Recently I misplaced my phone.  I have no idea what happened to it, but somehow it disappeared.  After a week long failed search I finally gave up and decided I could no longer survive without a cell phone. So off I went to the AT&T store to find a new phone that would fit my needs.

I am really not a technology person and I really wasn’t sure what I was looking for.  But as I looked through every display phone in the gallery I found myself going back to the iPhone. I really wanted to explore all my options before making a choice.  It took me quite a while because I tried out just about every phone in the place. My choice was based on a lot of factors.  Ease of use, size ,weight and keypad were just a few of my requirements.  I wanted a phone that gave me the ability to tweet when  the mood hit me and I wanted to be able to work on a post from just about anywhere.  You never know when inspiration will strike and I wanted the ability to work whenever, where-ever.  I narrowed my search down to the iPhone and the Blackberry Curve.

The deciding factor ended up being rheumatoid arthritis.  The Curve offers many of the same features as the iPhone with one glaring and all important (to me especially) difference.  Touch screen technology.  Until you have experienced the difference you cannot imagine how wonderful touch screen technology is.  I used to avoid text messaging because my fingers hurt.   Either my fingers hurt when I started to text or by the time I finished texting my fingers would begin to hurt and so I just stopped texting altogether.

The design of the iPhone makes texting more comfortable in the hand.  The full qwerty keyboard  adapts for different applications and it is a lot easier than it looks.  I was afraid that I would have a hard time with the touch screen distinguishing between the characters.  It takes a little while to get used to where you need to place your finger to hit the intended character but once to get used to it the typing can go really fast.  When I say place your finger I mean just that.  The effort required to chose a character is slight.  You barely need to touch the screen at all. Because the screen works based on body heat you don’t need to worry about unintended usage

I have had the phone for 3 days now and I can’t say enough good things about it.  Currently there are 35,000 applications that can be used on this phone and the applications are increasing.  Really this is far more than any phone that I have ever owned.  Within minutes I had sync’d up my itunes and  all my contacts in outlook so that even though I didn’t have my sims card from the lost phone all my phone number were in my new phone in seconds.

Just like the ads say there really is an app for everything.  I have twitter, facebook, ebay, amazon, itunes and the list goes on.  Every time I go to the app store I find something else I want to add.  Some of the apps cost a minimal amount while others are free.

Price is an important factor in considering anything these days.  This phone is not cheap.  The cost was $199.00 with a 2 year contract with AT&T ( without the 2 year contract the phone retails at $599.00) and  you must agree to a Data Plan with AT&T when you purchase this phone. This data plan is a commitment that cannot be backed out of.  The data plan is part of owning this phone.  The Blackberry’s data plan can be backed out of after 30 days if you decide that you do not want to use wi-fi service.

A fellow twitterer told me over the weekend that her provider changed her phone for free when she told them that she had rheumatoid arthritis and that she could no longer text without pain.  She lives in the UK so you might want to ask your provider what they may be willing to offer for your circumstances.  It is worth asking.