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Plain Cell Phones Fading Away?
An anonymous reader writes "According to this Reuters article plain old vanilla cell phones are fading away in the US. Instead, the author claims, (after quoting some 'expert' from this company) that phones with fancy features (cameras, games, etc.) are starting to dominate. I beg to differ - one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls."
Most cell phones have had at least small-scale games on board for years. Nothing advanced, but simple enough things that can keep you occupied during a really boring airport wait. Now, as the processing power increases and the color screens are more common, it's not surprising that the games are getting a little more attention. The new trend is the color screens and cameras, games were already on board.
as long as there is a market, there will be plain jane phones.
Sent from your iPad.
Happy Trails,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I would say that with Bluetooth, cell phones should get less stuff on them. I had a friend said that with Bluetooth a cell phone can just be relegated to a communication conduit. Ideally the cell phone can be made smaller and just stay in the pocket. Or even put in a palm pilot that does not have an ear piece or mouth piece. And have it come with a Bluetooth head set.
Keep it simple stupid. I don't want a camera, I don't want a PDA, I just want a phone so I can make and receive calls. -dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
If you work for the Department of Defense on a military installation, you are not allowed to bring a camera phone onto the facility. A friend of mine did, and they fired him on the spot.
how demand is artifically created by clever marketing and advertisements.
Meaning that money is wasted where it could help people in 3rd world countries more basic things like e.g. survive.
Over 90 years and counting !
I mean after all, the majority of people who don't want cruft around their phones probably don't have cell phones...
Here in Boston the most common phone I see is the cheap motorola phones that you get for $40 with a Verizon contract. Before that it was the cheap ?samsung phone that you got with the Sprint contract.
maybe that's just those of us who aren't into the bling factor.
There's really no other way for the cell phone companies to compete on price, they've pretty much hit the floor on pricing. Therefore, the price points are remaining the same, and the higher end model phones are simply moving to the lower price points.
Getting camera phones into consumer's hands, whether they really want them or not, is also the best hope the cell providers have to sell their data services. The cellular data structure is pretty much already in place at all of the wireless companies, but there aren't very many people using it. Camera phones are great ways to create a 1-megabyte file which then to get out of the phone requires use of the cell data network... notice that provider-subsidized cell phones never have a USB output through which the picture can travel?
My wife and I both got cell phones about a year ago. Hers was the fancy, bonus-cash-off color screen fold-open phone, mine was the standard, free-with-plan Motorola 120e. At the time, I thought I was being nice by letting her have the color phone. While she still likes it, I'm quite glad I let her have it, as the 120e is the perfect 'plain vanilla' phone for me. It's got a basic feature list--datebook, phonebook, and such--has a simple, monochrome screen, a powerful backlight (it comes in quite handy in blackouts,) and a nice design. It's absolutely bulletproof--it has gouges on the casing from where I've dropped, crushed, and scraped it, but it still works perfectly. It can last for days without needing a charge, and the call quality is just fine.
By contrast, the hinge on my wife's phone wiggles and feels somewhat flimsy, it's lucky to go for 36 hours without running out of juice, all the neat 'features' just end up costing money if you want to use them, and frankly, it doesn't get any better reception or sound quality than my phone does. Yeah, she can play Tetris on it, but honestly, I don't feel like I'm missing out on much.
For a good little "I just want to talk on it" phone, I'd recommend the 120e...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
All I know is that I have a Sony T616 blue tooth GSM phone in one pocket and can surf the web with it on my 480x640 Toshiba e805 PDA while sitting on the train going to work. This to me is a good thing given that there is next to no one on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, the train system in the San Francisco/Bay Area) that I want to talk to.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Even though there are people that want just a regular cellphone, i would think that nowadays it would actually not be worth the price for any manufacturer to make them.
When i went to the sprint PCS store a month ago, i did not see a single phone that was B&W. All of them had all the shiny new features, withthe cheapest one being $40. I dont think i will have a problem shelling out 40$ on a phone that does have some of those 'cool' games.
Ok, the new ideas in phone are great, there great if you are a average user who like taking random pictures and having a nice large color screen and who uses a palm. But untill they cameras are 4 mp and the os is linux and there is about 10 gigs of storage on them I will be fine with my normal call only phone.
