I just couldn't be bothered to get up this morning.
I've just spent the last hour off and on trying to write about my phone, and how it's cursed and how Microsoft basically need to pull their collective finger out because Windows Phone is like some sort of comical foil to the successes of Android and Apple, not least with the latest slew of releases from not just Google partners but the unstoppable Apple machine with the newest and greatest iPhones... In the world. I would have carried on but I was boring even myself. The long and the short of it is that in trying to make their OS more "market friendly" (I suppose), by dropping not only the internal but external hardware requirements like capacitive face buttons and the camera shutter on the side, and adding features such as a notification centre (that still feels incomplete), separate volume controls and a digital personal assistant, Microsoft are slowly weathering away the things that makes it unique, and just another also ran that doesn't have as many apps in their marketplace as the App Store or Google Play.
What with HTC not releasing the appropriate firmware so I can upgrade my own cursed handset this side of Christmas, hundreds of identikit "low-budget" handsets with specs so underwhelming you wonder whether phone evolution is going backwards, the lack of flagship hardware to show that actually, Windows Phone can stand shoulder to shoulder with the cream of the Android crop, and Nokia's (or should I say Microsoft Mobile's) curious inability to release a phone with a usable front-facing camera that has a shutter button as well... Feels like I'm backing a lame horse. Come on guys, seriously; if you can slap a 5MP front camera in an "affordable", low-mid range phone with on screen nav keys and no camera button, then you can as sure as hell put one in a £500 handset with all the usual HD screen, all hardware buttons and top of the line camera. Because of the tight hardware constraints, and also that the OS GUI is basically unchangeable, Microsoft had control over fragmentation of features (basically it couldn't happen), which is one of the criticisms that I level against Android, which will gradually creep in. I don't really want to have to make compromises in something as stupid as a phone, you know? Oh well, I suppose it is the way of all things...
This is my First World problem, I suppose. There are plenty of people still running around with ancient bricks (or their modern counterparts), "dumbphone" handsets that will quite possibly outlive us all and be used by the 6 foot cockroaches that will take over the earth after our inevitable mutual nuclear destruction, out of genuine choice. I must be doing quite alright if I get up in a morning and the one thing that I'm bothered about is what I'm going to upgrade my phone to next. Of course, I could just flip the other way entirely at this point, because as they say, "You can't take it with you". Might as well worry about it while I'm still here... But it there a point in worrying at all? This must be part and parcel of my terrible relationship with money - either not spend a penny or throw it all away as quickly as possible. It's only rarely the tinge of regret creeps through my mind... But only rarely.
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