Windows Phone Thoughts: We Are Gathered Here Today...

Have you ever been sitting down to a nice breakfast at a restaurant only to have your waiter accidentally knock a cup of water over right on top of your Smartphone? This happened to me yesterday while I was eating breakfast right before a meeting with a client. To make matters worse, I was expecting an email, and right as the cup was beginning to fall my screen lit up and the unmistakable sound of me receiving a new message rang through the air... as if my situation wasn't stressful enough, I was now left with that nagging questions of "Who was that message from?" and "What did that message say?"

I learned two very important things yesterday. The first above all else is that I have an addiction. I am indeed addicted to my phone and the service that it provides at being my gateway to the Internet and vast amounts of information and when this flow of information is just snatched away by means other than my own, I learned that I can be incredibly tense, anxious, and cranky. Not being able to check my email knowing that I was probably missing something important was just nerve wrecking. Trying to remember all of my important contact information I use on a daily basis was frustrating as well. Not being able to check the Internet on a whim for whatever reason didn't seem to help my situation either, especially when a majority of my day involved waiting for other people.

The worst part is that even though I knew my phone was now in Smartphone heaven, I still caught myself reaching for it more than a few times whenever I thought about emailing or messaging someone or even trying to figure out what time it was. At one point throughout the day I was talking to one of my clients about my phone ordeal and while telling them the story of my phone being destroyed, I caught myself reaching into my jacket pocket because his phone went off notifying him of a new message.

Now I know more often than not we bust Microsoft's chops because we feel Windows Mobile could be a lot better than it is, and it could be, but not having my handset around I realized something else. Besides my undying love for the handset I will forever now refer to as the Crackjack - I know, original and catchy - I realized that it is incredibly easy to point out the flaws in the things that Microsoft does more often than not and I rarely give praise to Microsoft for the features that do work and happen to work so wonderfully that we never even realize how much of an impact they have on your daily routine until they're gone. In light of this I would like to take a second to point out some of my favorite Windows Mobile features that do not exist on this horribly inefficient pre-paid phone I am forced to use until I get a new handset.