Dear Samsung Mobile Phone Department,Re: Samsung L810 AKA Samsung Steel
Bob Dylan once sang “the times, they are a changing”. I didn’t particularly like that song very much. David Bowie once sang “ch-ch-ch-ch-changes”. That was a much better song, but that’s Bowie for you, isn’t it?
I suppose you’re wondering what these two iconic singers could possibly have to do with your range of mobile phones. Nothing, I guess. But I have recently gone through a change that could truly define my existence as a person. Gender reassignment surgery? Acceptance of a new religion? Curly fries instead of regular?
No. I have purchased my first non-Nokia mobile phone.
Hold off on those high-fives for the moment. I’ve hardly gone to the effort of constructing an introductory paragraph with quoted song lyrics to congratulate you on being seven shades of awesome, now have I?
That is not to say I am not rather impressed with this phone. I can make and receive phone calls. I can take high-quality photos of people when they fall asleep on the train. I even have Raffi’s subtle ballad Bananaphone as my ring tone.
Yes, it would seem that all the pro-Nokia propaganda spread about the place has little or no truth to it at all. My genitals have not liquefied, I haven’t contracted hand herpes, and my Nokia-owning friends are still willing to communicate with me in person and by phone.
However, it’s not all beer and skittles. Let’s talk about text messages. By and large, there is very little difference between sending an SMS on this phone and on any Nokia I have ever owned. I understand that you have to be a little different, so the space bar is a different key. No bother, in time I’ll adjust to that.
My gripe lies with the inexplicable location in which one finds the apostrophe. Not under the 1 key as I would have expected. My old friends the full stop, comma, exclamation mark and question mark are there. So are the hyphen, colon, brackets, backslash and even the @ symbol.
Apostrophe: Missing In Action.
Finally, I found it. One can take the protracted route of going through the options menu and inserting it as a symbol. The more familiar with this phone (and other Samsung models, I presume) will be aware that holding down the # key and scrolling through the symbols gets you there a little quicker.
A quick English lesson – the apostrophe is not a symbol. It is a punctuation mark, and a bloody good one too. The apostrophe can do all sorts of useful things, like denoting possession of something, or replacing one or more letters to make multiple words into one. The efficient nature of the apostrophe makes it an essential ingredient of a text message.
@, on the other hand, is indeed nothing more than a symbol. It has only two purposes – a substitute for spelling at in its entirety, or a crude representation of a Danish pastry. While laziness may be at an all time high, most people can still be bothered typing out both letters contained in at. I can’t comment on the prevalence of pastry-related text messages, but I’m willing to bet there’s a greater need for apostrophes.
I’m fully aware predictive text could solve my problem, but as you’ve probably gathered, I’m not a predictive text kind of guy. The Rise of the Machines is an inevitable event, but I’m not about to concede defeat by giving a phone the satisfaction of accurately predicting what I want to say.
I don’t know much about the construction of mobile phones. It would probably be fair to say that I know absolutely nothing. But if one manufacturer can do it, then I’m fairly confident you can too. It’s hardly breaking the atom. And no, @om is not in common usage. The apostrophe is.
I’m not asking for my phone to be repaired, I’ll live with this technological handicap for the time being. All I ask is that on future models, you give the apostrophe the respect it deserves. It’s what separates us from the apes.
Yours sincerely,
Eoinín McAlpine
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