Aug 1, 2013 4 min read

For more than a year, I’d been walking around with a smashed phone. I dropped it and the screen cracked into a perfect spider web. It was ugly but the phone still worked. So I decided to wait for the upgrade.

Finally the hour was nigh. There I stood in the Verizon store, trying to decide between an iPhone and the un-iPhone. I cared not about pixels or the camera; what I needed was a phone whose screen would not crack (turns out they all do) and a texting keyboard made for my wide fingers. I was hoping for a smartphone with a flip-down board with three-dimensional keys, like my phone from five years ago. Back then, my thumbs could type 60 words per minute with almost no mistakes.

The store didn’t have anything like that. And so it came down to two choices. If I went with the iPhone, I could sync up everything with my other Apples – my iPad, my laptop and desktop.

“Any photos you take on your phone you can put right on your computers,” my son said. I reminded him that I’ve yet to take a decent picture with any phone, and I quit taking selfies because phone cameras add chins. So syncing photos doesn’t interest me.

I switched my attention to the other phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note. It was large for a cellphone, somewhere in size between an iPhone and an iPad. I thought I heard the salesman call it a “mini pad” but that can’t be right; a different kind of product comes to mind.

The phone felt huge; it was about the size of the reporter’s notebooks I always had in my hand. But a phone that size has a larger keyboard, and it came with a little stylus I could use to tap out the letters, avoiding the fat fingers entirely. If you are the kind of person who watches TV shows on your phone, this would be the phone for that.

“And you won’t always lose it in your purse,” my son said, pointing out how I never actually answer a phone call because I never get to it in time. I reminded him that I’ve been known to lose an umbrella in my purse.

“If you get this one,” my son said, holding the big phone, “you won’t have to learn a whole new phone. It’s pretty much the same as the one you dropped.”

I’m not sure he had to put it that way, but he had a point. I stood there at the display rack, holding each phone and pulling it to my ear on its tether cord. Compared to the big Samsung, the iPhone felt like a Chiclet.

I went with the large phone, and paid extra for a special case that’s supposed to protect it if I drop it.

Driving home, I told my son about some of the early mobile phones. In the late 1980s, I worked in a TV newsroom that had one; it was the size and shape of a shoeshine box, and weighed about 15 pounds. You carried in on a cross-body strap that made you look like you were testing for radiation contamination. I know, it Driving home, I told my son about some of the early mobile phones. In the late 1980s, I worked in a TV newsroom that had one; it was the size and shape of a shoeshine box, and weighed about 15 pounds. You carried in on a cross-body strap that made you look like you were testing for radiation contamination. I know, it Driving home, I told my son about some of the early mobile phones. In the late 1980s, I worked in a TV newsroom that had one; it was the size and shape of a shoeshine box, and weighed about 15 pounds. You carried in on a cross-body strap that made you look like you were testing for radiation contamination. I know, it sounds like a dinosaur, but let me tell you, if you were a reporter headed out for a day on the street, you were grateful to be able to take that phone. Otherwise, you drove around looking for pay phones, hoping you had enough dimes.

My new phone is about a 20th the size of that old clunker, and my son still teased me about how big it is. As I drove, he got it all set up for me.

“At least when you talk on this phone,” he said, “your head won’t look so big.” I took it as confirmation that I’d chosen the right one.