A means of communication

 

Yesterday I took another belated step into the 21st century: I bought my first smartphone. This involved braving the mean streets of Newmarket on Boxing Day, but I reasoned that most of the seasoned bargain raiders would be out at the malls rather than in the harsh light of day (The sunlight! It burns!). This assumption proved to be correct. There were small troupes of identically-coiffed trainee Epsom Plastics swinging tiny gift bags containing overpriced trinkets purchased with their parents' money, but the consumerism on display on the optimistically named Broadway was of a distinctly relaxed tone.

The handset I purchased is a parallel imported model, the Sony Xperia P, which has a four-inch screen and a dual-core processor. It's certainly no all-rounder like the admittedly fab but considerably pricier Samsung Galaxy S3, but it will do me just fine. I've just been tinkering with the offline settings so far because there's no wifi here and I don't currently have a data contract, but there'll be plenty of time to fill it up with handy and/or silly apps in due course.  (All recommendations gratefully received, naturally). The handset was set up for German users when it came out of the box, and while I did consider adopting a Teutonic alter-ego for the telephonic environment, it was easily switched back to English.

This means my previous mobile, a Sony Ericsson Elm, lovingly referred to as my 'dumbphone' on account of its lack of whizzy connectedness, will now be put out to pasture. It has served well since I bought it at the Carphone Warehouse in Chelmsford in August 2010, and while it never impressed with its performance, it was hardly likely to given its entry-level status. Its rudimentary wifi feature certainly proved helpful on several occasions, particularly in Berlin last year when I was anxious for news of a mysterious ash cloud that was threatening to close the skies to air traffic across Europe and thereby prevent me returning home to London.