iPhone Suicide.

You know that episode of South Park where Paris Hilton's dog commits suicide and becomes another victim of Hilton's "Pets Who Killed Themselves by Being in Possession of Paris Hilton" photo album?

Yeah, I think my phone is trying to off itself.

First, it tried to drown itself in a toilet (a clean toilet, mind you) by jumping out of my back pocket while in Pullman at WSU Homecoming.

It was a very traumatic event in the fact that I had had a few beers, came out of the bathroom bawling and waving my phone at my husband, who thought I was beckoning him to tell him someone in my family died.

Not so.

I was bawling because a $500 phone that my family all pitched in to help buy for my birthday just went swimming for a few seconds. Plus I had had a few beers and the featherweight that I am was a little emotional already.

But no, the iPhone did not prevail in its suicide attempt because we dried it out, charged it, and it still works like clockwork. The thing is a fucking tank.

Still, the drowning attempt did not curb it from continuing on its suicide quest.

It has jumped out of my hands on multiple occasions--and in most cases, fallen on pavement or concrete. But it survived.

It finally developed a crack down by the main button (thank goodness it's not on the screen portion of the phone) due to its habit of falling on extremely hard surfaces.

And now it has been randomly calling my husband and my friend Crissy. It's not a purse-dial (where you can hear the rustling of items in a handbag while you're shouting your lungs out in an attempt for the person purse-dialing you to hear you). It's a blank dial, where they answer, and absolutely no sound is there. My sister-in-law's iPhone has been doing this sort of thing for a while, apparently.

It has also been freezing up and not responding to any touch whatsoever. I took it into an Apple store to be checked at the same time I was in to get my MacBook battery replaced, and the Genius said to restore it, which would mean I would lose all my Notes. I have a lot. I guess I'll have to find that free app that lets you back up the things iTunes does not.

Or maybe its suicide attempts are for a reason- for me to upgrade.

I initially didn't want to get the first generation iPhone--I tend to shy away from first generation items just so the companies and manufacturers can work out any bugs.

But when my husband accidentally drowned my Razr in a glass of Sangarita, I needed a new phone. It was around my birthday, my family hadn't gotten me gifts yet, so a new iPhone I got.

And I have loved it. I use just about all of the applications, and loaded a few more when the new App Store opened. I think the Phone Saber makes me giggle the most.

When we were at the Apple Store the other day for my MacBook battery fix, I laid my eyes and hands all over the new 3G.

And drooled.

I then knew why my iPhone was trying to commit hari-kari:

It wants me to upgrade.

This possibly could be some brilliant scheme dreamed up by Steve Jobs himself--where the old generation begins to shut down and the user is basically forced to upgrade to the latest generation.

And as I was typing that last paragraph, my phone shut off and displayed the "charge the phone" icon.

I'm telling you, it's a conspiracy.

Oh- and all this bitching about how much more expensive the new iPhone is to the old iPhone??

Let's do the math.

I bought my iPhone for $499. I then got a $100 credit from Apple because people bitched so much (yay for bitching here!). I used that $100 to upgrade my iPhoto software and such.

So the cost is now $399. It costs me $20 a month to have all the data- text messaging, Internet, you know the deal. Multiply 20 by 24 (the two-year plan AT&T has for the iPhone) = $480. Now add $399 = $879. So over two years, that's how much the 1.0 will cost.

Now for the 3G. The cost of the 8G (twice the size of my current 4G) is $199. The data plan from AT&T went up $10/month, so $30 x $24 = $720. Add the $199 = $919. That's up $40 from the 1.0 version.

What people don't understand is they paying a higher price for faster technology. Think about it--dial-up is way cheaper than fiber-optic cable Internet (*drool*), but it's slow as fuck and most of our impatient society cannot tolerate the Internets at that molasses speed, so naturally, we pay more because we (as Ricky Bobby would say) "wanna go fast."

And as time goes by, prices go up. They are going up everywhere. Don't believe me? Buy clothing. All of the prices have been going up. But they're so slight because some clothes are a fraction of the price of a new iPhone, so naturally we don't notice as much. A 2009 GTI is probably more expensive than when the 2008 GTI was considered "new."

And now I just read an article in The Oregonian that mentions that old iPhones are fetching more money than the new ones are selling for.

Hmmm...a new 3G and a new pair of Franco Sartos? I think I need to go peruse Craigslist right now...