I have a shiny new thing (and I'm going to make like a tech blogger for a minute)

IMPORTANT UPDATE OCTOBER 18, 2012: I'm eating my glowing words.
Never has a phone sucked so hard.
You can't remove ANY preloaded applications, the phone shows "storage full" and refuses to work even when you have NOTHING on there. Same goes for your texts.
And today it refused to acknowledge my SIM card and I'm back to my old phone again using, by the way, the same SIM that Micromax tells me doesn't exist. Micromax also sucks at the customer service. I couldn't make a phone call, so I tried to email but that wouldn't go through so I left them a Facebook wall post--which they deleted. Then I tweeted at them. A couple of times. Um.. still nothing. Ugh. Never buying an Indian brand phone again.
So, really, the only thing it has going for it is the Instagram, but any other budget Android will give that to you as well. DO NOT BUY THIS PHONE.

Really, all you need to know about these last few weeks is that I discovered Instagram for Android.

I bought a new phone. A Micromax A78. Yes, Micromax is the same brand that's been pushing the Siri copy with the absurd tagline "Nothing like anything." Um. I can think of SOMETHING it's like.

The nice thing about the Micromax is that it was everything I needed for a reasonable price. I wanted an actual physical keyboard. I wanted a touch screen, I wanted a decent camera,  and I wanted this all to be under 10k.

It's also an Indian brand, which makes me feel very patriotic, and look I'm not giving money to the Chinese! (Only, it's made in China, so there's THAT.)

Android phones have a sucky battery life though. You should know that. If you want one, prepare to walk around with a charger in your bag at all times.








The keyboard takes some getting used to also. While it has a touch screen keyboard you can enable with a sticky button, I wanted the actual feel of typing. A lot of my communication is via text (Whatsapp etc) and touch screens are kinda clumsy. The keys on this are slightly squished, so you need to use the tips of your fingers, but it took me--what? two days?--to master and now I can type like a pro.



Another thing you should know about is that it has a very large, very nice screen. This IS very nice, only when you have the phone tucked between your ear and your shoulder, there's a high chance you'll wind up hanging up on whoever called you. I had a handsfree that came with it, but I seem to have lost it. Hang on to that, you'll need it.



All in all though, I'm very pleased. It's got a super fast processor, compared to my old phone, everything just starts up when you want it to. It has a toolkit section in a pull down menu, where for the first time in my life, I see a 'Reboot' button, which is awesome and time saving. It has all the newest Android apps, including my beloved Instagram and a not bad camera with flash. Plus a front facing camera so you can video call. All for the bargain price of  Rs 7500 and something. 

There's my tech review. Here are some more pretty pictures.










The new job is going very well, thank you.