A less-than-memorable two weeks of holiday were made at least bearable by some devices I was allowed to play with during my time away from the office.
Unfortunately, the use of technology "forced" me to sync home and work emails on to a smartphone, leading me to be accused of having a sad life by people who proudly boasted they had been to a tropical island where cellphone coverage was non-existent.
There was an added bonus of using a TomTom VIA which became much more exciting once a friend familiar with these devices set it up to almost make coffee in the car while we were travelling.
With four mobile phones between us, also having the latest accessory of a new charger hooked into the TomTom was invaluable.
But first things first.
For a while, I have been trialling a Motorola DEFY on the Telecom network.
This slim phone uses Android and is a hard-wearing device that is water-, dust- and scratch-resistant.
This is a seriously good phone and when the blurb says it has a high-resolution touchscreen display, it means just that.
It took a while to get used of the touchscreen texting. I still get messed up by pressing an S when it should be an A. Included in my predictive texting are words like "csn" and ones which have I instead of O. The size of my fingers is a problem.
The camera proved it could take photos under difficult lighting conditions at a 50th birthday party in Dunedin's Octagon.
But it could also take some reasonable scenic shots during a trip through to the Mackenzie Country.
The DEFY just begs to be played with. I have Beatles Radio downloaded, which plays non-stop Beatles songs. It might sound boring, but not when you stagger your listening of the station.
I have three email accounts coming into the phone, along with Twitter and Facebook. The news feeds use both national and international links and are updated regularly.
Attachments to emails are easy to download; photos are crystal clear.
The weather app is good and I can set it for Auckland, where my children live, and Wellington where I sometimes work.
It can be hard on battery life. The worst day was eight hours but that included plenty of talking, texting and tweeting. The best day was nearly 24 hours, but that included low use during the hours of sleep.
I have only one complaint about the phone. Twice a day, between 6am and 7am and 6pm and 7pm the phone often will not let me text. You open it, it closes down immediately, try again and again for the same result.
Or, you can get one word typed before it closes down. I phoned for advice which was "take it into a Telecom shop". I am trying to find one open in those hours it plays up because during the rest of the day, the phone is brilliant.
At the same time, my daughter Lauren (25) in Auckland has been trialling a HTC Wildfire, also on the Telecom Network.
The Wildfire is HTC's first Android device to be launched in partnership with Telecom.
Lauren reported last week she was well pleased with the device.
"I love the quirky weather application. When it is raining, as it often does in Auckland, and I unlock the phone you see and hear rain before the window wipers wash the screen. When the sun is shining, you are greeted with a bright shining sun over the screen and on overcast days, clouds pass over the screen accompanied with a gloomy misty sound."
It was fun to link contacts to Facebook to see pictures and updates when you either called or texted the contacts. However, there was an issue with linking up friends if they had a different phone number on Facebook.
The keyboard was easy to use for texting but often slow to respond and the camera was reasonable, but did not have good quality in bad light.
"All of the apps I use work well on this phone - Facebook, Gmail, weather - and games are easy to play. But again, the touchscreen is slow to respond and hinders my performance. Well, that's my excuse anyway," Lauren wrote.
"I really like the widgets and setting them out on each of my six home screens. It makes it quick to navigate around and looks cool."
The Motorola DEFY has a recommended retail of $799 and the HTC Wildfire is $599.
