Phones

Today is an interesting time to have a cell phone. This fact has made the world quite a bit more interesting, since just about everyone has a phone nowadays. See, apparently one day someone said "Hey, if our costumers are all carrying around small computers in their pockets, why not have those computers do more than just take calls?" A few months of engineering later and the first modern cell phone was invented. So then we had cell phones that could play Slots and Crab Catch on their monochromatic screens. Add a few more accessories like a camera and make SMS ubiquitous, and there you go.

Then someone else said "why stop at stupid games? let's make a phone that can access email and surf the internet! and let's add a qwerty keyboard! and thus the smartphone was born. (this is all extremely oversimplified, but I like it that way.)

anyway, this is my phone:

Yes, the picture is taken with a webcam and edited in paint. Get over it. it's a Nokia 2330. As you can the see this isn't exactly the Porsche of phones. in fact, its pretty much the worst phone still sold in first-world nations. But that's fine with me. It works. it has ten megabytes of memory, seven of which are full out of the box, but it works. Anyways, messing with this phone netted me a few interesting facts.

For starters, most Phones share a common type of executable file. specifically, the .jar file, which is apparently Java-based. I was expecting to have to look up stuff for my specific phone, but I was able to get my program (a Tetris clone, since most phone come with a version of Tetris that lasts for about thirty seconds before telling you to buy it I was dying to beat the system, and found a version that was sold for the low, low cost of nothing) onto my phone over Bluetooth (another thing which, like phones, I had zero experience with, but I'm very happy my laptop came with it) and run it without a hitch. Well, on the third try. My phone has such a pathetic processor that only the most minimalistic apps will run on it.

Anyways, this was a pleasant surprise, and an example of how have a little tech skills, creativity, and most of all, dogged thriftiness, can save a lot of people a lot of money.