Thinner Is Not a Feature, Simone

October thirty-first. Simone came in with the white box.

I clocked it immediately, the iPhone 5 box, sitting on the break room table like a small ceremony waiting to happen. She had gotten it that morning. She was being very calm about it, in that particular way of hers that means she is not calm at all, she is just making you look at the thing and react first so she can decide what she thinks based on your face. I have caught on to this. I still fell for it.

The phone is thin. I will give it that. I held it for approximately four seconds and said, out loud, "it just feels like the same phone but they trimmed the edges," which is not a technical analysis but I stand by it. Simone said I was missing the point. I said the point seemed to be that it was thinner. She said there were other points. We were in there for probably twenty minutes longer than we should have been, going back and forth, the old phone and the new phone lying side by side on the table like evidence at some very boring trial.

the comparison. one of them is thinner. that is the whole argument.

I do not have an upgrade due for another four months. I was aware of this fact the entire time I was holding her new phone and pretending to be objective. It is possible my skepticism was not entirely in good faith. It is also possible that whatever I eventually get will be thinner and I will tell myself it was about the features.

Happy Halloween, I guess. We spent it arguing about a phone in a break room and I would not change a single minute of it.

my face when someone tells me it's a significant upgrade