My Phone Thinks I’m a Lady: Eris Review

Two weeks ago, my bestie bought an Eris. The day before that, my sister told me that her cell phone was just about dead, and she’s struggling with finances at the moment. (I am too, but I didn’t know it at the time. Don’t you just love it when that happens?)

So, I did the only thing a phone-envious bestie with a phone-needy baby sister could and would do. I upgraded my phone and sent my sister my old one. Two birds, one stone: I get an Eris, and we all get to know that my sister isn’t wandering the Atlanta ‘burbs a la Wilma Flintstone.

My old phone was an LG with a full QWERTY, and I was nervous about the touchscreen keyboard. When I played with B’s phone, I struggled with it, and my fingers are nice and little. In fact, at one point, I was convinced I would hold out until I could afford the Motorola Droid, since it has a full keyboard. Of course, my phone envy got the best of me.

I love this phone. Here, please to repeat: I love this phone.

The size is perfect- it is just the right size to hold in my hand, heavy enough to feel substantial but not bulky or heavy. It fits right into the cell phone pocket on my purse.

My family noticed an improvement in the sound quality right away. My sister said it was clicking one night- it was my high heels clicking on the pavement as I walked.

When I read reviews on the Verizon site, people complained about battery life. It does run out more quickly than is ideal, but there are two major workarounds. The first is an app killer- when you open an app on this phone, it continues to run in the background. I use a free app killer to shut down apps after I use them, or to keep twitter and facebook from updating while I’m on my laptop and don’t need the notifications. It makes a huge difference. The second workaround is the charger. I freaking love this charger. The cord detaches completely from the power supply, and the prongs on the power supply fold up when the charger isn’t in use. Bottom line? I carry my charger on me. Friday night, my battery was running low, so I found an outlet at the bar, whipped it out (TWSS) and charged ‘er up.

I was running updates from Twitter and Facebook through SMS on my old phone. My text ringtone was a doorbell. The damn thing rang from 6pm to 10pm. People hated me. I hated the noise. Having a smartphone- being notified of updates through a unobtrusive one time alert is much, much better, and I can check my twitter timeline and pending friend requests from the couch, without muddling through itty bitty screens. The landscape feature (when you turn the phone, the screen orientation changes) makes non-mobile sites so much easier to navigate in the browser. Speaking of the browser…

The Facebook app for this phone sucks. It doesn’t show the live feed, I miss updates, it shows all pending events, which caused me to wish someone a happy birthday a month early (I may or may not have been drunk). I use the browser almost exclusively for Facebook. The trackball is a godsend when you’re trying to hit the itty bitty “home” link on the touch site for Facebook. If someone really hated me, they would disable the trackball on my phone, rendering me insane in a few short hours.

If you get a lot of spammy-ish emails (Nordstrom sale notifier, I HATE YOU), you’ll want to fix that, because instead of them piling up in your gmail while you’re off having fun, you get a notification on your phone every time. The upside is responding to important emails on the fly.

There is only one downside to the Eris…

It makes me feel bad about myself.

The touchscreen keyboard has an auto-complete feature, which makes things much easier when you’re typing a text or a tweet. It has a custom dictonary and is predictive…

So I’ve spent the past two weeks texting things like “tucking shut”. In order to avoid this, when you type a word that isn’t in the dictionary, that you know is a regular part of your lexicon, you should save it. I feel guilty when I’ve had to add the bad words. There’s nothing quite like hitting save on, say “dickface”, because, yes, I will be using that again. A little part of me dies (not that it serves to modify my language in the long run) when I realize that my phone thinks I’m a lady, and I have to tell it I really meant to call someone a whore. It’s like slipping up in front of your grandma.

I wish I was the lady my Eris thinks I am.