Smartphones are sound:
I have been asked to compare the ‘smartphone’ i.e. the Blackberry or the iPhone with a ‘normal’ phone. The comparison has become impossible; the ‘smartphone’ is now the ‘normal’ phone. This wasn’t always the case. Last year the Blackberry was a sign of wealth or business, a slightly embarrassing, totally non-student-budget-compatible gadget to pull of out the pocket, the 21st century version of a filofax. Bringing out a Blackberry was equivalent to whipping out a Buller tie. A socialist school-friend rang me recently to shamefacedly admit that he was ringing off something that he thought ‘might be a Blackberry’ – something he had obviously obtained by accident, perhaps forced upon him in order to better coordinate with his comrades in order to beat the bankers. Despite this deeply respectable motivation, he was worried that people might judge him, which, sure enough, they did. Many of my friends made comments that he had ‘changed’ or ‘sold out’; the irony is that these scornful comments, were, of course, made via Blackberry Messenger.
Things have changed; the Nokia 3310 is now a statement, the Blackberry is standard. The only real debate then is Blackberry or iPhone. The iPhone seems an obvious choice. Surely you would opt for the better phone with better features, the wonderful world of apps, a larger memory. What’s more, it actually works. It is totally unrealistic that in the (otherwise totally realistic) Sex and the City 2 Charlotte waves her iPhone desperately in the air, unable to get signal while Carrie happily BBMs away. A gadget that has an app that apparently transmits sleep into one’s brain has to be an unbeatable miracle of technology.
The iPhone may rival Dr. Who’s Sonic Screwdriver, but it is a social outcast. It is excluded from the elitist club of BBM. However sophisticated a sleep-enhancing app you may download, there is just nothing more comforting than the buzz of the received BBM as one nods off, or the flashing red light reflected on the ceiling as you wake up. BBM, to fill in the few unconverted individuals, stands for Blackberry Messenger and is a free instant messaging application, which has changed the nature of our generation’s communications. BBM is a skill. It requires a certain mode of delivery, which has now been adopted into every day speech. It has created the need for a new mode of flirtation. How can one leave the adequate wait for a reply if the message is received? And what to do if you are the last to send a message and faced with that cruel ‘R’, standing officially for ‘read’ but emotionally screaming ‘rejected’? It is dangerous. It becomes a horrific reminder of the night before, tracing one’s descent through spelling mistakes. ‘Hjh oare scowe jfru’ provokes fewer ‘lols’ when control over ones digits returns.
It is, or was, essentially exclusive. There is nothing more wonderful than sitting at a pub table and BBMing your neighbour about how much you hate everyone else there. BBM is not a text. In an inexplicable way. And it is this club, which the owner of the iPhone cannot be included in and know they cannot. They must sit with the proud BBMer, as both ignore the flashing red light. However, things are all changing. With the introduction of WhatsApp, the iPhone and the Blackberry may now communicate. Add ping to the mix and the Blackberry is redundant. While the iPhone is the likeable smartphone, the Blackberry is the loud obnoxious one. We can only wait and see if it will become totally extinct.
Blackberrys are bad:
How do I hate thee, BlackBerry? Let me count the ways. Being with a BlackBerry owner isn’t like being with a real human being. You never have their full attention, because Blackberry Messenger never sleeps.
They don’t even realise they’re doing it, but do it they do; casually slipping out their black monstrosity, more often than not swathed in a protective rubber layer like some newborn S&M baby, just ‘one second’ to reply to an inane message. It doesn’t feel as rude to them as answering a text, email or call because – as one BlackBerry owning friend so succinctly put it – the BBM occupies the until now vacant space between ‘texting’ and ‘speaking’. And what a gap that was.
Walking with a good friend the other day, whom I hadn’t seen properly in a week, I noticed she sounded distracted. I looked to my side, and sure enough, there was the ‘Berry, attached to her hand as ever. I didn’t point out how offensive I found it because, hey, I’m a pretty relaxed and cool kindofa guy, and if people want to conduct two conversations at once, concentrating fully on neither and ultimately allowing life to pass them by, then that’s one of the great things about our liberal democracy. Then we turned the corner into my college and bumped into her BBM interlocutor. Ha. How funny. We were both on BBM and now we’re speaking, like, in real life. Gr8. Why not just speak in the first place? Why chain yourself to what is, essentially, a glorified, portable version of MSN messenger, which any self-respecting member of our generation left behind along with the emo fringe?
There are two types of BlackBerry users. The BBM-me brigade, as described above, and the power play posse, far too important to be so detached from their emails as to have to log on to a computer (which isn’t to say there’s not some occasional overlap in the Venn diagram of mental incontinence between the two). The latter puts their smartphone down on the table even during a date – face down? Why insult my intelligence by putting it face down? It’s still a blatant symbol of your own sense of self-importance – because to be out of contact for a single second would be to suffer an existential death.
The constant availability of calls, texts, BBM and email – aside from the presumably desired effect of making the user look popular (ask yourself: does it really? Or does it just make you look like an overgrown child, dependent on the technological equivalent of a safety blanket?) – has a knock-on impact on those clinging to their retro non-smartphone. Emails are sent at the very last second, plans are changed, because, everyone can access their emails anywhere, yah? No, some of us have plenty enough time staring at a laptop screen without having to carry a mini-one around in our pocket.
And the worst of it? As my respected opponent points out above, the rise of the Blackberry has only just begun. When my Sony Ericsson K510i (Adidas themed, bought at a shop which doubles up as a laundry. Edgy) kicks the bucket, I can’t say for certain whether I’ll be able to resist the pull of the smartphone. They’re becoming the norm, no longer the preserve of rah girls in trench coats.
No, that’s not true; the BlackBerry has stayed exactly how it ever was, and we’re all mentally turning into rah girls in trench coats. Resist it for as long as you can.
