I finally bought one for myself. It has apps, a map, a browser that shows real websites. I read this blog on it right now. The theme looks small but it works.
The future is here and it is in my pocket and it needs charging every night.
The shop gets one every week. A phone in the tea, the bath, the river, the soup. Rules:
I have saved eleven phones this winter. The twelfth was in a pot of soup, with the lid on. I'm told it was an accident. It was a good soup.
Every phone has had it since 1998. Snake. A line that eats and grows, until it eats itself. Whole families lost afternoons, a customer lost a bus stop and then a bus, and I have personally lost a shift.
I have seen three generations of Snake: the black-and-white one, the green one, and the new one with a graphic apple. All of them have the same message: the more you eat, the less space you have. A philosophy in four buttons.
Ask me what is the best game on a phone. I say: the one that does not need to be charged. But if I'm honest, it's Snake.
Today an old woman, about 75, came to the shop with a small piece of paper. On the paper she had written, in big letters, a message to her grandson in Almaty: "I AM WELL. THE APPLES ARE RIPE. WHEN DO YOU COME."
I helped her type it letter by letter. It took twenty minutes. She pressed each key like she was ringing a doorbell. When it was done she asked me to show her the "send" key, and I did. She looked at the screen. "Where does it go?" "Through the air, apa." "Through the air," she repeated, and she nodded for a long time.
The answer came three minutes later: "I'LL COME IN OCTOBER GRANDMA." She read it, folded the paper, and said, "Now I know it is not magic. It was too fast for magic." And she bought a charger.
Every summer people come back from the jailoo angry that the phone did not work. It is not the phone. There are no towers on the summer pastures, the sheep don't pay for SIM cards. Climb a hill and stand still. That is the official advice of Ruslan's Gadget Corner.