Burrito West Blog

I have finally done the deed. I joined the cellular age.

When Peter and I moved to Vancouver we discovered it was about the same price/cheaper to get a cell phone vs a land line. So we lived with 1 cell phone for a while. I treated it as a home phone, Peter treated it as a cell. I was very happy to let him have it as I hate talking on the phone and definitely do not want to be reachable at all times.

Then last year Peter got himself a fancy iPhone. And somehow I ended up with a terrible pay as you go phone. I hated that phone enough to look around at getting a real phone. And, given that I prefer to communicate via email and social networks.... seemed like a smartphone was the way to go. But holy cow are smartphone cell plans expensive! (Apparently we in Canada have the highest mobile bills in the world.) I shopped around a lot and looked at various smartphones. I wasn't particularly interested in paying a fortune for an iPhone (and I like to be different) so I was looking at Android phones.

I found one carrier was offering a great deal on the Palm Pre - they give you the phone for free and you get a $15/month discount on whatever plan you pick (the Palm is not an Android phone, however, it's a WebOS phone). And the phone seemed to fit my needs perfectly (I wanted a physical keyboard and something smaller than an iPhone) I found a retail store that gave me a smoking good plan* and after hemming and hawing about it for a few weeks, yesterday we went out to the store and I came back with a shiny, fancy phone (and a 3 year contract, which is nutso and also something that only exists in Canada).

Here's my phone. Isn't it pretty? I love love love having a real keyboard. And email! And I can stop getting lost all the time now that I have googlemaps+gps!

If you need me, I'll be playing some kind of game on my phone - don't call, email. ;)



* My Plan: 200 local minutes, 500MB data, unlimited talk + text to 10 numbers nationwide, free evenings + weekends starting at 6pm, unlimited texting for $35/month+tax (add voicemail + call display for $10/month)