the shopping therapy failed3 min read

last week in dublin i bought the new nokia N95. shame on me. a few days after reading the bee story this asshole (= me) goes out and buys himself a brand new mobile phone … instead of trashing the old phone, cancelling my contract and stopping my contribution to electro smog. the absurd part is that for awhile now, i have been totally sick with this always-on thing. here i am always accessible, yet nobody ever calls me. minutes after buying the new phone i felt nothing but guilt. plus the nokia N95 is crap, pure and simple.

whoooahhh. lets pick this back up from the start. as it turns out it’s a fungus that causes CCD, so at least on that end my purchase was not as dramatic as i first thought. on the other hand i am still surprised at my reaction, and more specifically at how short my new-gadget-buzz turned out to be. after buying it i must have been giddy for a grand total of maybe 5 minutes; after that it’s been only guilt and shame. why would i need yet another new gadget? it’s just more crap. it’s just more plastic. it cost me a fortune. and of course it doesn’t really help, that the gadget in question, the bloody N95, just does not work properly. the next day, after waking up with what can only be described as a hang over, i would have returned the phone … but return policies wouldn’t allow it.

ever since i had first read about the N95 i was interested in this phone as a possible successor for my nokia 7650; the old faithful phone that i have been using for well over 4 1/2 years – after receiving it as a gift! the nokia 7650 still kinda worked, but it was clearly only a matter of time until it would stop to do so. in the papers i had read that the N95 was about to be released in europe. so when we hit dublin after weeks of staying mostly in the country side, i started to check out stores to see, if it was out. i saw it in a first shop window and liked the design, the double slide action, its small size yet impressive display. in fact i liked it very much! greed kicked in, the little demon started to nag me. i had that familiar feeling in my belly, the feeling that you get when you set your mind on buying something new. soon it was like an obsession and i had to buy it. jimmy tang, the asian-irish sales person, did a great job. and of course after i did buy it, i had that familiar huge buzz. that lasted only 5 minutes …

so now i am stuck with this crap phone. usually setting up a new phone is the fun part, but here startup times of applications are sensationally long, simply navigating the phone takes about twice to three times as long as it did with the nokia 7650. i don’t care if the thing has a 5 megapixels camera, when the camera takes 3 to 4 seconds to even start up and the shutter delay is equally high, my photo opportunity is gone by the time i am ready to take my picture. with the nokia 7650 it was start up and snap. the mp3 player is a scandal, it has the poorest sound quality i have ever heard, even worse than iPods and that means alot. the GPS application is very clumsy and has somehow decided that i live in berlin, and it won’t budge from there. so what if i can watch videos on the phone, i can already do that on my psp. wait, the N95 is supposed to be nokia’s top-of-the-line phone? i think nokia is in trouble, dude. the only thing that i still like about the N95 is its design and the wifi capability making it possible that i can now work in offline mode …

the shopping therapy failed

we picked up one of those free city guides when we were in dublin containing an article that was entitled “shopping therapy”. i tried it, but the shopping therapy failed. gadget mania feels more and more like a trap.

One Reply to “the shopping therapy failed3 min read

  1. sounds like a bummer, that’s why i just prolong my contract and get a new phone every year. the guilt stays low this way…

Leave a Reply to habi Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.