If You Want My Advice...

So my phone self-destructed when I was in Japan; so I requested a replacement from three mobile, along with a new simcard.

The replacement arrived a week or two ago, and was broken.  So I sent it back, received a new one, and surprise of all surprises, this one is broken too.  Both are refurbished models, however; it's extremely (see:here) unlikely both phones are faulty.

I fully understand that they are reading from a script when answering calls, and will be fired for showing any insight while helping the customer; but it seems plainly obvious to me that the mobile phone is not the problem.  The significantly cheaper alternative (for them) would be to send me a replacement simcard and be done with it.  Of course, this is a logical course of action, and large companies rarely do things the easy way, preferring to alienate everyone instead.

If you were wondering, my phone of choice is an 'INQ' (in capital letters no less) made by the telephone company who shows an outstanding propensity for creativity; 'INQ incorporated.'

And no, you should not buy this phone.  It is slow, the UI was obviously hand-crafted by a five year old with no access to a pencil sharpener, (presumably the closed blade in such a device poses a discernible health risk, discernible to someone, anyway) and the buttons are 'squishy.'  Yes that is a technical term, and no the buttons are not broken.  The 'squishiness' is designed into the very fabric of the phone, and epitomises the lacklustre effort of everyone involved in the creation of this monstrosity.

New mobile phones tend towards having a killer feature.  The iphones' was a price tag only a sheikh could afford, and a host of accompanying bloatware that would make even Bill Gates blush.  Ok, so that's not really a killer feature, but I can only presume these are the reasons for its' continued success.

The blackberry does... Something.  It's big and ugly, and business types like it so, if a gadget reflects its' owner, we can assume the blackberry steals taxes and buys overpriced Mercedes, to impress its various mistresses, before heading back home to the wife blackberry and doing a thousand pounds worth of drugs and alcohol.  I can only assume this is true based upon the news however, as I have no insider knowledge of their lives.  Or the life of a blackberry.  Wait, was anyone still following that pretence?

So this post turned somewhat more sinister than I initially planned, but that's what the news does to a person I suppose.

As a summary I guess you could conclude that: You should not buy the INQ, Blackberry, or iphone; go with something opensource like android.  You may well consider 3 mobile as your provider when you are next surfing for a change; they are rather helpful on the telephone, once you get past the ubiquitous robot woman, although you will find them extremely difficult to understand due to their being Indian outsourced.  They're generally nice to talk to, but they are as impotent as any other large company, due to their being structured by a sadist.

Luckily there are only a handful of idiots stupid enough to ask for this phone; so it will be a failure and the company will go bankrupt soon.

It doesn't affect me, being one of the idiots in question,  because my simcard is broken and I can't use it anyway.

Small miracles, eh.