My precious.....

Thanks to the new every 2 discount and a bit of a price break for working at Wells Fargo, I managed to get ahold of a Blackberry Pearl as my new phone.

I've wanted a smartphone since I broke my PDA. I adored having the task list and the calendar for reminders, but I hated having the cell and a PDA to carry around. I was going to get a Palm Centro smartphone, which was just as cheap as the Pearl, but didn't require a data plan. I blame the wife for derailing that plan. While we were in Verizon she looked at me with this compassionate loving expression and asked me very simply which phone I wanted. Of course the BB was the one I wanted, so she said to go for that one.

I really think our thought processes differed a bit on this. To her it was just trying the Pearlout to know what the alternatives were, so I wouldn't always be wondering. But to me, I already knew the Pearl was a more complex and feature-filled phone than the Centro, but it also required the data plan. So a week later when we started discussing whether I'd take the Pearl back for the Centro, the one thing that I was dwelling on was that now that I knew what the Pearl was like I would spend two years pissed at the Centro for every little thing that the Centro couldn't do as well.

(Note I say this without knowing precisely what the Centro is capable of. I just know most if not all reviews mention that the Centro is a nice phone, but it just doesn't have some of the features of the Pearl.)

Long story short, I think I'm sticking with the Pearl. If we nix the data plan I'll go back to the Razr and just use the Pearl for the task list and calendar.

I've found there is a honeymoon phase with any new toy like that, and I'm currently in it now. Every day I'm spending time looking up every guide and free software site and forum site on it, trying to glean a few more tidbits of information on how to best use it. Unfortunately the one thing I have yet to master is the phone part (namely the sound profiles and volume bits). That and SMS and MMS. My Razr just had 'texting'. Which MS is the equivalent to 'texting' is something I'm still wrestling with.

I despise saying this, but it may finally be time to RTFM. :-P