Why I Chose... an iPhone

My first iPhone was an iPhone 3GS, which I'd bought at the Dadeland Mall Apple Store in the late summer of 2009 after work.

It was a somewhat impulsive purchase, my having gone through a few phones (the one I'd liked most being the Trēo 800w, RIP) and not liking how the application ecosystem just wasn't being friendly to anything but an iPhone. I was a heavy Yahoo! user, and they were really hyping and promoting their iPhone(-exclusive) app; I wanted it.

So, I went and got it, porting my phone number over to it and a very helpful, nerdish, attractive guy helped me to activate it. This was back when one had to go to a store to do so or it would take forever. Another reason I'd wanted to go that route was Sprint, at the time, as considering Wimax as their 4G upgrade and everyone else was going LTE. AT&T, as well, was the only game in town for the iPhone, so more incentive.

My boss, especially, was envious for weeks at my phone. He'd kept saying he wanted an iPhone, but ended up getting a Samsung Instinct and porting it to Metro PCS like one of my other co-workers.

I still have AT&T and their grandfathered-in unlimited data package.

I'd adored my 3GS, which I'd called Mars. When I moved to Georgia, I remember watching the end-of-days movie 2012 on it, streaming it via an Israeli video aggregation site (and, I think, having a multi-ten gigabyte data usage metric that month, too).

In 2011, I got my 4S, ordering it the same day they were having online sales. I'd gotten it by Fed-Ex several weeks later, and that became my favorite. Even though I love my 6 Plus now, I think I loved most that the 4S had the solidity and heft of my Trēo 800w. I think I'd enjoyed it most with iOS 6, with its inbuilt Twitter and Facebook widgets on the notifications slider.

And now I have an iPhone 6 Plus, which I've enjoyed for almost three years now.

We'll see what comes next.

The Most Overhyped Gadgets

Yahoo! Shopping: The biggest let-downs? How have they been for you, should you've gone for them? I have nothing on this list.

Why I Love My Phone in 1500 Characters

I've submitted this to a "Your Story" column, just because I felt like this... Seriously, do you guys use your phone much? I want to hear from you! What do you do with your phone? Is it just something you talk on, or is it your all-in-all?

My phone has become almost irrefutably my life, partly because of the portability, usability and because of the myriad of applications I've used to expand the usability. I go on the Internet roughly 5-8 times a day exclusively on my phone, upload content all the time to my blogs, read my news from it, access all four of my e-mail accounts... Seriously, about 99% of my Twitter updates and responses alone come from my phone.
What I like most about my phone, though, is that it's helped me enormously with my quest to become ever greener by nearly eliminating my casual paper usage.I was going to an afternoon meeting with my boss, his assistant and the corporate auditor, and when everyone was bringing a pad and paper to take notes, here I was with Julianus (what I call my phone affectionately). While everyone was writing notes the "old-fashioned way," this self-proclaimed 21st Century boy was typing away, adding to a task I'd set up and making notes for later. It may take longer, but I've taken pride in the fact that I've decreased paper usage by one more person.
I was in another meeting that required a lot of reference material. While everyone else, it seems, was plodding away trying to find a specific text, I'd already scanned the texts to my Documents application earlier and had all the answers and references right there. I could answer questions a lot more efficiently than the others because the information was right there, and without all the weight!
I *love* my phone.