One small step for man …

Yesterday I took a step into the unfamiliar and – to me often baffling – modern world by the simple means of upgrading my mobile phone, a move that apparently came my way because I had come to the end of my current two-year contract.

As any oldie will tell you, such things are always beset by trepidation and anxiety as when – e.g. in my case – over the period specified above I had been operating via a Sony Xperia phone that, my kids estimate, I have managed to master and/or use (well, except by accident on odd occasions) no more than 15% of its capabilities.

As a matter of routine I use my mobile only to make phone calls, text, check the weather and sometimes communicate via WhatApp.

I very rarely use my mobile’s camera because – just as I like to buy my electricity from an electricity company and my gas from a gas company (rather than give in to the persistent hard-sell persuasion of each that they can also provide the other’s product at a cheaper price) – I like to take my photographs with a proper camera.

I also prefer to go online via a computer, rather than on my phone, because that’s what computer are for.

Separately, as I learned yesterday, under my recently-expired contract I had available to me a ‘memory’ (if that’s what it’s called) of just 1 GB – or gigabyte – compared, for example, to a lady of my acquaintance who owns an iPhone containing one of 64GB, and I never got within a mile of using more than a fraction of it.

A while back – by choice fuelled of not wishing to be part of the fashionable pack, I kept clear of Apple products (the iPhone) and instead went with a Sony Xperia because it operates on the competitor Android system.

I have recently been under a degree of peer pressure to switch to an iPhone because “It’s so simple to learn and operate, far more so than any Android phone” but decided against it because (at my age) trying to learn anything new is always an Everest-sized challenge.

So instead – having reviewed all the candidate options – yesterday I decided to go with a Huawei P30 phone, partly because the phone shop sales lady told me that it was not only lightning-fast compared to my outgoing Sony Xperia but also superior in every other way as well.

[For completeness, I understand that Huawei is pronounced “Huh-wah-wy” – in case anyone should want to know.]

In common with most other up-to-date mobiles I discovered that it possessions three cameras – two more than I will ever need – that is, unless (I assume) I should ever decide to take a selfie of myself taking a photograph of someone else who is taking a selfie of their own.

Which is never going to happen.

When I returned to chez moi yesterday afternoon I was challenged as to my reason for choosing a Huawei phone at all, given that it is currently in the forefront of world news – well, bar the coronavirus global outbreak – because it is the subject of a row between the UK on the one hand, and the USA and other sensible Western countries on the other, because of the supposed security threat to world peace it represents when it comes to the now imminent 5G phone system on account of the fact that (unofficially) to all intents and purposes it is an organ of the Chinese state.

I replied that I didn’t see this is a particular problem because – in this day and age, when I assume that every utility, government department, foreign power, global media giant and Ole Gunnar Solskjær knows more about I am up to, including when I am about to go to the lavatory – I have no secrets left to keep to myself anyway and so why would I need to worry?

It might even be – if I was approached and asked by the appropriate authority (MI5 or MI6?) – I could provide a service to the nation by acting as an insider fifth columnist, e.g. either spewing spurious and confusing ‘misinformation’ to Beijing’s secret service HQ and/or reporting ‘from the inside’ such things as I found out about all things going on in China or indeed from any territory within its sphere of influence.

I have had my new phone on charge now for twenty-six minutes – apparently its ‘super-charging’ facility is such that its battery only takes thirty minutes to recharge itself to 100% from zero – and my first task of the morning will be to find where the “on” button is.