Cell phone issues

My old cell phone was like a billion years old, would freeze up whenever it wanted to and ran really slow.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't a billion years old. More like three but in technology years that is like a billion.

I needed a new cell phone stat!

I can't begin to tell you how handy a smarty-pants phone is when you travel. It maps your drive/walking/transit tours. It can find you food, i.e. grocery stores and restaurants. It is my alarm clock. It helps decide what I'm going to pack/wear with the weather channel app.  It keeps me entertained with music, radio, video and audio books. It is my camera. And, last but not least it is my major form of communication. Phone, email and text messaging all rolled into one.

With all the various jobs a cell phone preforms for me it was imperative that it work and work well. The old one just wasn't cutting it.

Hence, the search began. What kind of smarty-pants phone did I want and the more important question...how much was I willing to spend? Obviously, one question informed the other, as they often do.

I determined that my top end dollar figure was $100. This limited the pool considerably. In fact, it took the iPhone right out of the running. Since, I wanted to get the most bang for my buck I did a little bit of comparison shopping. Did you know that there are websites that compare phone features? There are and they are fantastic! I popped on the old iPad to do a bunch of comparison shopping before leaving the house and knew just which phone I was going to get. And, who had the best prices.

The winner?
The Samsung Galaxy SIII.

Isn't she pretty? I got the white.

She came in at $99 from Radio Shack and the sales person, Isreal or Izzy for short, was amazing. I don't think I've ever left a store after purchasing a phone without having to make a stop at the Verizon store to get all the details fixed. Oh and that clap trap that Verizon likes to tell you about limited data when upgrading from S3 to S4? All a bunch of mularky. I retained my unlimited data. So whatever magic Izzy preformed I was one happy camper. He even put in a new sim card that I can swap out when/if I travel overseas, he swapped out the memory card from my old phone so all my photos and music are on the new phone and installed the screen protector so well that you would never know it is on there. If I hadn't watched him do it I'd say it wasn't.

Now, to start putting all my favorite apps on it.
Do you have a smart phone? I know I've asked this before but your answers may have changed since then, what are your favorite apps?

Love,
M