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Hop-On Hops Back On the PR Bandwagon
I thought CNN's gushing forth of breathless admiration in today's piece:
'Disposable cell phones on the way' sounded familiar.
Yep, it's Hop-On, the same company Slashdotters took to task last March
('Disposable' Cell Phone Actually Repackaged Nokia)
after reading the San Francisco Chronicle's expose
("Sample 'new' cell phone really just modified Nokia [8260]"). Maybe this time the technology is for real. Or maybe I'm just too skeptical for my own good. Caveat lector.
What I really need is a disposable cell phone that explodes 5 seconds after my minutes are used up.
-- Adam
that's right, that's what's comming next, the "free" cell phone.
How can they give away repackaged Nokias^H^H^H^H^H^H disposable phones? Easy, the "free" cell phone is AdWare!
Yes, it comes with a man in a monkey suit and whenever you're on a call to someone he hops around in front of you begging you to punch him and win $10.
Focus group studdies show that people just punch him and ignore the $10.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
I've seen regular phone cards like this - there is a "scratch off" coating over a code number on the card. You buy the card and then scratch off the coating - like a lottery ticket. My guess is that you call some central toll-free number to enter the code and authorize additional minutes.
Granted, they're not usually so inexpensive, but they're called TracPhones (or TracFones, however you misspell it). In fact, I bought a friend one a few months back for $40 on clearance. (Not like he ever seems to have the money to recharge it with minutes, so it didn't seem to do much good, but oh well.)
What remains to be seen is whether these disposaphones' minutes have to be recharged each month like the TracFone's (unless you buy a $100 "all year account" card) or whether they stay on for longer. I'm betting they'll be good for 6 months after purchase, the way the cheapy long distance phone cards are.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Americans are used to disposable toasters and cars. Disposable wireless phones are just the next step in the trend.
Note the $5 rebate thing that they are proposing. If the rebate is $5, than we can assume that the phones are costing them more than that, probably far more. Assuming that their phones are costing them that much, add in the cost of service with a CDMA carrier... it doesn't seem like the company is going to be too successful.
Besides, the phone looks like garbage. The modern cell phone really took off when models started to look good.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
Me: "Excuse me, do you have debit?"
Gas Station Attendant: "No, but we have a bank machine..." *points*
Me: But there's a $2.50 fee for using that ABM!"
Gas Station Attendant: "That'll be $18"
disclaimer: to be used in regards to the tourist who will be looking for a payphone at 7-11 in 3 months
dmarien
While I have to admit, this does appeal to my 'nifty-keen-go-go-gadget-toy' senses, I am curious what sort of ramifications this has for less than legal uses. This is the sort of thing a kidnapper could pick up to make a ransome call on, or any number of things where it would be useful for someone to be able to track down whose calling.
Yes, yes, I know...anyone worth half a grain of salt could clone a cell phone. I suppose it's just that 'security' sense in me. Otherwise, this wouldn't be such a bad thing for adults to get for kids, so you can call little Johnnie and find out where he is, when he should be home doing his homework, huh?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
If they are stripped down and re-packaged Nokia 8260s, then yes -- using them will be an excerise in futility.
dmarien
A friend ran the North American production operations of a wireless handset company until quite recently, and he told me that, in multi-million unit volumes, the COST of producing the cheapest available handset circuit boards (not including the casing or assembly) was a bit over $20. Since that was just the RF electronics, these phones have to be costing them $30 or so, at least. Basically, once marketing and airtime is included (airtime wholesale will run them at least $0.03 per minute, or $1.80 for the included 60 minutes), if nobody ever recharges the phones, these folks are hosed.
Steven N. Severinghaus
CNN Fooled Again!
Oh, wait, that's not anything new.
.
Besides that, mobile phones are also a "moral minefield", as a NewScientist article points out, because they require components that are arguably fuelling a civil war in Congo that is tearing the country (and its people) apart.
Sure, convenience is nice, but isn't this just a bit much? They offer a $5 rebate to people who bring them back, but I doubt $5 is going to tempt the rich executives who the article suggests these might be marketed at (though it probably will tempt the lower income people it also mentions).
It's also probably going to attract even more kids who don't have ethe money for a phone right now, and who really shouldn't have them for medical (and IMO social) reasons. It's just another case of the predominantly Western consumer looking no farther than his/her own convenience.
I think the point is that in an emergency you could use this phone to make a call. If they have non-rechargeable batteries you should be able to store then for quite a while and have the phone ready in case of emergency. Maybe a 12 volt adapter just in case.
I am dubious of the utility of these phone for receiving calls. I'm sure Hop-On will simply have a bulk deal with the carrier where they get a bunch of accounts and rotate them through the phones as they get "recycled." I think that is the disposable part -- the account not the phone. The minutes are way to expensive to be recieving calls for the last guy who had your number.