If you're looking for a phone that just makes calls, guess what -- they all do. Pick one, buy it, and use it. Don't complain about the add-ons because they're not costing you any extra.
Well I would say that Nextel, though they are starting to reach out to that pop culture market...is keeping that "phone that works" trend. Those things are tough...they do't have the damn extra bells and whistles that you don't need, and wherever they have coverage, service is great. I plan on sticking with them for awhile.
MY SECRET DIARIES
from buying a cell phone is that you are unable to find a plain vanilla phone that lets you make calls and store numbers exactly the point of the story.
I would have to say that the only thing keeping from buying a phone is the price/lack of features! If I am going to carry more weight in my pocket, I want it to do something. I am really looking for a good PDA alternative.
The only fancy feature in my motorola flip phone (forget the exact model number) is the voice dialing. Press a button, say the name, it dials the associated number. It's very handy. It has games like Blackjack, they suck, so I don't play them. There are all kinds of other features that I have no idea how they work.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I purchased my cell phone(which has all the bells and whistles, including the camera) because it was like 40 bucks with the plan I bought... I really didn't need all the bells and whistles, but I certainly don't mind them if I don't have to pay more for them.
However, I will not pay money to play pac-man on the phone, that to me is just rediculous...perhaps counter-strike I would pay for....
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
The plain Jane phones will remain so long as they are cheaper than the fancier ones. A more feature filled phone will make someone who wants a plane jane phone happy, while a plain jane one won't make someone who wants more features happy. Becasue of economies of scale, it becomes more eefective for companies to just make the one with more features and sell it. This occurs at the point where they can sell the fancier phone for the same price as the plain phone. I my poit is. Would you pay more for a splain jane phone. If not, then they will probably get pushed out of the market someday.
Holy moly, the day that a cell phone manufacturer comes out with the ability to export/import your address book as an XML document is the day I get a new cell phone. I'm with the author of the blurb. I need a phone to call people, and to store the contact info for those I call. That's it. And it'd sure 'nuff be nice to be able to import/export that info into/out of my system.
I could give a rat turd about cameras and ring tones.
LUDDITE!!! hehe, just kidding :)
I dislike color screens because they drain the battery too fast and 99.99% of the time I use my cell phone for -duh- calling people, not for sending pictures.
Now if it could only play 8 track cartridges :)
Our company has banned cellphones and PDAs with cameras inside the workplace for secutiry reasons. They have also banned wireless network devices. Whenever someone orders a new laptop the admin has to disable the wireless network card before turning it over to the user.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
If I remember correctly, it was released in 1997. It cost me an arm and a leg (my first cell phone ever) but it's still working. Somehow it reminds me of my HP 48SX calculator.
My only gripe with it is that when it's cold (-10 C) outside, the display doesn't refresh properly. Other than that, it's in a perfect working condition.
The owls are not what they seem
People will actually buy more cell phones next year. With 1 billion GSM users there will be more than half a billion phones sold next year.
Part of that is new users, but yes, people are buying replacements like no one had expected.
It's simple really, I want to be able to plug into my phone and think the words, and they person calling me can hear them. Thats all I want, no camera, no games, I'd rather think talk than think how many times do I push 4 to get the letter captial 'I'.
I wouldn't bother anyone by needing to speak loudly in public. That is the most important thing of all. A cell phone that allows me to communicate, while extending the courtesy of silence to those around me. THAT is the killer feature I am waiting for.
AngrPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Camera phones suck, the resolution is worthless. Just a stupid toy to play around with for an hour when you get the phone.
The thing that sucks for me, is I work as a government contractor, and some of the places I go to do not allow photographic equipment, yet I need to have a phone on me. If I forget to take my phone out of my pocket before going to a site, it will be confiscated. All I want is a decent phone with Bluetooth, and no friggin' camera. The Ericsson Z600 with the camera ripped out would be perfect.
I need to have the bluetooth so I can VPN in to my employer while I'm at a site. I suppose a phone w/ a data cable would do, but it's not nearly as convenient.
When you're making a fully-functional cellphone with today's technology, it doesn't cost very much at all to add this extra functionality. I just upgraded to a digital phone from AT&T, went with their very cheapest model...and it still has all sorts of computer games and things on it.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
What do you mean you don't want your phone to do
everything and then some??? You're no real geek!
I demand you voluntarily give up your geek license,
right now!
