I picked up my first cell phone over two years ago now. I primarily use it for Internet access while I am away from homes or sitting at the airport or on the tarmack. This week I flew back home from Vegas and had to wait in the plane on the tarmack for two hours due to low visibility at O'Hare. No problem for me, I just whipped out my cell phone and hooked it up to my notebook and was able to answer email and go on the net for the two hours while I was aboard the plane on the ground.
The neat thing about it is the Sprint Vision service (the picture is my phone Samsung A 500) that I use is only $10 a month for unlimited Internet use. I wrote an extensive article about this last year. Sprint doesn't promote or support the service for notebooks but there are data ports on many of their phones and all you need to do is purchase a cable to hook the phone up to the net and find their free software and it works. It is not perfect as there are latency and frequent connection breaks but it is more than sufficient.
Anyway I digress from the headline. I have had the phone for two years now and I am surprised that I have not lost or damaged mine considering how common it is. Below are some of the reasons:
1 Dropping them
2 Shoving them in a tight jeans pocket and sitting down.
3 Useing the handset in the rain
4 Threw the device on the ground in a rage
5 The dog/child got hold of the mobile
ZDNet December 9, 2004