as I mentioned two posts ago, last weekend Colleen and upgraded our aged mobile phones, coming home with shiny new Samsung Vibrants running the android operating system. I’ve been using mine most of a week now, and have some thoughts:

Overall, I like it. As with all fun new toys, it’s very shiny and very cool. It does all sorts of things, and has all sorts of bells and whistles, to the point of being almost a little intimidating. it’s a tiny little slab of glass and plastic that weighs two or three ounces and has more processing power and storage than my first two or three desktop computers combined. Carrying it around, you really do feel like an artifact from some far future space opera fell through a random tear in space-time and into your pocket.

I’m still not entirely confident with the touch screen; more than once I’ve accidentally set applications running that I didn’t intend to (for example, I accidentally started Avatar – yes, the whole movie came pre-loaded on the phone – playing while putting it in my pocket during a meeting, learning that in silent mode, the media player isn’t), though overall, I like the Android interface, which is more or less intuitive, save a few little hiccups. I’m also really growing to like the swype keyboard input, at least now that I’ve gotten used to it; my wpm is way ahead of my co-workers with their iphones who are stuck hunting and pecking.

The one thing that I didn’t expect with this thing doesn’t have to do with the hardware at all, but the information. The biggest benefit of smart phones is the totally untethered, unlimited access to information. I didn’t realize that this instant access to pretty much everything would feel this unsettling.

It’s probably that it’s just that things are new, or that I’ve been a little out of sorts this week anyway, but having that kind of access in your pocket spurs a kind of paranoia, like someone’s watching, even when I keep the GPS off to save battery charge. It’s like my email inbox is following me, demanding attention – I can access it in seconds while standing on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere; that, dear reader, is power. I think I have, at least for now, crossed the line into “too connected.” I suspect after a couple of weeks, the newness will wear off and I’ll start forgetting that the thing’s in my pocket (or I’ll leave it on the dresser when I leave home in the morning), and it won’t be so weird, but for now, it kind of is.

Of course, I could just turn it off, but where’s the fun in that? How would I keep pace with my office mates’ progress through Angry Birds?