The battle has always been about what’s in our pants, only now it’s moved a little sideways. To what phone’s in our pockets. How big is it? How clear is it? How can I play with it? Would women want to look at it?
My generation, the 1986 born, may have been one of the last generations to have gone from ‘Whoa! A telephone at home?!’ to ‘Whoa! Phones can be cordless?!’ to ‘Whoa, It’s about the size of a brick but you can take it anywhere you go!’ to the recent ‘Whoa, I don’t even remember where my camera and mp3 player are at!’. And as a result of which, we still remember what phones are actually for, calling. And messaging of course, which was about the only cool thing you could do with a phone for the greater part of the mobile revolution. Besides Snake, possibly the only game that could get Angry Birds really foaming at the beak.
All I need in a phone are the basics, fancy functions be damned. It’s like, sure there are nuclear weapons and rifles that fire a thousand rounds a minute, but sometimes a well-aimed stone, though rather Neanderthal-ish, gets the job done just fine. And Micromax lets me do just that. Call and message, quite decently too. Sadly, not Snake. The bastards.
Even if I did want my phone to do more than a phone should naturally do, phone manufacturers don’t make the situation easy. Choosing one mobile phone, just one, isn’t easily done. There are newer phones releasing every day. Newer operating systems, better cameras, Steve Jobs-ier, bigger screens, brighter screens, clearer screens, stylish, more stylish, Mango, Apple, Blackberry and a lot of other fruitiness, not in the good way, happening in between. So while it’s all fine to have a lot of choice and all, wants are unlimited, means to satisfy them are sadly not so. Yes, I did study Commerce.
And so my Micromax becomes the Che Guevara to the tyranny of modern phones. It’s the natural rebel of all things desirable. Is it smart? Balls. Is it stylish? Only in the remoter parts of Somalia. Apps? Games? Whatsapp? HD Video? Fuck you. Non-conformism, at its purest.
So while the rat race of phones goes on, of which phone is better and faster, the Micromax chooses to stand by and watch the other phones sweat it out on-field. It’s so far behind the race, it doesn’t even need to participate anymore. It’s that damn cool.
Which of course, is why I bought it.
Also, the phone was dirt cheap and I was broke.
