A Dear John letter

We just don't get along. I feel my needs are being ignored and when I need you most, you're consistently not there for me. When you first came into my life,  I had such high hopes, such euphoria, but you have been nothing but a profound disappointment.

I'm ready to give up on iPhones, and look for something more reliable.

A New York Times article today ("You Love Your iPhone...Literally") says people are so enamored of their iPhones that "Friends who have accidentally left home without (them) tell me they feel stressed-out, cut off and somehow un-whole. That sounds a lot like separation anxiety..." Or addiction.

Apparently, test subjects (ages 18-25) responded to the ringing of their iPhones with a "flurry of activation in the insular cortex of the brain, which is associated with feelings of love and compassion."
Hah! Fat chance of my developing that kind of attachment to you. When you ring,  I can't get any more than four jingles out of you, which means I have to scramble to answer, or call back, and that gets expensive and stressful.

And your ringer button is set right where my thumb touches when I hold you (see photo), so I often accidentally mute your ring. Friends call, and I never know about it until I look at my Recents. After a while, they give up on trying to reach me.
Far too often, when I push the ON button to make a call, your screen stays black. The other day, it turned WHITE. This is after I treated you to a new battery, too.

Then yesterday the voice transmission stopped working when I was making a crucial call, and now I have to turn on the Speaker to hear the person I'm talking to.  This means everyone in the room can hear both sides of our conversation.

Granted, you weren't brand new when you came to me, so maybe some of your issues are due to your previous relationship. But I thought (silly me) that an experienced phone could still be as good as right off the assembly line. After all, I'm no spring chicken myself. I knew from the beginning there was no hope of going online with you, because your wifi access was permanently out of service. I was willing to accept that shortcoming, as long as you lived up to all the other expectations Apple promised. But no....

So it's obvious we're never going to bond. Maybe a Droid or a Blackberry would treat me better.