The Cell Phone Connundrum

In the opinion of my cube mate at work, I live in 2003 since I have an ancient clamshell Sony Ericsson Z500a that doesnt have most of the “necessary” features like email, big screen web-browsing or bluetooth.  Its true that I havent upgraded my phone but the reason isnt that I am cheap or a technological philistine.  Like most of my other devices, I like my phone for the job it does.  I dont really care about frills or other “nice to have” features.  The main need that my phone fulfills is the ability to keep in touch where ever I am.  I am on a At&T/Cingular plan that has pretty good coverage in the bay area and this phone is rarely outta  bars pretty much anywhere that I have been.  The sound quality is also very good.  Hence, the basis purpose of the phone is well served and I didnt see a need to change.

My officemate, who owns an iphone, on the other hand believes that his phone has completely changed his life and when he bought it, he didnt know he needed a big screen browser, or maps or email.  But now that he has them, he cannot live without them.  He gave me an example of where he and his friends changed their mind about a restaurant and he was able to look up a place to go to, get a map and call in a reservation seamlessly  in so far that he no longer bothers to plan these outings ahead of time.  He is also able to use the time on the train to catchup on all his news and feeds because the large screen of the iphone actually makes this  feasible.  He finds himself better connected as he can get his emails, post to his blog and twitter all from this device that he feels disconnected when he is without his iphone.  Not to mention the other things such as decent camera and an 8GB ipod thats built in.

So enough of the iphone infomercial, I had  a couple of questions (and for those folks who know me, they know that I’ll always have questions).  First, with my utilitarian pov, I asked him “How does this phone work as a phone?”.  He sheepishly answered that it really wasnt that good a phone as the voice quality wasnt great.  My next was “I  didnt seem to use any of these other things like an ipod, or a data plan, why would I need those now?”.  Again he pointed out his radically changed life and said I would join the  new connected generation that communicates on multiple streams very effeciently if I chose an iphone.

Hmm.. am not convinced, but a new issue is changing the game a bit.. the new California law that all cell phone usage in automobiles needs to be handsfree as of tomorrow (July 1st 2008).  The Z500a doesnt have bluetooth and hence can only support wired handsfree solutions.  So perhaps its time for me to upgrade anyway.. also my phone has started randomly rebooting every now and then.. wonder if AT&T is doing software updates or my phone is finally dying!

Anyways after all this chat, let me state the connundrum that I am facing explicitly:  Am I really missing out in this tech savvy world if I dont have all these additional features in my phone?  Is this really a generational change? and finally Should I go out an buy a new iphone?