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| I two-timed my iPhone | |
| (1 day later) | |
| According to Samsung’s UK president, Andy Griffiths, 80% of people would never consider switching between Android and Apple. Or vice versa. Smartphone wars are therefore waged over the small number of undecided and unfussed. All those advertisements, all that spend – it’s just for the benefit of what Griffiths calls “floating voters”. | |
| Last week I was pushed into this pool when, halfway through the holiday, my iPhone – like so many tourists – reacted badly to rain. It then failed to revive after, as advised, I had sealed it in a bag of rice and left it on the radiator. Stricken with a panic that my ancestors presumably felt when faced with a really major pack of mammoths, I bought a supermarket Samsung – specifically, a E1200 basic simple model in white – and put the sim in that instead. Now my phone weighs less than a Twix. It fits snugly even in my midget grip. I’ve only charged it once in a fortnight. | Last week I was pushed into this pool when, halfway through the holiday, my iPhone – like so many tourists – reacted badly to rain. It then failed to revive after, as advised, I had sealed it in a bag of rice and left it on the radiator. Stricken with a panic that my ancestors presumably felt when faced with a really major pack of mammoths, I bought a supermarket Samsung – specifically, a E1200 basic simple model in white – and put the sim in that instead. Now my phone weighs less than a Twix. It fits snugly even in my midget grip. I’ve only charged it once in a fortnight. |
| But it’s not the battery life or portability or even stoicism in the face of drizzle that has really won me over. It’s the E1200’s old-fashioned idiosyncrasy. Its refusal to bend to my will. Unlike a smartphone – personalised so hard it’s essentially just a new, swipeable lode of your brain – this little fella is defiantly its own being. It has proved resistant to all but the most minor customisation attempts (you can change the ringtone, and you can choose between three wallpapers options: blue puddle with two drips, multicolour puddle with one drip, and, for those who like to keep things spontaneous, a shuffle of the two). | But it’s not the battery life or portability or even stoicism in the face of drizzle that has really won me over. It’s the E1200’s old-fashioned idiosyncrasy. Its refusal to bend to my will. Unlike a smartphone – personalised so hard it’s essentially just a new, swipeable lode of your brain – this little fella is defiantly its own being. It has proved resistant to all but the most minor customisation attempts (you can change the ringtone, and you can choose between three wallpapers options: blue puddle with two drips, multicolour puddle with one drip, and, for those who like to keep things spontaneous, a shuffle of the two). |
| Any relationship that’s just about one person ceding to the other’s bidding is, surely, dysfunctional | Any relationship that’s just about one person ceding to the other’s bidding is, surely, dysfunctional |
| I can’t work out how to mute the perky trumpet that lets you know a text has come – nor would I now want to. I have learned to admire its coy insistence on locking after five seconds. I respect its puritan special features: one game (sudoko) but no less than five alarms. I’m impressed and slightly frightened by the laborious setting which allows you to program six numbers that can receive a SOS alert should you discreetly press the send key four times continuously while the key lock is active. | I can’t work out how to mute the perky trumpet that lets you know a text has come – nor would I now want to. I have learned to admire its coy insistence on locking after five seconds. I respect its puritan special features: one game (sudoko) but no less than five alarms. I’m impressed and slightly frightened by the laborious setting which allows you to program six numbers that can receive a SOS alert should you discreetly press the send key four times continuously while the key lock is active. |
| Being with the E1200 feels like having a very small friend. And friends should not, strictly speaking, be people so bent to your will that they abandon their own feelings and principles. Sure, the function of gadgets is to serve you. But one’s intimacy with a phone is so hands-on, so ceaseless, that the symbiosis does feel more human. And any relationship that’s just about one person ceding to the other’s bidding is, surely, dysfunctional. | Being with the E1200 feels like having a very small friend. And friends should not, strictly speaking, be people so bent to your will that they abandon their own feelings and principles. Sure, the function of gadgets is to serve you. But one’s intimacy with a phone is so hands-on, so ceaseless, that the symbiosis does feel more human. And any relationship that’s just about one person ceding to the other’s bidding is, surely, dysfunctional. |
| In a couple of days, my iPhone will be mended or replaced. I will welcome it back and try to respect its weather issues. My cheery new pal will be stowed in a drawer. It will cope with the separation better than me. | In a couple of days, my iPhone will be mended or replaced. I will welcome it back and try to respect its weather issues. My cheery new pal will be stowed in a drawer. It will cope with the separation better than me. |
| Hollywood does domesticity | Hollywood does domesticity |
| On Tuesday the latest raft of programme announcements for this year’s Toronto film festival were released: the equivalent for anyone lucky enough to attend of watching the presents pile up beneath the Christmas tree. . Last year’s crop offered our first look at a best actor Oscar smackdown dominated by biopics of British boffins whose lives were blighted by illness or prejudice. This year, all eyes are on the best actress race, headlined by Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the inventor of the miracle mop in Joy. Next year, the smart bets are on Sandra Bullock for her role as a plastic container guru in Tupperware Unsealed. Kitchen innovators are truly the new genius scientists. What we will lose in glam we will gain in genuinely useful merchandise. | On Tuesday the latest raft of programme announcements for this year’s Toronto film festival were released: the equivalent for anyone lucky enough to attend of watching the presents pile up beneath the Christmas tree. . Last year’s crop offered our first look at a best actor Oscar smackdown dominated by biopics of British boffins whose lives were blighted by illness or prejudice. This year, all eyes are on the best actress race, headlined by Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the inventor of the miracle mop in Joy. Next year, the smart bets are on Sandra Bullock for her role as a plastic container guru in Tupperware Unsealed. Kitchen innovators are truly the new genius scientists. What we will lose in glam we will gain in genuinely useful merchandise. |
| Intensely French | Intensely French |
| In Michel Houellebecq’s novel, Submission, the hero, François, flees political and civil unrest in Paris by taking a road trip to the south-west. It is there, in the land of confit and prunes, he suspects French identity will be at its most intense and the violence will not yet have spread. En route, he weighs up pit-stops at two service stations: a no-frills one, Pech-Montat, whose “devotion to petrol was pure”, and another at Jardin des Causses du Lot, where he plans to “load up on foie gras, Cabecou and Cahors”. I sampled both these over the past fortnight in semi-pilgrimage. The former was crowded and queuey; the latter a little better, but no goat’s cheese, as billed. Still, at least no fridges riddled with gunshot, no bodies beneath the pumps. | In Michel Houellebecq’s novel, Submission, the hero, François, flees political and civil unrest in Paris by taking a road trip to the south-west. It is there, in the land of confit and prunes, he suspects French identity will be at its most intense and the violence will not yet have spread. En route, he weighs up pit-stops at two service stations: a no-frills one, Pech-Montat, whose “devotion to petrol was pure”, and another at Jardin des Causses du Lot, where he plans to “load up on foie gras, Cabecou and Cahors”. I sampled both these over the past fortnight in semi-pilgrimage. The former was crowded and queuey; the latter a little better, but no goat’s cheese, as billed. Still, at least no fridges riddled with gunshot, no bodies beneath the pumps. |
| @catherineshoard | @catherineshoard |
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