subject: Texted Out? [print this page] The cellphone has become my primary means of communication. We don't even have a land line phone anymore; my wife and I have our own separate numbers, so no one has to worry about taking or misplacing messages. The funny thing is, we hardly ever use our phones for talking. I personally hate talking on the phone for more than a few minutes and will do whatever I can to get off as quickly as possible.
No, for me and my wife, and for most of my friends, the cellphone is for sending email and text messages. One of my friends prided herself on sending over 1000 messages in a week. I really didn't think that was any big deal though, and at one point, the list of text messages from both my wife's and my phone was almost the size of a short novel.
This puts a lot of wear and tear on the phone's rubber keypad, and I've had a couple of phones where the numbers and letters have actually started to wear off. It looked pretty tacky, with the back lighting shining up through the worn gaps in the keys. Not only that, but it actually started getting rough, like chipped paint. It looked bad and felt worse. I wasn't ready to replace the phone and didn't think I was qualified for a subsidized upgrade, so I found a replacement keypad and made the change myself. It was a bit risky, disassembling the phone and all, but in the end everything worked okay and the phone looked almost brand new.
I've seen some friends who have put their phones through the same kind of abuse. It manifests itself in different ways on different phones. Some, like mine, now have blank buttons, and if you didn't know what was originally on the phone, you wouldn't know how to dial a number or send a message. In the worst cases, the buttons have either become too stiff to use or have fallen off completely. One of my friends took her phone back for a replacement after it started losing parts like that.
In any case, if you aren't ready to replace the phone, your best option would be to buy a new rubber keypad and have it professionally installed. If you're feeling daring or know that you already have the necessary skills, make the repair yourself. Even if you have a perfectly good keypad, you might want to replace it just to personalize the phone a bit. It will be a learning experience either way.
