[Note: This is a guest blog post from my wife. -Dan]
My husband, Dan, spent a good four years trying to convince me to get an iPhone. He used every conceivable argument, including the angle that it would actually be less expensive than my (dirt cheap) cell phone service because we could sign up for a family plan. And he made no secret of his own iPhone infatuation. (I suppose, he hoped that it would be contagious.) Every few weeks, delighted with some app or another, I would hear him cooing, “iPhone, is there *nothing* you can’t do??” Finally, in April or May of last year, I relented. At the time, I was pregnant with our second child and I realized that it would be a lot easier to keep up with my work emails while on maternity leave if I had a smartphone. But just over a year after I finally (in Dan’s estimation) joined the rest of civilized society, he did the unthinkable. He. Brought. Home. An Android.
Let me pause here to say that I have been corrected several times for referring to it as a Droid phone. Apparently it is NOT a Droid but merely a phone that uses the Android operating system. Or something like that. Whatever. (You people don’t obsess over these sorts of technical details, do you?)
I never thought I cared about what cell phone Dan used, until he brought IT home. And now, I am on a mission. This imposter must be banished. It. Must. GO. Why?
Reason #1. He never gets my calls. Apparently unless he cranks the volume on the ringer way up, he never knows that anyone is calling. Just one example. A few days ago, Dan was a bit late getting home from work. Nothing too unusual, given his substantial commute. But I knew he left on time. (He sends me a text when he leaves.) And school is out AND the weather was great, all of which usually makes for a relatively quick ride home. I wasn’t too worried until I saw the police car drive up in front of our house. Panic. So I grabbed my phone and called Dan who, of course, didn’t answer. So I called him again. And again. (Because if someone doesn’t hear the phone ring/want to talk/have the capacity to answer their phone at that moment, the only logical thing to do is to call them at 15 second intervals.) He finally picked up about 10 minutes later.
Reason #2. He never gets my texts. This past week, I had a really important phone call at work. The kind you really can’t interrupt. About 15 minutes into the call, my call waiting lit up. I could see that it was someone from my daughter’s daycare calling. Then my cell phone started buzzing. Daycare again. What to do? The daycare usually only calls if our daughter is sick or was injured or . . . I start madly texting Dan. “Please call <name of daycare> for me.” I text him about four versions of this, each one more pleading and panicked than the last. Since his Droidy phone apparently lacks push notifications for text messages (really, Droidy cell phone makers? Really?!?), he got my texts about an hour later. By this time, I had cut my work call short and (heart pounding) called the daycare. Fortunately nothing too serious.
Reason #3. And now, we pay the piper. I got a text message this afternoon from AT&T informing me that I am being charged an overage fee. So I am now going to be charged for all the phone calls and text messages that Dan never got (one of which reads “I’m confiscating your phone”). Why? In large part because when we text each other now, we are not iMessaging (for free) as we were when we both had iPhones. (iPhone, is there nothing you can’t do??)
Now I aint one of you high falutin’ techie lovin’ computer programmin wizardy types but it strikes me as somehow . . . let’s just go with “WRONG”* to be charged for service that was at best, poorly executed. And YES, I do understand that I am being charged by the service provider (AT&T, in this case) and not the people who actually made the Droidy phone that Dan is using. Whatever.
The phone must go. Must. Go.
* Dan has informed me that I must refrain from the use of any profanity in his blog
[I’ll be coming out with my own comments on switching from iPhone to Android in an upcoming post. I honestly hadn’t expected “marital strife” to be among them… -Dan]
Dan Dreams of Coding 