Cell phones = cultural experiance? (In which I am less longwinded and well developed than usual, you do the math)

Last night, as I was dilligently working away on thesis related stuff, a friend of mine decided that I needed a break. So she came over and brought her fiance and his friend. We were mostly playing video games and carrying on three conversations at once when my friend spotted my girlfriend's cell phone. It's one of those sleak, new "music phones". My friend immediately began to exclaim over the phone's cuteness and coolness, etc. She asked if my girlfriend had downloaded any music, which she hadn't because she didn't know how. So my friend brought out her phone to show her. My friend's phone, which she was given by a well-off friend who trades her's in every few months, was one of those cell/camera/mp3 player phones that flips open to reveal a larger screen, speakers, and a full qwerty keyboard. My girlfriend and I excalimed over the "sick"ness of her phone and she proceeded to extoll it's failings. Next thing I know everyone in the room had their phones out. Martinez (friend of fiance) was attempting to bluetooth his Razr to my friend's Sidekick to give her his ringtones, my friend was demonstrating to my girlfriend how to download media onto her phone, and fiance and I were comiserating about the realitve lameness of our phones.

It struck me that it was the first time I'd had an interaction in which cell phones were treated so strongly as a status symbol and media item, rather than purely as a functional item. It then occured to me that I must pretty backwards that this was the first time I'd had any such realization.

How is this related to media studies? Well, in the same vauge way that everything is, but also specfically for two reasons. First of all my friend's cell phone was an apt demonstration of technological convergence and also of its failings. Yes it's a cell phone/mp3 player/digital camera but it's too big and clunky for her, plus she's more accustomed to texting on the normal phone face rather than using a qwerty keyboard to do so. Should be more conveinant, isn't actually. Thoughts? Second, because it's all about liffestyle branding. Personal validation and expression through consumption which is the hallmark and maintaining force of consumer capitalism. Again, thoughts?