Who wants to be around a smartie-phone?

I just upgraded my mobile phone.

First off, I'd like to say that I didn't really want to. I was really happy with my old phone; his name was "Phone." I could use Phone to make calls. I could use him to receive calls. He even had a cool digital clock.

Phone also had a bunch of ultra-modern features. He had a directory of all my friends built in so that whenever I could figure out how to get to the directory, Phone would go ahead and dial people for me. The people that Phone called were usually not the people I had intended to talk to, but over the years I found that I kind of enjoyed that element of surprise.

Phone had built into his back a pretty good camera, which I used from time to time to take pictures of the change in my pocket. Or my thumb. And he had a microscopic keyboard, so that whenever someone sent me a text message like this:

"Hey! How are you?"

... I could just snap open that little keyboard and use my thumbs to nimbly type out a reply:

"lgi uh dfov, to the lajniak!  ;-}"

So even though I knew that my mobile company was ready and willing to give me a new phone for free, I had every intention of hanging on to good old Phone for a while longer. He did pretty much everything I needed, and he had become my friend.

Then a few days ago, while I was out on the boat, I felt that I should completely eliminate any chance of getting Phone wet, so I popped him into a handy cup holder. As it turned out, I had not taken into account the inch of rain water in the bottom of that cup holder. I could almost hear Phone's dying words, just as I might have typed them out for him on his keyboard:

"Ygly blark norfni...  :-("

So I went down to the cell phone kiosk to pick out a new phone. The guy there, who could not have been more than about eleven years old and yet clearly knew everything there is to know about every cell phone ever made, told me that it was my lucky day - I was eligible to get a free "Smart Phone."

I'm here to tell you that the phone he fixed me up with is very smart indeed. The new phone's name is "Kierkegaard."

Kierkegaard is a bit more technologically advanced than old Phone was, in much the same way that a nuclear reactor is more technologically advanced than a kitchen match. I can make him do all kinds of amazing feats by downloading and installing things called "Apps." As far as I can tell, "App" is short for "App-arently you are kind of bored and need to kill some time loading some really crazy crap into your phone."

When you look at Kierkegaard all you see is four small buttons and a blank glass screen. This is deceptive. I have discovered that if I poke around on the buttons and the screen for a while I can show movies, browse Web sites, check on eBay listings, read my emails, check out the latest weather radar, update my Facebook, navigate precisely to a used car dealership in Butte, Montana, study a map of the sky that has every star, planet and constellation clearly labeled, and look up dirty words in a handy unabridged dictionary.

What you don't see anywhere on Kierkegaard is any sort of key pad you could use to dial a phone call. OK, every now and then, if I happen to push the right sequence of buttons and hold my mouth just right, a picture of a keypad appears on the screen. And touching various places on this picture actually does sometimes work to make phone calls.

More often, though, I find myself using the handy "Voice Dialing" feature; I simply speak a name into the phone, and Kierkegaard goes ahead and calls someone I never even heard of.

I admit that I kind of enjoy carrying a phone around that is smarter than I am. Even though I'm still a little vague about how to answer an incoming call, I think I will enjoy the years of companionship that little Kierkegaard and I have ahead of us, debating over the concept of objective reality as it affects principles of theistic existentialism.

At least until I drop him into a cup holder full of water.