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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.
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
Steven N. Severinghaus
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.
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?
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