Smart Phone 101: What IS This Thing Anyway?

About 6 months ago, I broke down and joined the smart phone generation. It wasn’t an iPhone – just a basic Droid with essential smart phone functions and an 8 megapixel camera. I thought I would pay a little more for a slightly higher quality camera, as opposed to the 5 megapixels of lesser phones. One fact is, I am a smart phone dork.

The other fact is, I have been so extremely disappointed with my purchase and the quality of the photos I have been taking. Now, I understand that the photo quality isn’t going to be near what it would be if it was an iPhone or a regular camera. But, still, I thought  my photos should be better than this. My wife’s phone, which only has a 5 megapixel camera takes way better pictures. Holy disappointment, Batman!

So the other night I’m looking at the back of my phone, and I notice something inside the hole where the lens of the camera is. It appears to be a plastic covering, which I’ve seen before, but just assumed it was there to protect the lens. But it looks a little wrinkled, and I’m thinking to myself ‘this can’t be good. So I get to work and ask our digital expert, Tim, about it. “Hey,Tim, look at this. Is this thing supposed to be on here.” A slight grin crawled onto his face, as he began to disengage the phone from the  case. In silence, I had my answer.

For more than 6 months I have been taking crummy pictures – simply because the sales rep who sold the phone to me, and was kind enough to put the phone into the OtterBox case  for me, failed to remove the plastic lens cover and failed to tell smart –phone-ignorant -me to remove it before taking pictures.

Well, the good news in all of this is that I'm a little smarter than I was six months ago. Actually, I'm smarter than I was two days ago. What's next? You're probably going to tell me that my shoes fit so tight because you're supposed to take the wadded up paper out of the toe of the shoe before you wear it.