(n) Shi⋅mo⋅pho⋅bi⋅a [shē'mō-fō'bē-ə]: the abnormal yet completely understandable fear that your cell phone and service are worthless, confusing, expensive pieces of sh*t.


Hello... my name is Furious, and I have shimophobia.

My (allegedly ) better half had to talk me out of crushing my Motorola RAZR and throwing it in Lake Harriet. This was the final straw in my hate-hate relationship with the RAZR so I finally accepted my Ludditeness and will be replacing the RAZR with a

with a

with a...

Jitterbug!

*runs away bawling*

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Furibunny,

True stories from the Furious Family:

Today, I opened up my RAZR (and slit my wrists god i hate this f*****g phone) and there was 2 new voice mail messages. One was from BeeZee that I knew about, and the other, I THOUGHT, was from a bookbinder telling me my order was finished. Actually it was a message from the bookbinder from two months ago that I THOUGHT i deleted, so I ended up calling Texas burning cell phone minutes and embarrassing myself. PLUS, the light and screen kept popping off on the phone so I couldn't tell if the battery died or not while I was on hold and ended up making beep-boop-beep noises in the bookbinder receptionist's ear to see the damn screen and there's NO WAY to change the settings and then the dog decides to bark at NOTHING and I can't hear wtf's the receptionist is saying and I kept hitting the damn cameraphone button and OOOOO I HATE THIS FRIGGIN-

*FWOOFS the phone into crispy critters*

little elves have taken residence in my cellular phone. malicious evil acidic elves.

You have to remember too, the height of the RAZR is the width of my hand, so even though the buttons are "big", it's like working with a kiddie phone to me. My thumbprint can nearly cover the entire numeric keypad!

THIS is the size mobile phone I need!



Dead batteries? So what? Get cranking!

I hate cell phones...nasty demonic things that attract teenage klepto's. I quit using them after two got stolen by nasty teenage changelings right out of my house.

sure is...moblie...

I can imagine it hauled around in a big green army duffle bag

RAZRs are horrible horrible phones. i like my old nokia. i'm DREADING the day when it finally dies and i have to get a phone with gadgets and cameras and mp3 players and a radio and a... a.. god knows what.

quote:

Originally posted by Furious:
You have to remember too, the height of the RAZR is the width of my hand, so even though the buttons are "big", it's like working with a kiddie phone to me. My thumbprint can nearly cover the entire numeric keypad!

THIS is the size mobile phone I need!



Dead batteries? So what? Get cranking!

HOLY F*#@ I hated hauling that "man pack" radio through the wilderness!!!!!! They never worked that great either. STILL MADE BY MOTOROLA Furious. Moto makes painfully reliable products that never work well. Since they never have the courtesy to break down completely you can't replace them.

Get an unlockable Nokia phone. Nice Linux kernel under the hood. I went with a Virgin mobile pay as you go plan. Very nice. No hidden gotchas.

I have a KRZR (slightly thicker and stubbier version of the RAZR) and it's been one of the most easy to use and durable phones I've ever had. I've had it about three years now and is still ambling along.

I want to replace it as the buttons are so thoroughly worn that I'm convinced one day I'll short myself on them...

I had a razr but lost it after three years (found it again), and in the meantime, Carphone Warehouse gave me a free Blackberry, as I have a contract with them. It's one of the older models, still uses actual buttons, not thoughtwaves-and-fingers (hence the 'free' bit), and it's not too bad. I have NO INTEREST AT ALL in bells and whistles, just vast amount of texting and calling, but the camera has proved mildly useful.

quote:

Originally posted by Limertilly:
RAZRs are horrible horrible phones. i like my old nokia. i'm DREADING the day when it finally dies and i have to get a phone with gadgets and cameras and mp3 players and a radio and a... a.. god knows what.

i picked a simple motorola fli phone after my nokia died and i love it. its not all whistles and bells and i rather love it actually *snuggles motorola*

*seethes with dark emotions. "Motorola" and "Man portable" are the only recognizable words*

Moto 4 teh newbs. Nokia rulz.

I have a crappy LG phone with Virgin Mobile and it's on the Verizon thingy. I can't get cell service at my house.

Matt managed to text from his phone, but not actually make a phone call.

So, because it's so problematic to get cell service here, and I hardly ever leave my house, the whole cell phone craze has passed me by.

quote:

Originally posted by Nemo888:
HOLY F*#@ I hated hauling that "man pack" radio through the wilderness!!!!!! They never worked that great either. STILL MADE BY MOTOROLA Furious. Moto makes painfully reliable products that never work well. Since they never have the courtesy to break down completely you can't replace them.

