The trouble with a smartphone is.......

.....they’re too small.
A few months ago I purchased a Motorola Droid-X smartphone from Verizon.
I’m using maybe 15 percent of what it’s capable of.
I also got a small manual, but it doesn’t go into all the pre-loaded apps, or the 89 bazilyun apps available at the app-store.
In other words, what I know was gleaned by winging it, deducing it myself.
Yesterday (Tuesday, May 24, 2011) I visited my hairdresser in nearby Honeoye (‘HONE-eee-oy;' rhymes with 'boy') Falls, the guy who interested me in a smartphone.
He has one himself, and finds it great fun.
“So how’s your Droid coming?” he asked.
“Miniaturization is an enviable goal,” I said; “but the geeks need to realize us users ain’t miniature.
Great! Access the Internet out in the middle of nowhere on your smartphone, but the display is so tiny on that small screen, I hafta expand and scroll.
And the virtual-keyboard is too small for the average user.
My laptop, with my added-on standard keyboard and mouse, is all over my smartphone, which is ponderously slow — often requiring retyping.
So far, the only advantage to my smartphone is to Bluetooth the Internet from it to my laptop out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Or tether,” the guy suggested.
“But that costs money,” I said. “Same with Verizon’s receiver.”
We discussed whether his laptop was a Bluetooth receiver.
“2010,” he said.
“I bet it is,” I said. “I bet Bluetooth is in your System Preferences.
But for e-mail I prefer my laptop. My smartphone also downloads my e-mail, but I rarely respond in it.
Too ponderous for a word-guy like me, and voice-recognition can’t process the 40-dollar words I use, and Heaven forbid I punctuate.
The guy voiced a question into his smartphone, ending with “question-mark.”
It put in the question-mark after his question.
“But your question was simple,” I said; “not something a word-guy like me would ask, full of complicated words.
And ya mean I gotta voice every punctuation-mark?
On my laptop it’s just a simple keystroke.
And typing on a virtual-keyboard is a struggle.”

• “Honeoye Falls” is the nearest village to the west to where we live in western New York, a rural village about five miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester.
• “Tethering” is to hard-wire, smartphone to laptop.
• Most cellphone-services can supply a plug-in USB receiver-chip that downloads their Internet from the satellite and their network. $40 extra for Verizon.