In 2009, the unthinkable happened to me. I went stupid and actively chose to spend $500+ on a new and strange cell phone called the G1. It was sometimes also known by its nom de plume, the “Google Phone.” This “Google Phone,” apparently, had such marvelous integration between Google Search, Google Maps, Google Talk, Google Contacts and Gmail, it beckoned, nay, demanded that the user drop their non-Google email account, their non-Google search engine as well as everything else that was non-Google. For up until that point, there actually was no point in uniting everything you did under one company. Your cell phone was, well, a phone (as well as a moderately aggravating T9 texting device). The G1 represented the first time anyone had ever seen such deep integration of all these features, commonly combined, into one single, simple device. And while the G1 was a phone, there no longer seemed a need to call anyone. For the record, my parents are STILL on the old flippy-dip cell phones. These people refuse to even get texting! To think, my mother actually wants me to call her and use my voice to communicate. She is so 2008. Anyhow, I was hooked on this new, gorgeous, touch screen service-integrated device. It was life altering. Then the apps came and they were beautiful! Google had its “do-no-evil” hooks in me and I was a goner. I felt near love for this new little bronze phone of mine.
Then the G1 evolved. It evolved into dozens of other faster, more gorgeous devices running the newer and newer versions of the Google operating system called Android. No longer was the phone a “Google Phone” but rather it was now an ANDROID phone. I upgraded, swapped, traded, cavorted (cavorted?), and spent more money than I care to admit buying newer and newer Android phones. The apps poured into the market and I bought those apps and those apps needed power so I bought extended batteries. Life was good. But life was also getting expensive and more frustrating as time went on. You see, Android went a little…mental. There were too many versions coming out: past versions, current versions, future versions and hacked versions. Some phones could run all of these while others not so much. The phones became bogged down with features. They started to freeze and lag. You had to reboot them or worse, do a factory reset and start all over. If you were lucky, you might get a few hours of usage out of your precious phone before it had to be recharged. This meant extra batteries, chargers and applications designed to try and save power. You couldn’t run Wifi, the GPS and Bluetooth or the battery would drain at an astounding rate. You had to turn off background data syncing for fear of running out of power. So it came to pass, after 2 short years I started to look elsewhere, perhaps to Apple? Well I am not an Apple fan boy and although I had heard iPhones were excellent devices, they seemed…clichéd to me. No, I needed a new solution. I needed something simple, fast, unique and beautiful. I needed something to take me back to the beginning, back to when I loved my G1. But such a device no longer existed. The world had become a bloated technological wasteland. Or did it?
In late October, 2011, I saw a Twitter posting from a guy named @Benthepcguy. In his tweet, he mentioned something about T-Mobile (my provider) releasing a Windows Phone running version 7.5. He called it a “Mango Phone.” Huh, catchy, like the “Google Phone.” So I drove over to the T-Mobile store a few weeks later and asked to see this Mango Phone. The guy showed my something called an HTC Radar. Remember in Wayne’s World when Wayne first sees Cassandra and she is shown in a dream sequence with rainbows and flowers all around and Dream Weaver is playing in the background? Yeah that is what happened to me after 5 minutes with this device. I bought it on the spot and ditched the myTouch 4G. The phone was amazing. It was fast, easy to use, had a tremendous battery life and gorgeous. The phone was absolutely instrumental in causing me to change my full-life integration from Google to Microsoft. Gone was Google Search (Bing). Gone was Gmail (Live Mail). Gone was Google Maps (Bing Maps). Gone was Gmail Storage (Skydrive). The damn thing even came with Microsoft Office on the phone complete with full integration to Office365 and Sharepoint. No longer do I have to turn off the features I love like Wifi, GPS or Bluetooth. There is no battery management required (the thing lasts like 15 hours under usage). To me, the Windows Mango Phone is to the Android phone what the Android phone was to the flippy-dip phone a few years ago. Best of all, I am an early adopter and part of a 1.5% market share. This makes my phone unique and conversation piece. I have also become a megaphone advocate of this device and all it is (and will be) capable of. So raise up your glasses with me and let’s give Microsoft a cheer for bringing back the remarkable smartphone, a device so clearly superior to the other devices floating around in a world of evolving crap that its merits must be touted. And also let’s pray a little that they don’t screw it up.
