I guess I have been dreading publishing this post because to a certain degree it would mean the end of an era...hopefully the beginning of another. No need to be dramatic I tell myself but hey, what can I do? I'm hooked

I have been stalling in the hopes of being able to spend more time with the beauty. It has been bitter sweet. Enough with the melo-drama let's get to the basics.

 During the first few nights I felt like screaming at it or throwing it against the wall somewhere. It was absolutely difficult to use it. I could not do any of the basic stuff that one is able to do on a normal phone with WAP, MP3 etc : I could not send or receive via blutooth and I had no idea why one would even bother with such a phone.

It's touch screen which means it is super sensitive to everything you do that is remotely related to the screen and the apps! Omg, thank God for WiFi because these apps not only chow your battery but are costly. So if you're a money keeper like I am you may wanna stay away as much as you can.

Having calmed down I learnt how to adapt the phone to my personal style. I learnt how to QWERTY type with the greatest of ease (me being a novice at this day and age ).

What I learnt is that the phone adjusts to your personal needs when you type and the styles can be easily changed around trhough swiping either left or right on the screen and it didn't matter which way I held the handset as the sceen would just rotate, cool.

The predictive text really went a long way but what I loved most was the fact that it had the ability to learn and type Xhosa words.

I was able to download all of my Facebook contacts to my adress book, don't ask why I would actually need more than five hundred contacts on my phonebook but it helped when I needed to check on an email address.

I learnt how to sync my gmail to my phone which was a pain at times coz everytime it picked up a data signal it would automatically send notification of new mail.Yet in the same breath I loved this feature, I imagined myself in the not-too-distant future, a busy, working woman with a cool device on hand , sorting through emails out of the office, sipping coffee in some restaurant, responding here and replying there.

Over the weekend I put a reminder on the calendar for my child's birthday and off goes HUAWEI u8860 linking the notice to my gmail contacts. Nifty.

The camera is supposed to be 8mp HD, which is supposed to take these uber cool pics, alas my friend with a BlackBerry bold with 5mp takes better pics than mine does.

Nonetheless I was determined , I took as many pics as I could which I will post in the next blog as I've found uploading pics on my blog is a bit time consuming.

 I also could not enjoy the Documents To Go feature , which would include MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint as the services would cost me $14.99 USD. 

I did however enjoy compiling notes on the notes feature, you can make your grocerry list there which can come in handy if you don't like to overspend on stuff you don't need or did not budget for.

AccuWeather will keep you a step ahead with a four day forcast and will even show you International weather which you can customize, mine was set to Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, just in case I may travel to these places...the chivalry.

It has convenient Maps, Navigation , Latitude and Places apps which should ensure that you never get lost like ever.

Other than that it is a pretty standard phone that shouldn't take too long to figure out. It will frustrate the living daylights out of you if you're a 'pirate' who ordinarily downloads apps via blutooth as it only accepts Android phones. I had to get my friend to download music to my flash, transfer that to my pc then only to the phone and vis a versa.

Why will I miss this phone : Keeping up to date with news , weather and social networks. I'm sure we all know how imperative being in the know is for us journalists. Social media has provided platforms where we not only have to wait for the seven o'clock news to be updated (there are downfalls to this, I'm sure you know).

Had I owned a driver's licence and or was a traveller the navigation apps would've gone a very long way. I found the embedded map quite efficient, just to find places as opposed to going to Google maps.

 Oh and of course, WhatsApp...what will I be without the upkeep of what my mates are up to?

I'll survive :-) .