Get an unlockable Nokia phone. Nice Linux kernel under the hood. I went with a Virgin mobile pay as you go plan. Very nice. No hidden gotchas.

I thought I recognised it! Those yokes are a good way fall out of a Zodiac and nearly drown. No, really. Nothing quite like fishing a soggy corporal out of the sea while his mates kill themselves laughing.

I have a Samsung F-102 or such. I love it for going round my neck and being a Mp3 player. On the other hand, it crashes if you look at it funny, has no usb port and Vodafone have not quite grasped geography.

So it goes.

I've had my LG phone for over a year and the only thing wrong with it is the outer display screen, which only works if I shake the phone furiously. It's my fault it doesn't work, I dropped it about two months after I got it.

We use Verizon, and it works great around here. Only place I had problems was in the building at my last job, which I believe is a Black Hole that sucks away cell signals.

I like my plain and simple Nokia 6300. But bringing it here to Canada with me from the UK has meant that i've been restricted to what provider I can use because I wanted a SIM only plan. And North American mobile phone service/plans are TERRIBLE. I'm having to pay to see who is calling me! And I can't use the internet on my plan because I brought my own phone to it! AND MY SIM CARD COST ME MONEY.

Give me the UK's phone service any day. They'll throw themselves at you, and SIM cards, to get your business. And it's dead cheap, generally. Sigh.

I have a rather pretty black Sony Ericsson W910i from Vodafone, and I like it.
The camera is crappy, but I didn't buy it for the camera. I already have a camera that I like a lot.
I didn't buy it as a MP3 player either, but I like that it's a rather good one, and a radio as well (this meant that I could listen to the BBC World Service live coverage of the US elections on my way to the airport last year! ). I use it as my main "on the road" entertainment source now. And since it came both with a USB cable and an even niftier USB adapter for the memory card, loading stuff onto it is really easy.
The sound quality (both music and phone) is very good, and I have good reception almost anywhere (there's a reception hole on the railway into Berlin, about 30 seconds. And another one going the other way.)
It sometimes gets temperamental and turns itself off while I'm texting, but that's once a month at the most. Might be from when I dropped it pretty hard onto the sidewalk in mid-winter...

The phone I had the longest was a silver Siemens S35i, if I recall correctly. It was my second mobile ever (after a crappy prepaid one whose make I don't remember). It was really robust and survived a LOT of abuse over the years. I finally had to give it up because the battery had become too unreliable.

Then I had a Motorola flip phone, for about 6 months. It took a little tumble. In the washing machine. Phones don't like that.
It also SUCKED ASS. The charger plug broke almost immediatly, the battery never lasted more than a day whether I used it or not, the reception was actually worse than my old phone, and it was so hard to flip open I had to use both hands. I couldn't afford a new one after that one broke, so I just put the SIM card back into the Siemens, and kept it for another, oh, two years?

And I agree with Nicole, North American cell services/plans are horrible! You poor guys have to pay for incoming calls??? What a ripoff!

quote:

Originally posted by Nemo888:

HOLY F*#@ I hated hauling that "man pack" radio through the wilderness!!!!!! They never worked that great either. STILL MADE BY MOTOROLA Furious. Moto makes painfully reliable products that never work well. Since they never have the courtesy to break down completely you can't replace them.

Get an unlockable Nokia phone. Nice Linux kernel under the hood. I went with a Virgin mobile pay as you go plan. Very nice. No hidden gotchas.

I wasn't kidding when I said I ordered a Jitterbug J last night; big no-nonsense buttons, decent ear speaker, minimalist menus, the ability to turn the speakerphone on or off BEFORE you make a call, a dial tone... I hope it lives up to the hype.

The RAZR wouldn't be so bad IF the operating system was more customizable, like giving users the ability to disable all four exterior buttons so you don't end up taking pictures of the inside of your pocket or accidentally switch the phone from vibrate to ring when you don't want it to (yes I know you can reprogram the buttons slightly but you can't disable them).

And the Internet/texting crap they keep forcing you to accidentally start up (which sucks on boths accounts, especially on a prepaid phone) are miserable experiences in themselves.

And don't get me started on the choices for ringtones and wallpaper.

Motorola phones remind me a lot of Windows PCs - tons of potential (if you like hacking) but completely sucks right out of the box.

I have such a love-hate relationship with cell phones. They're so convenient (albeit that my Voyager has so many unnecessary features) and make it easy to communicate and get plans set with people....

BUT, People in the 17-18 age group tend to use them to talk to people, WHILE they're with other people. I can't even begin to articulate how annoyed I get when me and three+ others are all doing something, and people feel the need to text others. Or people that feel the need to text all day during classes. It's starting to become ADD-inducing and causing society to devolve.