This weekend was my first without my beloved G1. After many drops and a cracked screen, that it somehow lived through, the final straw was Wayne pulling it off of my nightstand, by the recharging cable, and dropping it to the hardwood floor three feet below.
Since I still have a few months on my contract before I can get a decent upgrade price on a new Nexus 1 or similar smartphone and I needed something to at least receive and make calls I went to my local store and asked what the cheapest phone they had available for me was. It turns out that the Nokia 1661 was their answer. 
While certainly not a pretty phone it’s at least small and quite thin. I barely notice it in my jeans pocket, however after using it for a few days I’ve discovered that I don’t really have much of a reason to notice it in my pocket anyway. Gone are the days of instant gratification via web searches, location based applications, and any of the benefits of social networking. What will happen to my mayorships? How will I get those new stamps on my passport? How will I see people’s responses to my snarky comments? At least I still have Google via SMS. Sadly my T9 skills have withered since being spoiled by a full qwerty keyboard, so even the simple queries of gooSMS take forever.
I thought that losing my smartphone might be a bit freeing; no longer tethered to the internet. However in the first few days, at least, that is not the case. I have at least a week before a friend sends me a replacement G1 (thank you Aero), so maybe by then I’ll have discovered the joy that is the retro mobile phone, but right now I’m just not feeling it.
Pros:
- Small
- Thin
- Built in Flashlight (I’m serious)
- FM Tuner/Radio
Cons:
- Everything else…
buy your own (different strokes I guess)