BELLAMYBUDIMAN

Photo from Moses Kurniawan.

Here’s what happened:

1. Give an idiot a smartphone.
2. Bait him/her with a classic old trick.
3. Wait.
4. Immense hoax delivery within minutes.

So, so-called smart and sophisticated smartphone user, if you are practically dumber than the least intelligent mammal on Earth, try not to buy phones that are potentially smarter than yourself. Here’s why:

1. You will give nothing but trouble to others.
2. You will only inflict rage to a massive crowd when this thing happens. Most of them would probably just wanted to kill you or decapitate you on site.
3. For the love of God, why can’t you at least ask first if things like this are true? Or just fucking Google it, dammit.
4. You are seriously dumber than a monkey. And this reason will just confirm itself when you got mad reading this because you don’t understand the reason why I think you’re seriously dumber than a monkey.

Now, give everyone a favor, sell your BlackBerry and trade it with this:

At least you will get ONLY yourself into trouble. Capiche?

Microsoft just (finally) released its latest iteration of their mobile phone OS, the Windows Phone 7 Series. I don’t know how it would feel on a real smartphone, as all of their previous mobile OS feels astoundingly crappy on any kind of hardware, high end or low end. Yes, I know that although partially it’s the hardware’s and their agonizing touchscreens fault, Windows Mobile 6.5 is still not only a painstaking software to use, but a complete garbage at the same time.

Judging from the video above, I must say that the interface design is impressive. It looks like that it isn’t just pure eye candy but no go like Vista, and it’s probably something that is really usable. Like Surface, perhaps, although I’m not too sure about their built-in browser here, they seem to exclude it from the videos I see. But it’s been ages since Microsoft made me to actually want to try something from them, it doesn’t mean at all that I’m ditching my iPhone, but I’m looking forward to try how this OS feels. Maybe, just like Windows 7, this is what Windows Mobile 6 should’ve been all along.

So where have you been, Microsoft? You should’ve pulled this off years ago. You have the money, resources, and practically everything you need to produce something real good and classy, so what took you so long and dumb enough to keep that ill-fated version 6 torturing people?

A recent mishap with my friend’s iPhone led me to write this post. Since smartphone users are sprouting everywhere not — whether they need it or simply bought it for the sake of style — I think I’d like to tell a few things to note before you decide to jump into the smartphone bandwagon.

Why a Smartphone?
Actually the first question that you must answer is whether you need a smartphone or not. Do you use your mobile phone only to make phone calls, text messages, or dead simple amateur photos? Or do you use it extensively to cater your daily technological needs? If deep down there you feel that the former is the answer, then you should stop here. Don’t ever think about buying a smartphone, just stick with your current dumbphone and off with your life. Trust me, you’ll save everyone the effort, including yours.

What Can I Do with a Smartphone?
After you decided that you have more to do with your cellphone besides calling people and texting, there is a plethora of things that you can do with a smartphone, be it an iPhone, an Android phone, a BlackBerry, or for-the-love-of-God-why-the-hell-did-you-buy-it-are-you-insane, a Windows Mobile phone. Just in case you didn’t know, you can, for instance, stay connected throughout the time with online messengers, check emails on the go, connect to social networking sites, browse the internet, or play better games. Note that, some of these functions are also readily available on regular dumbphones, so I can’t stress enough that if you don’t need the experience, then stick with your current dumbphone and off with your life.

What to Prepare
Assuming that you have decided that, okay, you needed a smartphone, well that means you will need to successfully add another bill to your tertiary needs. And that is a postpaid cellular plan. Why not prepaid? Well, in my opinion, I’d rather not have a credit-less phone in a middle of an important task. And wouldn’t it be silly when this happens:

A: “I just knew that your iPhone has Shazam on it. Can I try it?”
B: “You can’t. I haven’t topped up my credits.”

That’s just straight lame. Okay, I’m pushing it, but you get the idea. If this is the case, again, you’d be better off with a dumbphone where you can less worry about your cellular credits. Additionally, you will also need a fully functional computer within your possession. The reason is on the next subject.

Why Do I Need to Sync?
This is probably the most important subject of all. When you have a smartphone, then YOU WILL NEED TO REGULARLY SYNC with your computer. Hell, even if you have a sync-capable dumbphone, you should regularly sync as well. This ensures that you will always have a backup should something happened to your phone and you lost all your data, your contacts, important text messages, and so forth. And this is also why you should sync it only to a computer that you have access to at any given time and preferably yours.

You Will Need a Bit of Technical Consciousness
When you’re using a dumbphone, you could probably survive with a single operating system version throughout the entire life of that phone. But not with smartphones. Technologies evolve as well as smartphone operating systems, and every smartphone manufacturer would most probably recommend that you keep your phone updated to the latest software version to get the latest bug fixes, improved battery life, or new features. So if you’re getting a smartphone, keep this in mind and make sure that the least you can do is to make upgrades yourself, and not to nag to others if they can help you do this for free. Otherwise, for the fourth time, you’d be better off with a dumbphone. I’ve seen numerous people who bought iPhones just because they wanted to stay “up-to-date”, but give friends headaches when it comes to upgrading its software, especially with unlocked iPhones.

In a nutshell, having a smartphone doesn’t mean that it’ll take care of itself. It needs you to take care of it so that it functions properly, and can help you with your tasks. A smartphone is an improvement to your mobile life, and not an obstacle. If you see it as a potential problem in the future, then it’s simple. Just don’t buy one.

Surprisingly enough, HTC Magic is the first Android smartphone that officially entered the market of Indonesia. I got the chance to try the OS along with Andira and Nyonyo when I went to the Festival Komputer Indonesia yesterday. My first impression is that the OS is definitely usable. It might not be the iPhone OS — which is obviously my first preference — but I can say that this is far better than the Symbian, and in fact, this is so much better than that, that it blows Windows Mobile to the dust.

When I tried browsing around the interface, I have a few thoughts about it:

• The OS seemed a bit lagging compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry. Nevertheless, this is the first smartphone OS that Google came out with, so I think we can excuse them for this. Although I do expect that it should have lots of improvements for the next years to come.
• Usability-wise, I’m not too fond of how they lay out all the menus. At first try, to me, everything seemed a bit too cluttered, and at the same time it has inconsistent hierarchies. iPhone and Palm still provide the most elegant solution for this. Most normal users wouldn’t want complicated menu items.
• The keyboard is actually excellent, for an on-screen keyboard. Up to this point, I still feel that the iPhone still holds the most responsive screen keyboard that I have ever tried (I’m still looking forward on trying the Palm Pre), and although the Space key lags sometimes, it is far usable than BlackBerry Storm’s. No offense, but when I opt for on-screen keyboard, I’d like it to respond at my first effort. I simply think that having to highlight a key and pressing it (and at the same time moved to another key and pressed that instead) is a major turnoff.

One thing that I don’t like is probably the build quality of HTC phones. Seriously, they suck. One thing that they should think about if they want to put Android on a smartphone without a physical keyboard is probably not using plastic for the screen. Compared to the iPhone and BlackBerry, it feels like a crappy second-grade Taiwanese cellphones.

Bottom line, if I have to choose between the Android, Symbian, or Windows Mobile, I would definitely pick the first one, regardless what the hardware they’re in. But that is if. Right now, I would still pick the iPhone any day.