I now have a new cell phone and besides vibrate mode it doesn’t have a single, normal ring that I’m willing to use. Of course it has a cat meowing, a horse neighing, jazzed up versions of all your classic music and gobs of other rings that will annoy and distract others with ease.

Another annoyance is that there’s no way to silence the ringer before answering. I have to either answer or reject the call while it’s still ringing or vibrating in my hand, and that’s not even the default setting. The default is to answer the call the moment you flip open the phone and it doesn’t have an external LCD to see who’s calling before you open it. The setting to turn that off is called, “Active Folder” under Phone Settings -> Extra Settings. Why couldn’t they have called it “Answer on open” or something a little more clear? I initially thought Active Folder had something to do with instant messaging.

I don’t understand why cell phone designers can’t make them less obtrusive instead of moreso. I keep my cell phone on vibrate so it only alerts me that someone is calling instead of bothering everyone in a 3-mile radius. The only thing I can think of is that I’m in a small minority, assuming cell phone manufacturers are catering to the majority of the market.

The phone isn’t all bad. It’s extremely light and small which is a big plus, and the screen is bright and has a high resolution. It also turns off the screen entirely so the battery lasts for several days.

I just thought that as time went on, cell phones would become more configurable and convenient so people with all sorts of different preferences could configure them how they wanted, but it seems like the features I use most are being done away with.