Taking the Wireless Plunge

Friday night, the screen of the cell phone stopped working! :-(

The phone worked fine, but you couldn't see anything on the screen. This made it rather more difficult to use than a "regular" phone, which doesn't have a screen in the first place. We've had that phone (a Samsung SCH 8500) for more than 5 years, and it was a good phone. We'll miss it, but it's to the point of being disposable technology. I can get a new phone for "free", as long as I agree to another two years of service, whereas if the old phone can be fixed, it would certainly not be cheap.

My wife and I had been discussing getting a second mobile phone, so we each would have one. (The advantages to this should be obvious.) But, we didn't really see a need to have two mobile phones and a land line at the house. So, my initial plan was to try the two phones for a while, and then cancel the wired phone. I knew that you could change mobile providers and keep the same phone number with the new provider. However, I thought that was only for mobile to mobile. It turns out that you are also able to port a landline phone to a mobile phone [FN1]. So, I want ahead and requested that. The mobile phone port went through right away. Once the landline phone port goes through (likely in a business day or few), we'll be a completely wireless family. Except for internet (of course).

For those that want to update their phonebooks, you won't have to, which is the point. But keep in mind that the old cell number will likely become my number, while the old landline number will likely become my wife's number. But both will mostly work for both of us.

Oh, also, I didn't really know what kind of phone to buy, other than preferring a cheap flip phone. We went with one of two different models, mainly to have an easy way to tell them apart. It was either that or using a Sharpie marker to write our names on the phones. We went with the models below. The first one was "free", while the other one cost $10.


[FN1] Interestingly, when my group at work changed offices 100 metres within the same building, we weren't able to keep the same phone numbers, and all got new ones. So much for [insert company slogan here].