Proletariat of the world, unite to kill wannabe geeks
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Hell, I don't even care about an address book: give me a cell phone that actually gets calls through as reliably as wired phone systems, 99.9% of the time with excellent clarity. The rest is window dressing.
Personally I just wish the web browser in my phone would load up my hotmail and I'd be happy. I guess I need to set up my own site that shows e-mail in wml or whatever it is my phone can read.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
You beg to differ? Just because you don't want a cellphone with a ton of features that you'll never use doesn't mean those phones aren't dominating the market. I think if you walk in the store of any major cell phone provider you will see that they carry almost nothing but the phones with all of these extra features.
My priorities in a cell phone:
...
1) Size
2) Battery life
3) Weight
4) Price
69,105) Games
69,106) Camera
69,107) Other crap I'll never use
</luddite>
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
I am afraid I can't do that Dave
Help fight continental drift.
phones with fancy features (cameras, games, etc.) are starting to dominate.
Well great then! I think this is fantastic. Think about all of the places that cameras aren't allowed, for example movie theaters. Now think about how many jackasses who leave their phone on and have it ring during the movie.
This will have the benefit of making phones more and more difficult to bring into public places, since cameras aren't allowed in those places. In my opinion, all the better. I hate cell phones, I dislike even having one (I only do because of work), and I'm all for any "features" that cause a backlash against them.
Cell phones are now already banned from strip clubs, certain concert venues are pushing against them, etc. This is a great thing in my opinion.
that i can download video porn with..
serenity now!
As long as people like my grandmother continue to use a cell phone while she lives in Lforida for 6 months out of a year to call home, there is a rather large market for plain cell phones. I think it would be a huge misstep for the big makers to stop creating these.
Think about it: less time to research if all you have to do is add addresses and limited functionality web browsing. All your designers can move on to more important stuff that grabs money from the movers and shakers and you can continue selling cheap phones to Grandma and Grandpa and keep that part of your market.
Cell phones are getting ridculously complex, but there will not be a loss of plain phones anytime soon, just a flood of more complex phones.
what?
I think the main problem is a phone with nothing but the ability to make calls and compile an address book is that it just doesn't have a markbet big enough to warrant interest; why undoubedtly useful for some people who don't need colour screens and assorted games, those people are often in the minority. I want my phone to be more than just a basic tool for calling people, as do most other people my age (16), and as we're a big market, it's how phones are developed and sold.
I guess the blame can be pinned on us young 'uns again =)
If you go shopping into any store most of these camera, PDA phone are so cheap it would make the average consumer almost have to get them. Since the FCC mandated that cell phone companies have to provide number portability, everyone wins. You can switch cell phone companies, keep the same phone number, and reap all the benefits they offer to new members. For exmaple, at a local electronics shop here they are offering $150-$200 of cell phones if you are a new subscriber to their service. Bringing the final cost of the phone to a more affordable $100-$150 instead of the $300 original asking price.
Hmmm.
(...) I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use.
When you take away all most of the features off of a cell phone, they become so cheap they can be disposable. And, in fact, people have already realized that. Why not get yourself one ?
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
and you'll satisify 99% of the geeks on the planet...
best RF reception ever
tiny
amazing battery
fast UI
no useless bullshit color screen that can't be seen in sunlight
plain black and white case that's simple.
the ONLY thing this phone needs is Bluetooth.
how the fsck is this so gawddamned hard for Nokia or SonyEricsson to understand?
The 8390 still goes for over $200 on eBay! T68i's with 10 times the features go for under $40.
I've never seen an industry NOT sell something so many people wanted in my whole life.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I beg to differ with you begging to differ.
Maybe in the US, but here in the UK it is almost impossible to buy a plain black and white basic phone.
Phone functionality works in 6 month cycles. What is high tier this year will be middle tier middle of next year and low tier at the end of the year.
6 months ago colour screens and polyphonic was middle tier, now even the most basic phone these days has them both. Next year the most basic phone will have a camera (and the high tier will also have cameras but be capable of pushing 2 megapixels)
Ever tried getting a phone that doesn't have SMS? You can't and in two years it'll be the same with the other bits of functionality you despise.
So yes, they are dominating. Just because you are holding back doesn't mean they aren't. But when yours bites the dust you'll realise that you'll have to move with the times.
