I finally caught up with (e:paul) and (e:terry) and now own a Note 4.

I've had an upgrade to use since March, and I know AT&T was profiting off it - but I couldn't justify paying money for a Note 4, especially while I had a Note 3 that still worked (minus (e:paul)'s crack and the lack of charging from when I took a drunk bath with the phone). It seemed wasteful.

Well I wanted to have a working and long lasting phone for Jabe Pond this week - so I finally bit the bullet and upgraded to the Note 4, for $0 upfront!
The Note 5 is out, but it sucks - who wants a sealed up phone you can't root, take the battery out of, add an SD card into, and adds a glass back? For $300!

The new phone is nicer, especially the camera and battery life - but it's not as life changing as when I went from a flip phone to a HTC Titan, or a Windows Phone to the Galaxy S3.

I really feel that we're reaching the end of the treadmill of consumer electronics capitalism... I'd like to write about (e:paul)'s breakdown at the AT&T store when he realized there's nothing new he wanted to buy.

The best feature of the phone is if you press the power button three times, the emergency mode is activated and it sends an SOS text with a picture from both cameras, a sound clip, and your location to your emergency contact.

I have so much to post on (e:strip) but my phone is dead as a doornail.

It's a Galaxy Note 3 that I inherited from (e:paul). It's experienced a lot such as (e:paul) dropping it on the floor (e:paul,59449) and maybe getting too steamy in the bathroom from the shower.

Now it won't charge. We had a battery charger but it got left behind in Cleveland. For 4 months now I've held out from using the phone upgrade we have because a Note 4 costs $350 - and why should I waste resources getting a new phone when my current one works? At the same time, I freaking hate AT&T getting extra money from the phone subsidy.

Now I can either repair the charging port on the Note 3 for $10, or get a new Note 4 for a ridiculous amount. Just a month away from the 5 coming out

Or I could go full retro and one up (e:paul) with a Commodore phone.

Sometimes it's nice to get away from your phone but currently it's just driving me crazy.

What to do with these first world problems?!