In 2003, my former coworker Bill Hall was sitting on the other side of the cube from me when I heard him say, ”Oh my Gawwwd! The Matrix phone!! It’s so cool!!!” I anxiously replied, ”What’s that? The Matrix phone?! What’s the URL for the love of all that is holy!?!” The Samsung SPH-N270 Matrix phone was a replica phone produced by Samsung in conjunction with the release of the second film THE MATRIX: RELOADED. In that film you can occasionally catch some of the characters using it. I’m a total movie prop freak, so owning a prop phone that really worked became my newest obsession.

My company was using SprintPCS so, other than the crazy $500 cost for the phone, I only had to switch over the service. The phone worked great, but there were times now and then when it wouldn’t take a charge if I’d let the battery completely run down. I learned to keep the phone charged daily to prevent this problem, but sometime in 2004 the phone completely died as a result of this unfortunate condition. Sometimes the phone would be in a virtual ”I Don’t Want To Be Charged” coma for days only to snap out of it at random. Not this time. I sent my dead little phone back to Samsung for repairs to the tune of $75. Samsung asked that I keep my battery and only send the phone. I did as they asked, but I had a sneaking suspicion in the back of my head that the battery was the culprit. I got the phone back from the repair place and it was shiny and new and I smiled a lot when I held it. Mmmm. New phone. This joy didn’t last long. The phone’s display was inverting and rebooting at random. WTF? I sent it back again WITH the battery and included a nasty note about their stupid ”Don’t Send Us The Battery” policy. The Samsung repair tech that I spoke with had the cajones to suggest that perhaps my phone was too old. Excuse me? I’d owned the phone for freakin’ 16 months. Calling it old was super dumb. FIX MY PHONE! After several weeks, I received the repaired phone once again. At that point, I decided to keep it in storage and to switch it out for my *backup* Matrix phone. Oh, did I forget to mention that I bought two of them? Ummm. Yeah. I know. I know. I believe that all Samsung SPH-N270 phones have this same problem because my ”new” backup phone had the same charging quirks as its predecessor. Still, things were going great using until I was in Houston last weekend and forgot my charger. The phone completely ran out of power — and stayed that way for a couple of days. I thought it had survived the ordeal when I returned to Minneapolis late Sunday night and plugged back in. Wrong. It died a wrenching death at lunchtime and hasn’t come back since. Destiny had pulled the head plug out of my beloved super geeky prop phone for the last time.

I used Skype for a while as I searched for a new phone. Domestic calls in the United States are FREE with Skype as long as you give them an initial payment of $10. They don’t use that money unless you invoke one of their pay services (like calling long distance outside the states, for example). The quality is great, but I’d prefer to use a mobile phone and not be tethered to my computer. I first tried hitting up Best Buy for the Samsung SPH-A900 (see photo below), but Sprint told them to charge me a $36 activation fee. I tried to weasle my way out of it — but couldn’t. The next day I hit up the SprintPCS store. No luck. They were super snotty there, anyway. Pfft. Screw those guys! Last night I returned to Best Buy and gave in to the activation fee. I only ended up paying $99 for the phone! Maybe that fee will be on my Sprint bill? Who knows. I like the new phone, but I’m still trying to Matrix-ize it.
Check out the new and the old below.