When your smartphone conks!

“No no. Not union station, Washington! Give me union station Chicago!” I pounded my stubby fingers on the google maps application on my sleek and delicate Samsung Captivate smart phone. I was sitting inside my new temporary apartment (the place where I’d be staying for the next 3 months) and trying to plan my route to the Union Station, Chicago. The 3G network inside the apartment was very slow and I was beginning to lose patience. Finally, the map showed me the route.

“Okay, give me the bus timings.” I said out aloud. I gently tapped the button on my screen and patiently waited for the application to refresh itself. 30 seconds...60 seconds…90 seconds…nothing happened. “Oh come on!” I shouted and began pounding my thumb on the home button.

No response.

The touch screen interface seemed to have stopped working. “Oh great!” I thought. So I pressed the power button and waited for the usual pop up to emerge – ‘Turn off’ it said. Casually, I touched the pop-up with my finger. Nothing. “Oh shit!” I slapped myself on the head and held the power button pressed down longer, hoping that that would trigger an automatic shutdown. Nothing happened.

“What the hell!” I slammed the phone on the bed in frustration. It was time to proceed with the age-old time-tested strategy when it came to dealing with stubborn phones. I flipped the slender device and pressed my fingers on the back panel.

“How the hell do I remove the battery!” I cursed my phone and fidgeted around for some time with no success. I felt totally helpless. The bright blue screen of my phone said happily ‘Screen locked. Slide to unlock.’ It was almost as if it was mocking me, daring me to do something which both of us knew I couldn’t.

For the first time since I got this phone, I wished that I had my humble Nokia 3310 or Motorola L6 instead. The thing with smartphones is that they give you an illusion of power. They give you all these cool things like GPS, facebook, angrybirds…stuff that makes you feel awesome. But the moment they become stubborn and unresponsive, you begin to realize that you had much more power with say a Nokia 3310, which you could smash into the ground and re-assemble and get everything working back again. Smartphones are like Persian cats - smart, stylish and sophisticated. But they are not as faithful as a hamster which you could coerce into running on a treadmill.

Ok. So my phone wasn’t working now. What do I do? I thought. A sudden sense of panic gripped me.

Shit! How do I tell the time now?

How do I know which bus to take?

How can I tell when will the bus come to the bus stand?

I don’t know the address of my destination. It’s in my mail and I cannot access my mail!

Oh heck! I can’t even update my facebook status that my phone isn’t working!

I sat silently on the bed for a moment or two, trying to plan out my next move that would save me from this impending doom. It was then that I realized that my phone had begun to control my life. I was dependent on it like an addict on cocaine.

But why? I thought. Didn’t I do all those things without a phone? I could tell the time by wearing an extinct object that went by the name of ‘wrist watch’. I could ask the people around me about which bus to take. I could patiently wait at the bus stop for the next bus to arrive. I could use a payphone and make a call by which I could find my destination address. I could for once, pretend that facebook didn’t exist.

I laughed at myself and at the people who had become addicted to technology, so much so that they had begun to forget how to do things on their own.

With that thought, I wore my shoes, slung my bag over my shoulder and stepped out into the chilly Chicago morning.