During my last month of Master’s at Western University, I lost a newly purchased Galaxy Nexus. It was quite heartbreaking for me not only because I had spent $700 on it just two weeks ago but because I could no longer keep in touch with friends and family the same way (until, of course, the arrival of a new smartphone). I finished the program and flew to British Columbia with family. We moved for good.

The first two months here had it ups and downs. Not only had I left behind my hometown and my friends in Ontario but I, now, had to live the next few months without a smartphone. This was partly by choice. Apple is to release iPhone 5 in October this year and if I buy a smartphone now, I will be chastised for investing my hard-earned money in another smartphone in a period of four months.

I am known among my family and friends as someone who spends too much on phones and loses them too often. I am not surprised by this notion because I really have changed about seven smartphones in the last twelve months, spending God knows how much on ’em all together.

Not to worry, this blog post is not all gloomy and sad. It gets better. This morning I woke up with a sort of an epiphany. I remembered that I’d purchased the first generation iPhone that was released solely in the States. I had bought it through Ebay for $600. I was one of the first students at the University of Toronto to own one. People–young and old–would come up to me to ask if they could play with the so-called revolutionary phone. While I liked the attention, I never bought gadgets because of it. My reason for allocating most of the little money I had on gadgets, specifically phones, was mainly due to my love for technology.

A year later when the iPhone 3G came out in Canada, I went ahead and bought myself one. I didn’t know what to do with the 2G iPhone I had so I gave it to my older brother to use. Long story short, this morning I remembered that he still has the phone but doesn’t use it ’cause he’s got one of those candy phones that is locked to the provider. Only he would forgo an iPhone for a cheaper plan!!!

I asked him if he still had the iPhone and sure enough, he did. I was so excited you have no idea! Being able to use this first generation iPhone meant I wouldn’t have to rely on my Mom’s old Samsung candy phone which, by the way, does not even have a full QWERTY keyboard :'(

I took a needle and opened up the sim tray of the iPhone 2G (iPhones have this one user-unfriendly slash un-ergonomic feature) and placed my chatr sim card. Rest assured, it works.

So what if it’s five years old , at least I have a smartphone now.