Cell phone quest comes full circle

My cell phone is the most simple, bare-bones phone I've owned since high school. It's pay-as-you-go, has no Internet access, displays two colors and its coolest feature is probably a small flashlight on the top. And I love it.

I got my first portable phone around the time I started driving. It was a Tracfone, which didn't do much more than make and receive calls and texts. I got tired of it quickly and upgraded a few times in the seven years that followed, but never to a smart phone. I just didn't make enough money to justify it.

By 2009, I was in China, where I actually do make enough money to comfortably buy a high-end phone. So what do I do? I buy a bare bones 300 yuan ($45) Nokia instead and have never looked back.

This often surprises my Chinese students, who see me reach into my pocket and expect some state-of-the-art piece of machinery. Instead, they see something that looks practically from the Stone Age to them. These students are barely older than I was when I got the Tracfone, and many of their phones are better than any I've ever owned.

There's not much these phones can't do, which the students take full advantage of.

They use the phones for translating words they don't know. They play music and videos during class breaks. They've even cumbersomely used them to replace cheat-sheets when trying to cheat on tests and quizzes. Last semester, one of my worst students showed me how his iPhone could use Google Earth to look at my hometown via satellite - it was the most he'd ever spoken to me.

I know that some of my students don't feel like they have many belongings worth taking serious pride in, but it's not hard to notice how much they love showing their phones off.

Smart phones are amazing things, and I'm happy that my students have access to this wonder technology at such young ages. There's certainly a part of me that wouldn't mind getting my own some time, even one that's a few years old. But there's also something to be said for my own inexpensive cell, and it's something most "better" phones I've encountered can't share claim to.

This simple, dated little thing I carry around is one of the most durable pieces of technology I've ever seen. I can't believe how many situations it's survived undamaged in the past two years that would have ruined other phones.

I once had a flip phone stomped fatally in half during a dance party - my current phone has been split in half more times than I can count. Most of my friends have horror stories about water-damaged phones, including one that dropped in a toilet. Mine dropped into a giant mug of beer and was fine. This phone has survived me partying halfway across Thailand, and endured a merciless rainy season in the Philippines, all without slowing down. I think I've unknowingly discovered the un-killable phone.

Phones with cool features and touch screens certainly have an appeal, as well as a weird way of signifying social status for some people, and good for them.

My phone has a different appeal, one that has grown on me with experience. What had seemed like a purely disposable purchase has lived hard with me through adventures across Asia these past two years - this phone is a survivor, and I couldn't think of a better phone to fit my current lifestyle.

In a field like technology, where the focus is on moving forward as quickly as possible, the opportunity to come full-circle is rare. Yet that is exactly what I've done here in China with this simple-but-tough-as-nails mobile phone.

Let everybody have their Blackberries and iPhones - I think I owe my old Tracfone an apology.

For China Daily

(China Daily 03/17/2011 page20)