Last week I took a bold step towards the future by purchasing my first flip-phone. As I’ve noted before, I usually have a two-year delay in picking up on the latest trends, so waiting until 2006 to ditch my old candybar phone with the monocromatic display and original-nes style ringtones is no big suprise.

I’m totally enamoured with my new phone. Their is the obvious attraction — as a kid who grew up watching Captain Kirk request a beam-up by flipping open his communicator I secretly not so secretly desire to do the same. But aside from playing out my childhood fantasies, this phone totally rocks! My signal strength is better, I can hear people more clearly, voice dialing is totally awesome and yesterday I used the speakerphone to have a friend navigate me to my destination as I drove. I haven’t even begun to use the phone’s bluetooth features yet! This thing’s so hot, even James T. would be jealous.