Which may or may not be a good thing depending on your point of view.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I need to be able to store 200-300 phone numbers
I need the snake game
Thats about it.
I'd be happier with a phone that only needs charged once a week/month, and doesn't drop calls, no static, etc...
My cellphone up and died last month, and I went to replace it. I asked at a few other carriers how long it would take to get my number moved to their service, and when they were telling me anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 weeks, I went back to SprintPCS.
Unfortunately, they no longer carry the plain, simple phone style that I prefer. [I was using an LG 4NE1, and before that, a Touchpoint, and before that, one of the early Sony models].
They tried pushing a picture phone one me, and I didn't want it. I got stuck with a Samsung that I'm really unhappy with. It may look all slick with its color screen, and flip action, but it just doesn't deliver in terms of simple functionality that I used to have.
I only bought this particular model because it closed, so the buttons were protected, so I wouldn't call people accidentially when it presses against my keys. Unfortunately, I can't easily open it one handed, and with the screen on the inside, I have to open it to see who's calling.
I should've just dealt with not having a phone for a week or so, and have bought a replacement 4NE1 off of eBay.
Hell, even the ring tones are particularly annoying -- most likely, so you'll use the cool feature of downloading new, snazzy ringtones they can charge $2 each for. And of course, the $15/month service to be able to download the ringtones. But they don't even have The Liberty Bell March, so I can't get back my old one.
It all comes down to the basics of an product design -- the more features you put into something, the more likely it's going to break. I want a phone that makes phone calls, and has a way to store phone numbers. That's all I care about.
[And I'd like a service provider that doesn't make me wait 3 hrs, then tell me there's nothing they can do about the fact there's constant static on my new phone. Mind you, it took them all of 30 sec to tell me that, after they wasted 3 hrs to flash it to new firmware, which was NOT what I brought it in for]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
the phone with the feature and the phone without the features.. which one would you take? the one that's main perk is that it's less confusing becaus of having less features(not always even true) or the one that had the gimmick features and bells, like presence, truetones & etc?
the phones that are otherwise decent tend to have 'extra features' and heck, phones with features that would have been considered overkill few years ago are already in the 100-200$ range so it's kinda hard to pay hundreds of dollars for those features. the truth being that people seem to be willing to pay around 100-150$ more for a phone that is almost identical clone(feature wise, including battery & screen &etc) of the cheaper model just because it has different exterior still amazes me though.
people don't seem to be that hot into buying discount phones(nokias new 1100 & all) around here anyways, so I'd rather have the companies actually making the phones worth their money and not just adding their profit margin every day the phones become cheaper to produce.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I don't have a cell phone.
I rarely find the need for one.
In school it was convenient, I was all over the place and doing stuff.
Now I'm at work, or at home.
I rarely spend hours at undisclosed locations wandering. Social activity is generally preplanned.
Then the money aspect, some people claim they have $10 plans, but most people I know spend stupid amounts, $50-80/month or even more, that's crazy. I'll keep my $1000/yr in my pocket, thanks.
Great little phone. It's NOT a flip phone and it's very slim (.46 inches thick) I've had mine for months, no problems.
http://www.sanyo.com/wireless/demo_6400.htm
There's always a rebate or something available for a phone almost all the time. I have never paid for a cell phone, and I'm on my 4th one. And the phones that come out to be free after rebate are usually the plain jane type I like.
I don't need a camera that plays games or takes pictures. All I need is one that lets me talk (Or pretend to talk) to people... Simple, right? That said, I'd also like it to play MP3s, balance my checkbook, do my taxes, handle my business calls, cook my meals..........
"The amount of intelligence on this planet is a constant. The population is growing." -Cole's Axiom
The business behind not selling plain-jane phones is that it's far easier to detect when one is being overcharged if one's phone doesn't do anything fancy. The fancier the phone, the more hidden and otherwise excessive charges can be added without the user complaining as much.
stuff |
Shameless plug alert!
... :) Every time I hear that in reference to a toy/gadget I look twice; it could be the next big thing.
I like to be able to tell my cellphone by voice to call my wife and have it react without having to touch the phone.
Also my fabulous 1year old Sony Ericsson t68i lets me use it as a remote for my home computer and laptop for watching movies and flipping PowerPoint presentations at work. AND the Bluetooth GPRS connection when the phone is in my wardrobe in some jacket pocket works like a charm. I'm free to walk around a hotel room with my laptop and work in any *ahem* position I like.
