Cell phone is dying

My cell phone is dying a long, slow, painful death of the abused electronics kind. The phone has been to the barn, through dust and cat hair, riding in the rain, and all manner of abuse. It’s lasted almost three years — pretty good for a little touch phone with a battery back that comes off if you look at it wrong. It’s a good little cell phone: Motorola Ming A1200 running Monta Vista linux.

Over this summer, the phone started randomly shutting off, rebooting (and then not coming back up unless the battery was removed), and dropping calls. Nope, it’s not the signal, it’s the poor abused phone. It just wasn’t meant to take the kind of abuse I put cell phones through.

I’m looking at getting a Nokia N900, running Maemo (linux OS for cell phones). It’s an unlocked phone. Pretty, pretty phone: based upon Nokia’s line of internet tablets, so this phone has some power behind it. Multiple desktops, 32GB storage built in (plus a memory card slot), and a 5 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics. Nice keyboard, good screen, and real email/browser capabilities. Pretty.

No carrier subsidy so it’s going to cost me more than a regular phone on a cell phone plan. However, I like having access to a phone’s full capabilities without having features locked down by a cell phone company. I have waited months to see if T-Mobile is going to offer this phone on one of their contracts. The N900 carries T-Mobile’s 3G broadband frequency, so you’d think T-Mobile would carry the phone.

The N900, of course, costs just under as much as the used saddle I bought for Isis last week. It will be another month before I can afford anything. I just hope the Ming makes it through another month or two. (Unlikely considering this past week the phone quit recognizing the memory card.)

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