The future of smartphones meets an ordinary telephone call.
When the new generation of smartphones arrived, I was excited.
Very excited.
Here was a device that could browse the internet, manage email, display maps and do things that would have seemed like science fiction only a few years earlier.
Naturally, I wanted one.
And naturally, acquiring one involved a contract lengthy enough to qualify as recreational reading.
Three years.
Three glorious years of commitment to the future.
In exchange, I received a small technological miracle.
There was just one problem.
One of the ordinary telephone features wasn't behaving properly.
Not the web browser.
Not the fancy touchscreen.
Not the revolutionary software.
Something related to the basic business of making a phone call.
There is a special absurdity in holding a device capable of connecting you to the accumulated knowledge of human civilization while struggling with something telephones had been doing for decades.
The marketing department promised the future.
The telephone department apparently hadn't been invited to the meeting.
It could browse the entire internet.
I just wanted to know when somebody was calling.