Features - real features - like that are really useful. On my old basic Motorola V I didn't know how to use the address book. It was so damn ugly I winced just looking at the menu.
Phones will do more handy things in the future, and don't you for a second make the mistake of so many before you:
"A [insert invention name here]?! It's neat, but who will ever really use it?"
not always tho...
... with Bluetooth a cell phone can ... be made smaller and just stay in the pocket... not have an ear piece or mouth piece. And have it come with a Bluetooth head set.
Great. Then when the obnoxious guy next to you in the restaurant, airplane, or [wherever you can't escape] starts talking loudly on his cell phone, at least you can hear BOTH sides of the conversation.
And even chime in. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There is a small percentage of people who like the old and simple stuff ... like for example cars. I think "An anonymous reader" might have found him/her self in good company with the people described here. DRIVING: My Life, My '58 Lincoln (sorry couldn't find the reg-free link.)
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
"From the consumer perspective ... it makes no sense to go for a low-end handset," ABI Research analyst Kenil Vora said.
/are/ fading away, cause once you bought one of those, it's a long time before it "needs" replacement, and that's not so cool to manufacturing plants that were built to supply the once new cells, or to the expanding telcos serving their shareholder masters. this is about fashion shoes, not work boots. that's all.
key word: *consumer*.
this is about manufacturing markets, dig? in that sense, plain phone
The cell companies are trying to maintain profit margins by pushing you to more complex services as well. I went with AT&T a few years ago because I wanted the unlimited long distance and the huge 'local area' that let's me use the phone over most of the US without paying extra. Last fall I wanted to upgrade my phone but all they will sell me now (based on ZIP) is the new MLife crap that cost a ton more and doesn't allow any of the roaming I selected AT&T for. Wow, I can do all kinds of kewl stuff with a new phone. Too bad all I want to do is make phone calls.
I got a good deal on a refurbished phone that was an older, discontinued model off of EBay and have been happy ever since, but I know that sooner or later they're going to try pushing me to a different service that offers them a higher profit margin. At least I'll be able to keep my number when I jump ship to a different company that will allow me to simply take a basic service at a good rate. Assuming there are any available.
It seems that the usable selection of cellphones available is pretty much dictated by the companies who provide service to them. Anyone can buy an old-style phone off eBay, but to use it the service companies have to allow the phone to be programmed to their networks. When the business pressure of the users of any given phone style is outweighed by the cost and hassle of providing service to those phones (i.e. when current technology progresses to the point where old-style phones get too old and their technology is difficult to remain backwards-compliant with), the providers will, one by one, stop letting the phones be used. Of course, there may remain niche markets for old tech phones in areas where larger numbers of their users live (and maybe willing to pay a premium for the service?).
What makes you think your view represents the masses? Most people just want a good deal on a phone and service plan so that they're not out a lot of money and they get decent service. The phone companies and vendors offer better rebate packages and deal on the fancy phones, and go figure that those sell...
Heck I just bought a Sony Ericsson T610 (Camera phone, MMS, Bluetooth, etc.) for my parents off of Amazon because it worked out to $100 minus $200 in mail-in rebates plus a free Jabra Bluetooth headset. Now the last thing they need is a fancy feature they don't understand, but screw plain and simple with a deal that good!
Silly slashdotter, not everyone in the world is like you....
1. That camera has, most likely, a CMOS sensor (much, much slower than CCD, you can only take reasonable pictures in daylight)
2. Its cheap lens system makes you believe that you're in a different reality (i.e. all squares look round because of the radial distortion)
Integration of features is not bad, as long as you don't sacrifice quality.
The Raven
As the price of technology falls the cost of adding new features is so marginal that there is little to lose by adding them.
However when people go shopping for new phones and compare lists of features there is a lot to lose if thos features are not there.
The guy that can sell the full internet with
a smart browser that can adjust to real HTML
output will make money.
The guys that understand low-bandwidth ( yahoo
and google ) have flourished. The guys
that don't get it ( just about everybody else)
have struggled.
I have no problem using 14.4 connection rate
to check the weather or a football score or
check google or use yahoo email. Mostly I'd
do it from home; but now and then it'd be
nice to cellphone it and check mapquest
for instance.
It' be cool if it worked on my small footprint
screen.
