My cell phone subscription ran out a couple of days ago. For the remainder of my time down here I get my folks' cell. They just signed a new contract with my brother and sister-in-law that, for obvious reasons, I'm not a part of. Anyway, part of the deal was new cell phones.

It's more than a step up from my old phone. It actually has a lit display compared to my gameboyesque gray and black one from before. Instead of snake, it has bowling! Pretty rad!

The buttons, on the other hand, take some getting used to. Whereas most phones have twelve buttons or so for the numbers and * and #, this one has six buttons. The 1 and 3, 2 and 5, 4 and 6, 7 and 9, 8 and 0, and * and # buttons are connected to one another and which part of the metabutton determines which number you're hitting. It's no problem except when I'm trying to dial without looking. I suppose I'll just have to get used to it.

The rationale for the unique button configuration is for, I think, the games on the cell phone. They've sacrificed utility on the phone's primary function (being a phone) for the tangental functions. Part of me objects to that out of principle, except that it makes the bowling game a lot more fun and easy. And the bowling game is rad!

It reminds me a bit of the TI-8x series of calculators. They were all the rage when I was in high school. In addition to being a graphic calculator (and for many poor students with rich parents in leiu of being a graphing calculator), it was a game console for a lot of Atari 2600esque games. It was enough that I was waiting to find out when TI was going to come out with a Windows 95 version.

So now phones have downloadable games and keyboard-configurated buttons. That's just low-budget phones (which is pretty much all I'm ever going to own). There seems to be some convergence between PDA's and cell phones and I guess that's pretty natural.

Whatever. I wanna go play some more bowling!