The Ring And I, Analyzed

What do our phones say about us? If you use a blackberry, does that mean you're a round-the-clock workaholic? If you have an iPhone, are you an artsy type who flits from one distraction to another? What does it say when you own both—or, in my case, neither? I got to thinking about all this last week in Los Angeles as the chatterbox driver who was taking me to a business appointment struck up a conversation with me. When he found out that I was a technology writer, he whipped out his iPhone to check the traffic patterns along our route. He regaled me with tales of standing on line for the year's most-talked-about gadget; how he'd stayed up all night after bringing it home; what he liked about it (slim form, great screen) and what he didn't (where's the copy-and-paste, Apple?). But when I took out my Sony Ericsson 710a swivel phone—positively ancient in mobile-phone years, as it dates back to 2005—he couldn't help but express surprise that I didn't have an iPhone, too, or something gee-whizzy from Japan. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the only reason I wasn't sporting an even older phone, my beloved Sony Ericsson T610 candy-bar phone, circa 2003, is that I lost it in the back of a cab after a night on the town. I began to feel like a Luddite.

Being a technology writer brings with it certain expectations, foremost, that if I empty my pockets, people will find the latest and greatest gadgets among the contents. In fact, it's the opposite. I'm actually a rather change-averse person who fiercely resists adding new devices to his regular rotation. Instead of the BlackBerry that everyone assumes I'll have—as do Barack Obama, Reese Witherspoon, Jay-Z and the other boldfaced names listed at celebrityblackberrysightings.com—I'm rocking a Palm T|X that I use to work on my writing, this column included. While most of my peers and pals have some model of iPod, I wasn't as obsessed with music when it shipped in 2001 as I'd been in the early to mid-'90s, so I listen to my tunes on my PlayStation Portable instead.

In an era when so many people seem to be looking for convergent, all-in-one devices like the iPhone—Lindsay Lohan, Ron Paul and Katharine Heigl among them, according to gadgetsonthego.net—I remain resolutely determined to maintain separate devices for separate activities: my phone for calls, texting and checking e-mail; my PSP for music and occasional Web browsing; my Palm for scheduling and writing. Never the three shall meet. Why? I use each pretty heavily, which makes me hyperconscious about battery life, and I don't ever want to run into a situation where I can't make a call because I spent too much time working on a story, or write a blog post because I played games longer than I should have.

In part because I'm so particular about which gadgets I use on a day-to-day basis, I'm always fascinated by the devices other people allow into their lives. So when T-Mobile vice president of development Leslie Grandy stopped by our offices to talk about the company's Shadow phone, we got into an interesting discussion about why people prefer certain types of phones over others. I like the simplicity and small form of a candy-bar phone, but many people want flip phones because they either don't like to have the screen pressed up against their faces or they don't want to inadvertently pocket-dial someone. That's pretty obvious, but more surprising was Grandy's explanation of why the Sidekick has been popular among young adults: many users work in service and hospitality jobs that don't permit them to be in front of a PC during the day, yet they want to stay connected to their friends via IM or e-mail. I was caught off guard by this, simply because the majority of my peers sit at a PC or carry an employer-provided BlackBerry. I may not have any plans to "improve" my cell phone, but if broadening my social circle will make me a better tech journalist, I'll have to give it some serious thought.