Picture phones? Games? Text messaging?
Gimme break. This crap is for hyperactive
teenagers.
"Reuters article plain old vanilla cell phones are fading"
Vanilla is NOT plain it is a flavor!
I hope this comment is completely off-topic and I get a crappy rating, or modification. Whatever.
In some ways I agree with the author of this post. I mean, yes, it would be nice to have a camera on my phone (except that in all honesty, why would I use that camera when my digital camera is better), or instant messaging (except that keypad typing is really annoying, and thumb-boards are as well, and I'm not a JOT fan), and a web browser (if only I could really see what I was looking at), and fancy ringtones (my self-esteem is so low that I need some fancy song to play when my phone rings so everyone thinks I'm cool), and GPS (ok, so I actually like this feature), and a radio or mp3 player (except I can buy a better mp3 player or radio, a lot better)...
Ok, so maybe these features sound nice to begin with, but in all honesty, when your camera isn't that high quality (and yes, some are going to argue that they get GREAT pictures from their phone, thank you, I work in a publications department, lets compare your phones digital camera to our 10,000$+ digicams), your screen isn't big enough to really do that much, and the phone uses a keypad for text entry, is it really worth all that extra money?
In my opinion, not really...
I'd like one or two 'special features' but in all honesty, all I really want is a phone, an address book (and maybe a planner, if my phone can sync to my computer), really great battery life, and a good signal wherever I go. beyond that, there isn't much I want. I see how it's great that all these devices can come together (eliminate pocket bulge today!) but you end up with one somewhat mediocre device in the end.
I've been considering getting a combo pda/phone for a while, but the cost is just to high compared to the quality, and then when I see that most of them have internal (think ipod) batteries, and I know how fast I go through cellphone batteries, I can see myself being stranded somewhere without a charge when I might really need my cellphone, or worse, killing the battery from overuse over a few months (In the last 7 months I've logged 296 hours on my current cellphone)
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Nope
They are not fading away through any action of the consumer. They are fading away because the manufacturers are forcing tons of features down our throats! Like the poster, features that I neither want or will ever use. But features designed to exact an ever higher price tag. I too an not getting a new phone for the same reason.
I'm in my late 20's, in the tech industry (coder) and I have never owned a cell-phone. I can count the number of times I've even used on - on one hand.
Until cell phone use is as cheap and reliable as a land-line, I see no reson to waste $30, $50, $100 or more on a cell phone every month. $30 would be worth it if it came with unlimited domestic long distance 24x7, no outages, no dead-spots, no connection isues...
For my money, I'd rather use a landline at home, a landline at the office or stop and use a payphone for a whole 25 cents.
Now, if I *DID* own a cell phone, I would want a small, high-quality, reliable, sleek, PHONE. I don't want to play games on it. I don't want to surf the net on it. I want to keep a list of phone numbers and *maybe* a list of addresses. That's it. I don't want to take photos with it or record audio, either. Stow all that superfluous shit away and give me a bigger, more powerful, longer-lifed battery and better internal antenna instead.
Anyway, I don't see myself buying a cell phone for another five years at the least - if ever.
By popularizing small CCD cameras this way, for example, the cost of CCDs goes down even further, thus changing the cost structure of full-blown digital cameras.
Also, it is cheaper and simpler for the company to offer a few phones with bundled features than more phones with a wider range of features. Think about warehousing, distribution, the risk of unsold inventory, and so forth.
The people behind all this stuff aren't stupid...at least I hope so.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
I love my Motorola 720. I use damn near all the features. With its address book and calendar, it's replaced my PDA. Since I can grab games and send e-mail (for the cost of my air time minutes), I don't need to dig my laptop out of its bag to amuse myself or keep up on intra-office communication while I'm stuck at O'Hare for hours on end.
Plus, considering I got it for only $50 more than the "free" phone Verizon was giving out with the contracts, the deal was even sweeter.
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
I hope that you are pointing to the fact that by removing extras, like the Nokia plastic housing, and claiming it is your product is bogus.
I carried a nextel around for a couple years. Now my job doesn't require that, and I don't want it. I want something real small and unnoticeable, and I'm willing to forego gadgetry to get that.
