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The week-long flip phone experiment is over, and I’ve switched back to my old (or should that be new) trusty smartphone. Am I happy? Sort of. Frankly it’s a mixed bag of emotions.

“Turn your downtime into banking time” encouraged a radio ad for a large bank that was promoting the availability of its latest banking app. As a flip phone consumer, at least for the week, I wanted to ignore the ad completely, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how this simple sentence highlights everyday use of smartphones. Downtime is considered a bad thing, a waste, when we could be doing more productive activities.

I made my cousin speechless this past week. Literally, mid-sentence, she stopped talking and she stared incredulously at my phone before exclaiming “what the heck is that?” In all the years of carrying the latest and greatest devices I’ve never had such a reaction. Of course, these days pretty much all phones look the same and it’s really hard to carry a device that is so clearly different from the pack. The last such phone was the original iPhone. Before that, it was the RAZR that I’m now carrying.

Switching from a smartphone to an old flip phone is the technological equivalent of jumping into an icy lake: you know that it’s probably a dumb idea but there’s a (small) part of you that wants to see how it plays out. And yes, surprise, the metaphorical water is even colder than you expect; at least on day one.

My name is Eddie Hold, and I’m a smartphone addict. On average, I look at my smartphone more than 100 times a day with activities ranging from checking the time, to email, games, music, and more. It’s the first thing I do in the morning and pretty much the last thing I do before going to bed. One hundred or more “touches” per day is roughly once every 10 to 11 minutes while I’m awake.

T-Mobile unleashed the next stage of its Un-Carrier strategy yesterday, expanding the focus from smartphones to address demand (or lack thereof) for cellular connected tablets. The timing of the move was ideal, coming just one day after Apple’s iPad launches, and Nokia’s launch of its 2520 Windows tablet. The beauty of T-Mobile’s move is based on a combination of factors including the data and the way you can buy new tablets.

High school math problems used to debate the expected collision times of two trains that are moving towards each other at different speeds. The when and where of this seemingly unavoidable collision was guaranteed to be somewhere in the year’s final exam, causing a gnashing of teeth and a frantic chewing of pencils. Ah, the good old days, and how easy we had it then. As core curriculums become focused on real-world problem solving, the rare issue of head-on train collisions is likely to be cast on the scrap heap. What I would propose instead is that the next generation of math problems relate to the complexities of mobile phone ownership.

Microsoft is buying Nokia’s Devices and Services business for roughly $7 billion. The deal signals the end of an era in the mobile space, with Nokia effectively now pulling out of the mobile phone business. But beyond this era-ending component, Microsoft’s acquisition signals a bold move by the software giant to accelerate its plans in the mobile space by owning, for the first time, both the software and hardware required to grow the Windows Phone operating system, which currently accounts for less than 3% of the smartphone installed base in the US.

Most conversations over the past few days have begun with, “Did you watch ‘Breaking Bad’ Sunday?” Between DVR, Netflix, and HBOGO, it’s been quite a while since I’ve viewed a show during its broadcast. This time I did, kind of, only a mere 15 minutes after its broadcast so that commercials could be skipped.

Mobile phone trade-ins have rapidly moved from being an obscure option to one that is front and center at the major carriers. The shift comes as the carriers look to move away from the subsidy model – led by T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier” initiative, but also by the increased demand for no-contract variations as the market hits a new level of maturity...