Plus no LCD means no Caller ID.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Coming back from an extended trip of Europe and Asia, I was appalled at how far behind our cell phone technology is. GSM seems to be the best solution. You can walk into little cell phone stalls on the side of the street in many countries, get a chip and a card with minutes - for as little as 10 dollars and viola, in a matter of minutes you know have a phone number in that respective country. Refills for minutes are from anywhere from 5 to 50 dollars. Your phone number is yours, doesn't change every time you refill your minutes. And my cell phone worked in every country I was in. I had to buy a phone for there - the GSM phone I had here runs at 1800, not 1900 as it seems to be all over the planet. Any time I happen to go back to Turkey, Greece, or even Singapore, I have my own number. All I have to do is change out the chip, and buy minutes if needed. Now, why can't we have that here in the States?
There's enough food in *total*, but most of it is in Europe and North America, where people have good soil, and good climate and enough unecessary technology to make more than enough food.
I hatee to burst your bubble, but whilst many of the food shortage problems in Africa are man-made, drought still takes a heavy toll, and one of the major problems there at the moment is that the leaders and other better-off countries aren't putting enough money into buying food reservers (many African leaders have a taste for luxuries built on the death of their subjects).
But there is also a chronic population problem in developing countries - they simply cannot sustain the population in terms of food and money, in part because of western policy, in part because of local policy, and in part becausee of natural phenomena.
Indeed, the overpopulation issue might be irrelevant at this point, but the question still remains -- why should we focus on "disposable" technologies rather than make the best use out of the available resources? Whether or not overpopulation is an issue right now has no bearing on the fact that our resources are in fact limited, and we should be putting forth some sort of effort to recycling what can be recycling rather than wasting time and effort churning up more resources.
I for one would include maximizing the utility of our resources as an important component to technological progress. I can understand trying to make things inexpensive, but this whole "disposable culture" paradigm has not been constructed for the benefit of the consumer or the environment in which they live. It's just another way to get people to pay for the same thing more than once.
Will the signal strength be any good, especially in rural areas, with these disposable phones? I'd expect that with sub-standard components, they might not be able to perform as well. We'll see though.
Don't expect to reach the moon, but I think they'll give you a decent range. I'll bet you those earphones/hands free connections are specially design to act as antena.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Here is the page on the FCC website on the approval of the device.
/ forms/reports/Search_Form.hts?fetchfrom=0&form=Gen eric_Search&mode=edit&show_records=50&grantee_code =QHO&product_code=HPN1600
https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/oet
The relevent PhoneScoop page is here: http://www.phonescoop.com/phones/phone.php?id=179
Photos, a users guide, and other information is avalible.
Remember how silly disposable cameras once seemed? "When they first came out, most people thought, 'Ah, why would I want a disposable camera? That changed rather quickly" when consumers discovered new uses for them, said Michaels.
Yes, but I could always buy disposable cameras for around $10 (US), and today can buy cheap non-flash ones for around $6. That's easy to justify. Sixty minutes of air time for $40 isn't quite as easy to throw away. That $10 target is a big psychological barrier for consumers when the word "disposable" is involved.
AT&T can get me $0.05 per minute for state-to-state long distance, twice that for in-state long distance. My non-disposable cell phone gets me 2000 minutes per month for around $100, or $0.20 per minute. If I'm buying a disposable phone, I'd like to pay no more than $0.30-$0.40 per minute, or about $10 for half an hour. For that kind of money, I'd happily send one with my daughter to summer camp, or even take it on vacation myself.
Bottom line: $40 is too much. $20 is managable. $10 is ideal, and if they could hit that dollar amount customers would beat a path to their door.
According to a related story, the cellphones that people commonly use now are practically treated as disposables. I guess they're not out of their minds to create a phone that is at least recycleable.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
How could CNN print this crap without checking into the history of this company? Surely someone there remembers that this same company has pulled this scam before. Hop-On keeps issuing press releases every month or so touting how close they are to product release, and how succesful they are even though no one has seen one of their phones.
According to all of their press releases they will have CDMA, TDMA, and GSM phones. Quite an engineering and desgin feat for a company that employs 15 people.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Its always nice when someone comes up with a new concept but it would be nice if these things stays on the drawing board for the sake of our environment, I'm not saying this will melt more iceberg's or enlarge the ozone hole, but its a trend, we don't need more disposal things we need better built things that last's longer, like my unbreakable HP48..
http://www.intellipool.se/ - Intellipool Network Monitor
Although I understand the importance of reaching the dispatcher(s) quickly, I wonder how much that prominent button (which probably completes the call with one touch) will clog up the 911 services, especially in major metro areas?
Oh yeah, never mind - this is just a scam anyway! ;o))
db
Cig:
ôô
This is so true. Recycled vehicles have performed almost as poorly in the marketplace as hybrid cars.
By 'recycled' vehicle, I don't mean a vehicle that's literally forged from recycled steel from other cars. I was thinking specifically of the fact that it seems like every American must purchase him or herself a new vehicle every two years to be the good little consumer that his or her government wants and to keep up with the neighbours.
Why isn't a used car good enough? Why do Americans' vehicles have to be these brand new, huge, gas-guzzling juggernauts that 80% of the time carry only one person? The US Senate really botched it when they failed to pass the fuel-efficiency standards for SUVs and light trucks, and I predict that in 20-25 years, especially if shit goes down in the Middle East with Palestine and Iraq, there will be another fuel crisis.