"pay for hundreds of features"
Are you insane? Most phones, like mine with a camera, games, sound recorder/player, high-res (for a phone) screen and all kinds of stuff, are free when you sign up for service. Mine was more than free...I got $190 more in rebates than the cost of the phone ($80 for the phone, $270 in rebates). (I know some people are going to complain about having to sign a one year contract, but the contract breaking fee is $120, so you still end up with $90 net and the phone if you break the contract before the year is up.)
I beg to differ - one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls.
Oh right, so because you're begging to differ, the article is inaccurate? Frankly speaking, you're a moron. I just got a new phone last weekend. It cost $70 after rebate.. it has a camera, color screen, ringtones, etc, etc, etc. Sure, I'm never going to use 95% of the features, but $70 is cheap. If I wanted a boring phone w/ a plain screen, no camera, no way to hook it up to my computer, etc, it would have been FREE. So you might want to dream up a new reason not to get a phone, because so many deals give you free phones now that there's no need to "pay for hundreds of features that I will never use"
"All I want is an address book and a way to make calls."
And the next guy wants a color screen. Or a reminder feature. Or maybe a game - just one, nothing more. Well, maybe two. Space Invaders and Pac-Man, maybe some Tron/Snake/whatever. Crab catch.
Point is, everyone lists the things they want - and most of them don't match up. So the companies add as much as they can so that they'll attract as many people as they can. Maybe you don't use more than 40% of the features. Maybe the next guy uses 40%, but his features are different from yours.
All I want is good reception - I think everyone wants that. Who goes into the store and asks for intermittent connections, dropped calls and static?
This is not the first time I see people complaining that all they want is a plain phone, and somehow contrasting this to research showing more complex cell phones are starting to dominate.
Bullocks. I work for a cell phone carrier, and the simple fact is that we don't sell more high-end cell phones because demand far exceeded expectations (and, thus, supply).
People mainly want games, though cameras are also very much in demand. The main constrains wrt cameras is price and low quality compared to "traditional" (hah!) digital cameras. Both these constrains are not intrinsic to cell phone cameras. For one thing, one can expect volume in cell phones with cameras to far exceed volume in digital cameras alone.
Now, the people I mainly see complaining about this features are people who grew up with notebooks and pdas and digital cameras, and, having just reached that point in life where one becomes used to the world, are suddenly unhappy that it keeps changing.
To those, I have only one comment: dinossaurs!
(8-DCS)
You'll get longer battery life, longer discharge cycles. Not to mention that you can speak on the phone and do the typing on the PDA, for example. And, of course, let me choose if I want a wireless connection betweent the two, or just plain cable.
Bite my shiny metal... oops... Nevermind!
Not wishing to troll, but I've noticed that a lot of people on Slashdot aren't embracing mobile technology as much as they might. Maybe the coverage in the US is bad, maybe the calls are expensive, I don't know.
But GPRS, MMS, Phone, and Bluetooth are all essential for my phone. I want to browse the web while on the bus, I want to snap a picture, and email it to someone. I want to have a sound recorder to record interesting stuff.
Get your own free personal location tracker
I'm convinced cell phone companies incorporate game so that buttons quickly wear out warranting the purchase of a new phone. It sure doesn't help battery usage!
It's all about striking a balance. I've been using a nokia 52xx for about five years now. Yeah, it would be great to check the weather or traffic reports, but as long as my friend is putting in ridiculous hours in from of his computer, anything on the web is just a call away.
How often have you ever looked at your phone and said, "I wish you had more bullshit technogizmo garbage!" I can see why you could use an address book and MAYBE even a couple of games to kill time when you want to. Video display, voice recognition, fucking cameras....NOBODY NEEDS THAT SHIT.
If you work for the Department of Defense on a military installation, you are not allowed to bring a camera phone onto the facility. A friend of mine did, and they fired him on the spot.
I thought the whole POINT of the cameras was to get people used to them so they could be used for spying, detective work, etc.
Like the stereotype of the japanese tourist with the camera. They were ALL OVER the US starting soon after WWII, taking pictures of everything.
Turns out it wasn't just that one of the first non-junk manufacturing industries they got going was mass-produced cameras. A lot of it was industrial espionage. They went back and cloned auto plants, cerial factories, etc. right down to the layout of the machines.
