It’s comforting to know I’m keeping company with Tom Cruise, Vince Vaughn and Emma Thompson when it comes to technology. The latter’s favourite piece of technology is a fountain pen, Cruise shuns emails and mobiles while Vaughn doesn’t own a mobile phone because the old ways worked well enough for him, according to The Telegraph (UK).
I felt similarly about an old mobile phone until the evening the Samsung Galaxy S5 I was test-driving told my family I was at the cinema. I wasn’t. As planned, I was shopping for their dinner. Unbeknown to me they waited, perplexed, wondering what movie was so good that I had to instantly divert from buying roasted chickens. Or had I met someone with far more appeal than the interior of Géant?
The test begins
The reason is clear enough for those accustomed to smartphones. It wasn’t locked, so when my husband rang and I rummaged for it in my handbag, it had the sense to cut him off and send him a polite white lie. What a clever device.
It began last week when this technophobe was lent a smartphone. There is nothing wrong with my old 2008 Nokia 3500, bought the same year that Barack Obama made it to the White House, the Mumbai attacks horrified the world and the global financial meltdown started. It’s a brilliant piece of equipment that has a battery that lasts three days, its neat size fits into a side pocket and I get all my messages without fail.
My techno-savvy colleagues think differently. “Stop being such a Luddite!” yells my boss when I don’t get his WhatsApp message of obviously great importance. So when a Samsung Galaxy S5 arrives at my desk, I get this feeling of belonging to a global community. I’ve finally reached the planet of the Apps.
Leaping to the latest offering from Samsung is somewhat unfair on my old Nokia, but it demonstrates what enormous advancements have been made in just six years.
The S5 is a smart phone in the true sense of the word. It’s not for sissies. It’s for discerning users who would appreciate the fingerprint scanner, 5.1-inch HD display, a 16MP rear-facing camera, a built-in heart rate monitor and its dust- and water-resistant credentials.
I wouldn’t say it’s perfect for beginners in the smartphone game for there’s far more features than I can cope with at my stage of transition, bear in mind I still have a whole generation of smartphone-speak to digest. When I was told, for instance, that my smartphone is Android, I wondered when it might metamorphose into a human shape. OK, so there is this other meaning now — the operating system developed by Google.
I’m worried about exploring the device too deeply as I hear about bad reactions being triggered via trivial mistakes. People speak about getting hard-bricked or a bootloop, both of which sound painful.
However, there was not much chance of that because my teething problems were basic, such as the difficulty in turning it on. Internet surfing swamps you with far too much highly technical information, but the little brown leaflets that come with the S5 box have perfectly explicit diagrams and instructions, the first of which is to charge the device.
It has a three-pronged plug, but the top one was so squashed together that I couldn’t put all three in a traditional electrical plug socket. When I asked our tech-specialist writer he couldn’t quite understand my dilemma, but silently pulled out the prong that is pushed into a hidden compartment.
Another colleague showed me how to eliminate any loud pings, and make them soft or silent. When I set the notifications sound to chirps, my neighbour, who sits opposite, looked everywhere for a tiny bird, which she must have thought had flown in through the window.
Easy chatting
Downloading WhatsApp was a breeze, but to find the messages again was not, made all the more frustrating when a cousin from a hut in darkest Africa pinged me on Galaxy’s Chats saying “It’s really very simple. Just do it once — it’s not rocket science you know.” I simply couldn’t locate the chats icon. But there it was under settings, which a chimp could have found without any help.
Any apps I didn’t install were quickly inserted by my teenager, who is in awe of this phone. Of course he wants it for his birthday next week. Not a chance.
On day three, I set off to the launch of a saltwater crocodile exhibit in the city, messaging my boss that I was going to be late. He questions my reasoning for not using WhatsApp, which is actually free? I had completely forgotten about that form of communication.
But, by day seven, it was clear I’d happily own a Samsung Galaxy S5, despite me not using even a quarter of its possibilities. It is light, slim, fast and the camera is easy to use. Had I shouted capture, shoot, smile and cheese it would have taken a picture for me using the power of my voice.
So it’s almost like a robot — only smarter.
