HTC Typhoon

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In preparation for the Europe trip, I bought my first smartphone: an i-mate SP3, also known as a rebranded HTC Typhoon.

The model had been introduced in 2004 and was discontinued by the time I bought it in 2007. I was able to find a new one on eBay for only $100.

It was a small candybar phone that ran Windows Mobile 2003 SE. It had a 2.2 inch screen and a VGA (0.3 megapixel) camera. I maxed it out with a 2 gigabyte MiniSD (not MicroSD) card.

It didn't have wifi, I didn't have cell data, and its web browser was garbage anyway. So I would be using it for entertainment, texting, and as a camera. Texting would be kept to a minimum because of international roaming fees, and the camera was a backup, since I also had my nice Canon digital camera.

For entertainment, I loaded it up with a bunch of e-books, a few movies, rips of several CDs, a Sega Genesis emulator, and a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog.

After setting up the phone to do so many amazing things, I spent 99% of my time playing the bubble-popping game that came with it ("Jawbreaker").

The phone had a joystick button that was long and rectangular. It could be rotated up and down, pushed down on the left and right sides, and pushed down in the middle. Using the button made some noise, and I used it for hours on end to play Jawbreaker. I didn't think other people could hear the noise until Mike exploded at me in Hungary:

"CAN YOU STOP PLAYING THAT FUCKING GAME FOR ONE SECOND? I'M TRYING TO SLEEP!"

It must have been annoying him for weeks, but he had been too polite to say anything.

Windows Mobile wasn't ideal. The weirdest problem was a bug with the note-taking app. If you pressed the backspace button, it would sometimes delete the entire line of text that was above the cursor. Unnerving.

Overall, though, I thought the phone was a marvel of technology and appreciated having it on the trip.

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