GUEST POST: 17-yr-old Grant Calderone on the future of phone plans.

If you’re asking me to shell out $749 for a smartphone, don’t market it to me like it’s a hamburger.

It’s hard to imagine Apple, Inc. desperate for anything, but the company has been squirming to return to prominence under the smartphone spotlight following the failure of its cheap and synthetic iPhone 5C.

We didn’t see the fall of tech’s Holy Roman Empire, but it was pie in the face of Steve Jobs’ legacy nonetheless. Now, with the the length of the iPhone 6+ exceeding six inches, infamous media manipulator Apple has detoured the public’s attention from design brilliance to bigness in one product. What’s next? A lifestyle clothing line featuring pockets fit for a smartphone king? A true visionary, MC Hammer sported iPants years ahead of their prime.

But baggier garments to fit bigger phones aside, this Jumbotron Industrial Complex was initially born of one-upsmanship between Apple and Samsung over “similarities” in features like voice recognition systems, phone-bump-file-sharing, operating systems, and even built-in kickstands. Now comes the “size matters” contest and the diminishing value companies assign to the intelligence of consumers. Is this arms race towards bigger and bigger screens really what we want?

Who will the i6+ appeal to, anyway? Will it be iOS gamers seeking ever larger screens to maximize Threes, Candy Crush, and Plants vs. Zombies game play? More real estate for thumb swipes on Temple Run? Or are we talking about entitled 9 year-olds, then? Everyone knows at least one of these whiny creatures, and they’re the last people on earth who need to learn the phrase, “Bigger than Bigger.” Who lets a kid use a $750 überscreen phablet when it’s bigger than his head? Whoever it is, they’re going to have fun when the i6 battery runs out and the babysitter needs to be relinquished to Mommy’s oversized iPurse.

And what about the phone loans, service agreements, and data plans with which Apple has now begun to meddle? Will parents of the not-too-distant future be signing a two-year contract with Verizon immediately upon signing their child’s birth certificate?

Come to think of it, why not merge birth certificates and carrier contracts into one document and give new meaning to the phrase “family plan”? Will, “It’s a boy!” be shortly followed by, “and we picked Sprint!” Children are already born onto kindergarten waiting lists; why not born into phone plans?

We’ll have to pick that up another time, though…I just heard my local Apple store got re-stocked.

Grant Calderone, like everyone you know, is currently in the market for a new smartphone. Say hi to this button-pusher on Twitter @grantcalderone

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