My (three-year-)old mobile phone got extremely poor reception at the new house, to the point where it would drop into analog mode unless held high up on the second floor… and even after doing so, reception was usually not good enough to actually hold a conversation. That, combined with the fact that my last phone bill was for $97—due to a combination of overrunning my 60-minute airtime limit and making a bunch of “roaming” calls while in Seattle—finally motivated me to go upgrade phone and plans this past weekend.

I ended up getting a Nokia 3120, nothing fancy compared to its peers today but it’s small, light, has decent battery life, and was pretty inexpensive. And hopefully once I get the USB data cable for it I’ll be able to effortlessly transfer all my Outlook contacts to the phone. One woefully missing feature for me is voice dialing, which I had come to take for granted—after all, it was available on my old “dinosaur” phone—but I think setting up speed-dial buttons will remedy that to some extent. Now if I could only get used to the 3120′s rather idiosyncratic (some would say idiotic) user interface, it would almost be perfect.