New Technology and a Look at Past Technology

Yesterday, I upgraded my iPhone to the latest and greatest version. I have been [patiently] waiting for the new version since the summer, when my two year contract on was up on the old 3G phone.

It's been a slow wait, filled with temptation and longing. I kept my eyes and ear open to any new iPhone rumors, and I hoped for the announcement of the iPhone 5 on October 4th.

But truthfully, the iPhone 4s is a huge upgrade for me just the same. I think a regular iPhone 4 would be a huge upgrade as well. I just don't want to be in this same position, two years from now, waiting again for another iPhone release. See, two plus years ago, I decided to go with the cheaper, iPhone 3G instead of the newest 3Gs. It's been a great phone until the past nine months or so when it has become ssooooo sllllooooww. I was restarting it at least once a day, apps would routinely crash, and it wouldn't support many of the newer apps.

After the iPhone 4s announcement, I made sure I pre-ordered one on the first day (in fact, I think I ordered mine only 3 hours after the pre-orders started). Once I received my shipping notice on Wednesday night, I started stalking my tracking number. I had to leave work early on Friday to ensure I would be present to sign for it - and it arrived about 30 minutes after I got home.


Seriously, it was like Christmas in October.


It was a cinch to activate and set up. I had to re-sync my old phone to iTunes and then sync the new one up in order to transfer all of my apps. That's it.

Compared to the old iPhone 3G, it is blazing fast - no delays with the apps, no freeze ups with the camera, and that Siri is really pretty cool. I used her to text my son and husband.

But this isn't a post just about the iPhone 4s - we do have another new smart phone in the family - a Droid phone that my son picked out.
[yes, I can hear the thoughts now - what kind of mother gets her 12 year old son a smart phone? Truthfully, he saved up all his money for it. I even had him fork over money to prepay 12 months of the data package fees.]

Our assortment of old and new technology:

From left to right: the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 4s, the Droid Bionic and in the back - a Seagate external disk drive.

A closer look at the Droid Bionic:

I told my son that I wouldn't be able to help him with this device, but he hasn't had any problem downloading all sorts of free stuff from the Droid Marketplace. It's a powerful, fast device. If I wasn't so partial to the iPhone, I might have considered one. Oh, but my favorite camera app, Instagram, is only available for the iPhone. So that strikes the Droid...

A look at the Seagate GoFlex drive:

It holds 1 TB of stuff. Wow. And see that the blue in the connector port? That's a USB 3.0 port, also known as SuperSpeed USB 3.0. This can mean higher data transfer rates, although you need a USB 3.0 port on the computer to take full advantage of the increased speed. You can distinguish a USB 3.0 port as they are marked by the blue components. I am using this drive to house my photos while I work with Lightroom and PhotoShop Elements and I haven't seen a decrease in processing speed.

Finally, with all this new technology, I thought it would be fun to look back at the devices we used in the past, just to get an appreciation of what we have now.

On the left: my first cell phone, a pink Motorola Razr, from 2006. That's right, I managed 39 years on this planet without a cellphone. Since it was only a phone, it really didn't get used all that much, even though I carried it with me all the time. In the center: a Palm Pilot IIIx, from 1999. I bought this cutting edge device right after the birth of my son. It was totally rad back then, with it's pea green screen and stylus. It synced with the Palm Desktop software. I remember storing my shopping lists on it. We always said back then that these computing devices would eventually be combined with phone capability.
Finally, on the right, my husband's first cell phone, purchased around 2002. With a simple, dot matrix screen - I don't think you could even text back then.

Looking at these old devices, I guess my old iPhone 3G represents major technology advancements in a mere 6 years. And I wonder where technology will take us over the next 6.