone. So as I'm sitting here typing my article, I know when an email slides in on any of my email accounts. My phone makes this cute little tinkling chime sound when I get messages or emails. If I don't like that sound I can choose something different, or create my own. Really cool.

I can now use Android applications. Not sure how I feel about this yet. I know my son had an application that made farting sounds. That was pretty funny, but I must admit not very useful. I've been kind of looking at the free stuff because I'm cheap. I found an application that will calculate tips in a restaurant. I think that's pretty useful.

Another thing I like about this cell phone is that you can call someone by using voice recognition. So all I have to do is say someone's name and it will dial the number. If you're going to have a cool phone you might as well have all the fun stuff.

Now that I'm getting spoiled with all the things I can do with this phone, I'll probably never be satisfied wit a phone that has less goodies. If something happens with this phone I'll have to replace it with something equivalent or wait for my son to get a new phone. He just got the T-Mobile HTC HD2. It's pretty cool. He can watch TV through his sling box. Oh, you want to know what a sling box is? I'll have to tell you about that later.

Sources:
Personal Experience