Between my wife's disability, and my kids, I consider our cell phones to be gifts from God. I won't go into details, but there have been times when a cell phone has been worth ten times what I pay for it.

That being said, all I want from a phone is to have it make a frigging call. As my phones have worn out, I have had to buy new ones, and "vanilla" phones are increasingly hard to find. My current phone is a Gz'One Type S, which I had to buy on the road when my old beatup phone crapped out in Minnesota.

It gets many points from me for being my first water-resistant and ruggedized phone--features that should have been standard years ago. I killed one phone by falling on my ass into a tide pool.

As for the rest, it does way too much. I don't need a phone that takes pictures and plays music. I don't need to get to the internet. I don't use Bluetooth for anything.

And it knows way too much. I am offered services like child tracking and navigation. I already knew there were ways to track me, but they were never so blatant about it before. I hit a wrong button, and the phone's voice asks me for a command. I keep my mouth shut. God knows what built-in commands are already in there. The wrong words and the next thing I might here is "self-destruct mode initiated. 39...38....37...."

At some point I will sit down with the manual and plow through it. I'll have to, since the Nannies out here are making driving and calling illegal without hands-free operation. I've never been beaten by any tech I've taken the time to beat. But right now...hey, it makes phone calls. I'm cool with that.