A Dark Ages Luddite special for you this week, which begins with me getting a monumental mobile phone bill from foreign parts, and ringing up to complain. If you call your phone company, whine a bit, say you fancy another network, then, shazam! you get an extra 100 minutes per month for the same money, plus a spanking new 3G cameraphone! Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch/phone, and the new Ericsson V600i (we name and shame here) comes pre-loaded with hassle. I found it suspiciously lightweight, unwieldy and stupid, while giving the impression of being very erudite and fancy. We all know people like this.
The worst thing about the phone is a dog lives in it. Every time you switch on, the puny dog chases a red balloon, and shows you its obviously female underbelly. I am an adult. I do not want a dog on my phone. But I can’t get rid of it, because then I’d have to read the manual. Who reads a 174-page manual? A sad person with no friends, of course. It’s hard enough to get through a 174-page novel. It’s against my principles, so I have to guess what the buttons might do.
I look on the Ericsson website for a shortcut. On the subject of 3G, etc, I read the words: “Aiming at downlink data speeds of up to 100Mbps and latency reduced to less than 10ms as well as optimisation for IP based traffic” before I decide there is some sort of virtual-reality Viking invasion going on, and this message is written in secret code.
On the ratfestering phone there is a toggle-of-miscreance, rather like a computer mouse, which ensures you ring the wrong people all the time, and lose messages. The predictive text is unpredictable. The ringtone I’m stuck with is “Alien” or “Woodpecker”. Then I’m struggling to make a call on an escalator when the dog disappears from the screen and is replaced by two ugly pink-surrounded black holes. Yes, the mobile-poltergeist is filming up my nostrils – I have been happy-slapped by my own phone. Our relationship is over.
Advertisement
I want my old Jurassic Nokia back, with its big buttons, black-and-white screen, and minimalist efficiency. But I’ve given it away to a tweenie, who still does not realise that it’s really dweeby. Now tearful, and sorry about my affair with a younger phone, I locate an early Nokia on eBay for £4.20. I’m about to send for it when my husband says: “I’ve got one of those from four years ago somewhere in my desk. It’s a bit chipped.” Hallelujah! The classic Jurassic Nokia is the Model T Ford of phones: dull, solid, clunky, yet in some way disarmingly honest. The ringtone is ring-ring. Oh, comfort and joy.
Now I’m interested in the elephants’ graveyard of mobile phones. Apparently, Europeans discard 100 million phones a year. Can that be true? At Warwick University, they have created biodegradable mobile-phone covers with flower seeds implanted in them, so when your phone dies, you give it the last rites, bury it in the garden, and a few months later, you’ve got a triffid.
Many phones go abroad. Like those well-maintained Fifties classic American cars in Cuba, all those Jurassic Nokias are being carefully looked after and loved all over Africa. A friend who works in developmental health in Kenya says some women use one ring on the phone to alert each other to take antiretroviral drugs at the right time. Others make Morse code-style messages with the rings, which are free if you don’t pick up.
The worldwide ubiquity of the mobile is fascinating. Muslim clerics ruled a few years ago that a man can no longer divorce his wife by text message. (“Talaq” three times, in case you’re interested.) In North London, I see lots of near-toddlers and homeless people with mobiles, and that biography of a homeless man – Stuart: A Life Backwards – explained that when you see street people on their mobiles, they’re not doing a drug deal: any sensible person goes to an untraceable payphone for that. It must be true: in The Sopranos, Tony’s on his mobile phone all the time, except when he’s going to have someone obliterated, and then he ominously stops by a payphone and gets out a quarter.
I would quite like to see the Ericsson buried in concrete by Tony Soprano, but I believe in recycling, so the new 3G (Gremlin) phone is left to die in its box, until someone else loses theirs. I know I’ve done the right thing when I walk into Finchley Road Tube and I see a woman wearing white Juicy Couture-style velour tracksuit trousers which say “Juicy” on one buttock and “Bling” on the other. She is yabbing on a phone that looks exactly like the Ericsson. Enough said.
Advertisement
kate.muir@thetimes.co.uk