Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Is that a bomb in your pocket? Or a spy? Or both?

The phone, the ever-present phone, has rejigged a lot of human behaviour very quickly

issue 15 October 2016

Remember how much fun it used to be getting a new phone? I think of a friend a few years ago who was getting his first iPhone. He’d been on a waiting list, and he found out it was coming in on a Saturday when his newish girlfriend was coming to stay. She’d want to spend the weekend having wild and inventive twenty-something sex, he realised with a sinking heart, and perhaps going to the local farmers’ market. Whereas he’d want to spend it playing with his new iPhone. So he told her he was sick, and she accused him of having an affair. Which in a way I suppose he was.

It’s not like that now. You get a new phone and it’s basically the same as your old phone, albeit perhaps half a millimetre thinner. Dullsville. So congratulations to Samsung for their long-overdue achievement in putting the excitement back into mobile phones.

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