Pundits say that the phones are outdated after 6 months these days.  Great for the handset manufacturers as persons keep buying, for style or technology reason.

Old guys like Swank and certain of his contemps  will recall when the life of a phone was--well, it had no life.  It was permanent.  It was just "the phone."

I have been using TUne in on the road this year as I can rarely handle the homers on the opposite radio. WInthrop was great from the locals but most are not that good. TuneIn is probably the best app of the ones I have tried onboth my first and second gen Android phones both made by . Motorola ...the other app I have really had fun with is Swype for texting situations. really speeds things up and lets you use your thumb while holding the phone with one hand.

The best part of the TuneIn has been the ability to do what thousands of basketball junies are doing in Indiana from 12-3 everyday. Dan Dakich has taken the Indy area by storm. He is so much better a talk show host than he ever was a coach. I saw others here and in the convo have beeen listening to him. Tune in and the digital jack in my DOdge Ram pickup have made the ong  trips to the convo and places like Mt Pleasant MI extremely bearable as he fill the cab uptrhough the sound system with antics and stories that keep me cracking up hour after hour.

Well, well, well, I see that BL is not the only one who doesn't have full command of his or her nautical nomenclature.  

Welcome to the wonderful world of smart phones, Pete.  For my money the iPhone rules.  I realize that this is to a large extent a matter of personal taste and usage perference.  For one thing I find the "virtual keyboard" on the iPhone much easier to type on than the "hard keyboards" on some other phones.  I also find the selection of apps far superior for my needs to those of other smartphones that I've investigated.   I think that the iPhone can best be summarized as the best handheld computer on the planet with a mediocre mobile phone thrown in.  For me that's perfect, since I used my iPhone about 90 percent of the time for mobile or portable web surfing and data-centric apps.  Others, who have different priorities, I can see, would make another choice.