No worries though--they'll suck Alaska dry, killing untold species of animal. Fear not, America--your SUVs are safe! Consume away, brothers!
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Americans have no taste for recycling or reuse--everything has to be new (just look at the booming sales of new garish SUVs).
Don't mistake the American love of large things for a lack of recycling or reuse. I've done a lot of traveling, and never seen a country that covets old cars as much as the southern states do. We can't buy old garish SUV's simply because there haven't been any big ones: the few that have long shelf lives (the original Jeep Grand Cherokee wagons, Range Rovers, and Toyota Land Cruisers) are eagerly gobbled up and even seen as status symbols.
This whole disposable cell phone thing is just symptomatic of an American culture that will overuse whatever resources it can get its hands on...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't America the first to come out with stringent emissions standards for cars? Take California, who's heading for a zero-emissions standard by the end of the decade - there's no country taking such a firm stance on emissions.
What's your damage, Heather?
I disagree about Kyocera phones being less "appealing."
When I subscribed to a cell-phone plan, I had the choice of a Nokia series phone, the kind with the internal antenna, which I felt like I was going to break, and couldn't customize very much.
Or, the choice of a Kyocera Q1900, the equally low-end model offered by another company.
It's about an inch taller and slightly heavier, and it fells MUCH less flimsy. It's long enough to go from my ear to relatively near my mouth that I am heard well on the other end, has a retractable antenna (but operates well enough with it down), switchable faceplates, Internet service, and a very verstaile contacts and SMS features.
More expensive phones like the Motorola StarTac phone are just too complicated -- it's almost like a computer, with all the features it has, and it doesn't need to be like that. Granted, it does fold up really small...But that aside, a cell phone is a cell phone, I picked mine based on reviews that said it got better signal quality.
I'll take a comparatively rectangular Kyocera phone with an antenna that can transmit from the center of a movie theatre or mall, or in the sub-basement bagage claim of an airport, rather than the best looking Nokia with a weak internal antenna that can't transmit through the wall of my own house.
shoot a gorilla ourselves. Disposable elctronics are killing our natural habitats like few other things. There is a rather heinous link between mountain gorillas and cell phones :(
http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Hmm, what a good idea--It's very difficult to purchase a plain cell phone _sans_ service plan these days.
//or// get a plan with very limited minutes anyways. You'll probably get a phone free...
I'd like to give a cell phone to my friend as a gift...he certainly has use for it, but doesn't want a phone tied to a service plan he can't afford yet. I'd buy him a cheap phone that can be put on whatever network he'd want.
Prepaid isn't an option...cuz prepaid phones are pretty gay. They sound so "lower class" as told to me by every person I know who owns a prepaid phone. Plus, if you're going to be a light user, either get a plan where the minutes roll over each month
what happens if you buy the phone, but it in your car, forget it's there for a couple of years, then REALLY NEED IT (i.e. break down 100s of miles from home) but some Next Big Thing in wireless comes along and the company stops supporting the protocol that your phone speaks?
What if you buy the phone, hide it in the car, trade the car in forgetting the phone is in there, and somebody gets the phone, calls in and gets your personal info?
Great, so every time you buy a new phone (and let's take GSM as an example) and a new SIM card and now you have to get a new area code.
What a fucking brilliant idea. We don't have enough area code problems already, let's give people disposable phones!
This message brought to you by an Angeleno who is sick of area code bullshit and will happily gore anyone who deliberately hastens the changes.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
Smith & Wesson gets into the pop-up stopper business shortly thereafter.
This idea of "disposable" everything is really attrocious. We have finite resources on this planet, a delicate ecosystem, and yet we go around making as many things as possible disposable, consumable, bulk-buyable. These phones are just another step down the road to complet unsustainability; no technology could sustain this nonsense.
Our "delicate" ecosystem is likely to outlive us by tens of millions of years, so don't weep for its sake.
Nor are we likely to run out of resources. Firstly, if we're willing to process low-grade ores, we have mind-boggling amounts of any desired material available.
Secondly, raw materials will stop being a problem when our garbage becomes a higher-grade ore than what we'd otherwise be mining. Expect recycling to make big money in the next century or two as cities become closed systems resource-wise.
The real issue of conservation is not whether we'll run out of materials or make the planet uninhabitable - it's whether the planet will be _comfortable_ to live on, and whether all of our favourite fuzzy critters at the top of the biological pyramid will still be here for us to look at. This is perfectly do-able; it's just a question of whether we, as a race, consider it worth a little added inconvenience and expense. The jury's still out on this one.
In summary, you are addressing the wrong question with your alarmist rant about ecology.
I'll leave it to someone else to tear apart your political rant.
Or, in other words, they're repackaging someone else's electronics.
I'm sure I've posted this before, but it's worth another mention. It seems Hop-on have promised other 'great' things as well.
In Australia, for months their was advertising for Hop-On - free Internet access on the back of taxi's. The website was www.hop-on.com.au, and you had to go there to register. (URL is now broken).
It seems to be the same hop-on as the website uses the same style and advertising mascot as the one in the US.
The free internet never came, and was never heard of again.
So I would be very skeptical of this company.
--jquirke