Swopping Bricks

My twelve-year-old daughter just doesn't seem to understand what a mobile phone is for. She is on her fourth at the moment. The first two disappeared (I strongly suspect both are some­where amongst the debris in her bedroom) and the third one only lasted a week because it was a "brick". Her father had to give his old one to his mother (who is at least 83 and does not need a mobile phone), order a new one for himself and swop it with my daughter for the brick.

As far as I can see (but correct me if I'm wrong) the purpose of a MOBILE phone is to be contactable when you're ... well, mobile. The only reason I prefer my daughter to have one is so I can check on her whereabouts, tell her to come home, find out how far from home she is and so on. More often than not, when I ring her the phone is either switched off or the battery has run out. The reason the battery runs out is because she has been playing games on it for hours on end.

As far as she is concerned, if her mobile phone doesn't have the right games, isn't able to send picture messages and doesn't have an internet connection so she can download polyphonic ringtones, it's a brick and she doesn't want it. The current one meets the first two categories but not the latter. My mobile phone meets the first and the last, but not the second. However, she has decided that polyphonic ringtones are more important than picture messages, so her current project is trying to persuade me to swop my brick with hers.

Having said that, she only wants mine until Christmas, when she is expecting me to buy her a phone that not only plays games, sends messages and downloads polyphonic ringtones, but also takes photographs and videos. I am so fed-up of the whole business I may just go to the nearest builders yard and buy her a brick.