The Incredible Cellular Phone

         Kevin was here visiting last week and whenever he is here, we have to do, change or fix something. We did get my computer better organized and fixed the back door and then we tackled the cell phones. Kevin thought that we could swap the SIM card from my older phone into the newer higher tech touch phone I have been learning how to use all its features for the last two months. That way I would have my old number with the upgraded phone.

         The old phone came apart easily and he had the SIM card out in a flash. The newer phone was more difficult to take apart. We got the back cover off and removed the battery only to find the circuit board and SIM card were covered with a metal shield that was riveted on solid and impossible to remove without damaging the circuit board. We quit at that point and I left the phone in pieces for two days.

        Yesterday I decided to put the new phone back together. Getting it apart was nothing compared to putting it back together. Those tiny little screws were nearly impossible to pick up with my average sized fingers and then even more difficult to set them into the holes to refasten them. That got me to wondering how in the world do the manufacturers build these things? The components are miniscule and the screws have to be measured in millimeters. I know they are put together with machines, but making a machine to pick and insert these tiny components and screws and then programming the machines to do all of those operations is mind boggling to me. I know just enough to appreciate how complicated the tasks would be, but nowhere near enough to imagine the minds that create the machines and the software to run them. I have seen giant robots in car factories that assemble and weld automobiles and that is complex, but those machines do not seem to be beyond reason. The machines that put cell phones together must be designed and be built to have a fraction of a millimeter tolerance. So that’s a fraction of less one-thousandth of an inch.

        The whole phone fits in a hand and yet it has more memory than you could not fit into a pickup truck 30 years ago. The processor does more than a truck-sized processor those years ago and an Android phone can do anything you could do on a desktop or laptop computer. Those who are more dexterous than I am can use their stubby little thumbs to wail out messages faster on those tiny screen virtual keyboards than I can with my large keyboard on my laptop. All of this technology is available in a hand held device that sells for a few hundred dollars or in my case, a reconditioned phone I bought for twenty dollars at the Dollar General store in town. We live in a world of wonder.