Ways in which this is not the future (special telephonic edition)

[zwol]

1. The shiny new smart phone I just got, which has more CPU grunt and nonvolatile memory all to itself than I had to share with 1000 other undergraduates in 1995, does not function as a telephone outside the continental USA.
2. It can talk to satellites in space and find out where I am standing, but cannot deduce from this that I am standing at a bus stop, nor find out when the next bus will arrive.
3. AT&T (thankfully, as of day before yesterday, my former telephone carrier) has just billed me nearly four dollars a minute for a phone call to New Zealand.

Comments

[aldren.livejournal.com]

1. Stick with GSM, and make sure you have a quadband phone. Having an unlocked phone is very nice while traveling.


2. If you have a Java-based phone, you can get Google Maps Mobile, which can use your phone's GPS to do that.


3. International calling has always been expensive. You can get something like Gizmoproject, and it will be treated like an incoming call, or set up Skype, which has something similar.

Receiving a call in a Sydney subway underground, from my parents riding backwards in their car in a tow truck, for 20¢/min total, is a sign to me that we are, in fact, in the future.