Getting Smarter About My Smartphone

First picture with the new phone

About a week and a half ago I got a new smartphone.  This has been quite an adjustment for me, considering I've been using my first cellphone for about 6 years now.  That one was a flip phone that was the most basic available back at the time.  In fact, I got it at Alltel a few months before Verizon completed their acquisition, just to show what an ancient brick I'm talking about!  Still, even though it's ancient, my LG has been pretty good to me.  It's always worked reliably and the battery life on it is great.  Back in the day, I could go two weeks or more without charging it, though it's been dropping down to more like 4 days now.  While having ancient technology that didn't even text well has been a drawback in some ways, overall I've been quite satisfied to live in the past.

Let's just say that I'm a late adapter.  But now, with my new job as a Social Media Manager, a smartphone has become a necessity rather than a luxury.  I've long put off getting a smartphone because of the expense involved.  Not only can they be pricey up-front, they pretty much require an expensive monthly data plan to be worthwhile.  When I started looking into the options available to me, I remembered that Gerrit had recently gotten a phone plan with Republic that was pretty cheap.  In looking into it and talking with him, this seemed like the best option.  There were some affordable plans that provided the services I need as well as big competitors for a lot less.  Plus, there's also the option to upgrade and downgrade plans twice a month if desired.  I also liked how the main phone option, the Moto x, was more reasonably priced while doing the functions I need than other competitors I looked at.

I was pleased that it didn't take too long for the phone to arrive after I ordered.  Also, there weren't a bunch of complicated procedures to follow for set-up.  Everything from Republic was preloaded.  Then it was just a matter of finding the apps that I wanted.  The social networking apps were priority, of course.  Because the Moto x was developed while Google owned Motorola, everything is seamlessly synced with Google accounts up front.  This has been nice since I use a lot of Google's services regularly.  Now I'm starting to use new services, like Google Calendar, from what I did before from convenience.  This plays into Google's plans nicely, I expect, but I don't mind supporting them because I like their services a lot.

There's also a ton of other fun and useful apps.  I'm just starting to experiment with some different stuff.  I got the LDS apps, which are both very handy, of course.  I recently got Out of Milk, which is a shopping list app.  It has some cool features, like allowing you to make a list of what's in your pantry so you can remember what ingredients you already have if making shopping decisions on the fly.  What I like even more is that there is a section that gives you a break-down of sales being run by the various stores in your area.  This had been a great feature even on my first shopping trip with it this week.  I was able to do ad matches at Walmart with stores that don't typically send us their printed circulars.  It was also  nice to just stick the deals I wanted on the list with the price match all listed digitally, instead of flipping through a bunch of printed ads to find the items I wanted to match.  I'm excited to learn more about this app as well as some of the others I've found, like scientific camera, in the future.

The app I've been enjoying purely for fun has been Quiz Up.  It's basically just a trivia app, but there are a few things that make it really fun.  First off, there are a TON of categories you can choose to do on just about everything.  Plus they are frequently adding new categories to try.  I also like the set up they offer of going head to head with a competitor in a timed show-down.  The quicker you answer, the more points you get.  You get to play people from around the world in whatever interests you.  I've played people from every continent, including Antarctica, at this point!  It's pretty fun to see what country each person comes from.

You can also make friends with new people through chat or simply challenge your own friends with the app.  I found Gerrit the other day and had fun challenging him on various topics.  I was also the most advanced in Utah in the Ender Saga category for awhile, but someone barely beat me on that today.  It helped that it was a new category when I started, now that it's been out for a bit, there's always going to be some hardcore players to beat me out just by playing a lot more often.

Getting used to being at least somewhat up-to-date with technology has taken a bit of time for me.  I still have a lot to learn, but it's pretty clear that having a smart phone is going to be incredibly useful in many ways.  I feel a little sad to say goodbye to a simpler existence, but I'm excited to learn more about the many new benefits I can enjoy now!