Fone Follies

Sorry… it was either that, or the even worse "Phone Phollies".

Even before we left for the US at the end of October, I’d a feeling that my Motorola MPX220 "Windows Mobile" GSM quadband phone was in trouble.  There’d been a number of hiccups in the last few months where people said they couldn’t reach me — even though I knew the phone was on.  Or I’d go in to my office and discover that for some mysterious reason, the phone had decided to shut itself off.

Didn’t seem to be a battery problem, as it would charge normally and seemed to have roughly the usual time between charges.

A couple times, the phone just started vibrating madly, and wouldn’t quit until I’d pulled the battery.  And upon occasion, it was just dead — again, until I pulled the battery and put it back in.  Actually, in retrospect, that happened quite a lot, but most often in the past two years seemed to have more to do with heavy data transfers and modem use.

Anyway, yeah, clear signs of a phone on its way to the Electronic Graveyard of Broken Gadgetry.  The shutdowns and ignored incoming calls were obviously a form of silicon senility.

So yesterday, here in Bangalore, I went out and bought a new Motorola K1 Razor.  Gotta love India…I was able to get a decent price on it, and it included a bunch of usually optional accessories.  I know the phone isn’t the most advanced currently available, not even close, but it’s a nice mid-range phone and doesn’t make me feel as if I’ve given up features from the poor, decrepit MPX220.

One of the main things I really needed to do was to get all my contacts off the old phone, into my VAIO laptop and Outlook, edit to fix up the entries, and then onto the new phone.  Fortunately, I managed it with only a bit of hair-pulling and forehead bloodying (plus the MPX220 crashed again, as someone tried to call me and the phone decided to shut down instead). 

I will admit, also, that the new Motorola phone tools are pretty slick and without much trouble at all, I was able to take one of my MP3 files, edit it into a suitable ringtone and then ship it out to the K1.  (It’s "Boe", from the Doctor Who Series 3 Volume 2 soundtrack…actually a beautifully melancholy and wistful tune.)

I’ll post more in terms of a review later, after I’ve used the new phone for a time.