LG Optimus Vu officially revealed ahead of MWC with stylus, 1.5GHz CPU (Updated) — Engadget

appars i’m never going to pay a premium for a this years model hot phone.

i ran with a flipphone on verizon for two years, then right when my contract came up for renewal, the new every two discount dropped from $100 off to $50.  so i jumped over to att who had a deal to get a refurb treo 750 (rocking windows mobile 5), figuring i could get a discounted iphone later.  as it turned out, att hates new customers, so they spent 23 months offering to let me upgrade at full price, aka $600+ for a new iphone or android slate or whatever.

i was all set to jump ship, but when renewal time came up, the discounts on brand new hardware were still pretty weak, but refurbished or last-gen hardware?  startingly good.  i got a refurbished iphone 3gs for //nine dollars//.

appars att wants you to suffer at first, but then stay forever, because now that i’m a year into a renewed contract, i can upgrade to a brand new motorola atrix 1 for ten bucks.  and since the desktop dock and laptop dock for webtop phones has adopted a new standardized connection, the now obsolete atrix 1 docks cost less than half as much as the new versions.  i could get an android phone with a netbook //and// a media center pc it plugs into for under $200.

and at this rate, the samsung galaxy note, with its five inch oled lcd, which just launched for $300 on contract, will be super cheap next year because there will be four other gigantic android tablet phones out by then.  like this lg number that could take a good run at the psp vita or the kindle fire.

tl;dr, i loved the treo because of window 3.x nostalgia.  it was not a robust piece of hardware, but it didn’t really need to be.  it was a perfectly entertaining piece of kit.  i had windows solitaire, a super nintendo emulator, a micro sd card with 1gb of 3gp videos dl’d off youtube, and a drawing program (with stylus) and word processor (with physical keyboard) that i used //constantly//.  i never even turned on the 3g internet, i didn’t want to crash the whole system rendering a website on opera mini.  240x240 resolution screen was never going to get me a real browsing experience, but i could write a novel on that thing even today.

now, i still miss my physical keyboard (and not having to hold the phone sideways for a landscape photo), but once you have a fully functional web browser in your pocket all the time, with a good touchscreen?  there’s no going back.  also, APP CITY.  while i was rocking the treo, and bemoaning that because the snes emulator wouldn’t register simultaneous button presses (jump + walk forwards) the only game i could play past level one was lemmings (which, again, windows 3.x nostalgia), i was also buying used gba games right and left, and mario golf advance on the gameboy micro is flawless, your argument is irrelaphant.

whereas today i have probably thirty games on this iphone that i paid 99 cents for.  full ports of half a dozen old pc shooters, super monkey ball, angry birds, stair dismount.  a full fledged gta3 clone, and a korean game studio (gamevil) pumping out delicious 16bit snes rpgs.  plus shareware all over the map, including a full port of //myst//.  so there’s no going back, as much as i’d like to just get the palm veer and call it done.  (to be honest, if i still could, i would have by now.  it was just too lovable.)