(That's why it's so much harder to get tours of manufacturing plants these days. Kelloggs, for instance, used to give plant tours all the time. Was a regular tourist attraction. But they stopped them entirely after the Japanese cloned the rice crispies machine.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At one point in my life, I purposely went out to purchase the geekiest watch I could find. That thing transferred phone numbers from my computer just by holding it up to the computer screen, and it was like wearing a hocky puck. I came to hate the thing, and have taken to purchasing the plainest watch I can find. One with actual hands, and a mechanical date function.
One of the things that I never understood about email clients was why they insisted on trying to store all of the contact information about a person. Who sends things to a snail mail address from an email client? Attempting to keep these things synched with your regular contact manager (like a PDA) is silly because I never try to send email from my PDA, and I have three times as many email addresses as I have real world address and phone number sets.
Inappropriately added functionality usually just makes a device more difficult to use, or at least distracts from its primary function. I have a PDA for my addresses; I don't need them on my cell phone. I don't want to have to whip out an entire PDA every time I make a call. The games are cute, but they just drain the batteries more quickly. The only unusual feature that I actually use on my cell phone is the Direct Connect, which I consider to be a logical extension. Everything else is a waste of electronics, a waste of my time, and a waste of the energy it takes to lug the thing around.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
A quick scan of verizonwireless.com shows phones starting at $9.99. Yes, that model is web enabled, and yes there's a required contract (though having to sign a contract is a separate question from having to "pay for hundreds of features that I will never use"), but how much less does the poster expect the phone to cost? No, there isn't any way to take a top of the line sleek cool looking phone and sell its unwanted features back to the company to get it for a price of your choosing, but I'm afraid that's the way the world works. Hope the poster never has to shop for a new car....
...the way of the future. ;-)
In 10 years those will be wearable PCs actually.
Pleeeeezzzzz. What was he taking pictures of? I bring my laptop and digital cam to work all the time, no problems. Just don't walk down the flightline and stick your nose in some random hanger and start snapping pics. But fired? No. Sorry. Ask your friend what he *really* got fired for.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I can honestly say that I would prefer a small, light cell phone with great reception, text messaging, vibrate, silent, and a few ring tones...games are optional...and REALLY LONG BATTERY LIFE...
:)
That's all I ask. I don't ask for much. The buttons don't even have to light up
I find it frustrating to say the least that the manufactures want to push gadgets and the latest technology just to make more money. I use 900mhz phones in my house, this keeps my 2.4Ghz and 5.8Ghz range open for networks and baby cameras. But you won't find that good of selection of these 900mhz phones available anymore. So, I get the 900mhz range all to myself. I have the same problem with Cell phones. I just changed to T-Moble and the representative asked me, "What features would you like on your phone?". My response of course was, "I would like it to make phone calls very well, thank you!." I also like to sync my calendar and contacts but I feel that is a bonus to good phone service.
You want a phone that has an address book and can make calls - but you dont mention you want it to receive calls. Smart :)
i want a cell phone thats as large as the distance between my ear & mouth.... whys that so hard to understand.
It's funny that the author begs to differ, and then goes on to say that what's keeping him from buying is that the phones have too many features.:) The article isn't saying that people don't want plain phones, but that their not being offered...
It's not a cell phone. It *just* a plain phone that you can take with you to every place! You can only make calls with it!
*BUT* therefore it has no problems with viruses or firmware updates and the bios is ultra stable!
Imagine that...
If only I could find an investor for this great product.
I love my Nextel phone. I don't believe they have any phones availble that show anything more complicated than text. In my experience the build quality of the Motorola phones it quite good; I beat the hell out of my phone and it's been running strong for 2.5 years and my pager before that was likewise a tank. The only addition beyond a simple phone and phone book is the Direct Connect digital 2-way radio. That is at least a functional extention instead of a diversional one.
My only gripe, and this may be with my previously mentioned ancient phone, is the phone book organization. Entries are in the order in which I enter them. I can't alphabetize them or anything. But along the lines of the High Fidelity record reorganization, the "autobiographical" method of locating a single number in a sea of contacts is "comforting" to some extent.
So the fact that you don't want one of the fancy phones means that they are not dominating the market? Have you tried not wanting Microsoft Windows, because the kind of competition your force of will creates is just what the EU is looking for.
it's just trendy, I had a phone with internet access on it, and I grew out of it in about a week. I don't have it on my current phone, but I have some terrible games that I only played to insure they were bad. really, I just want a phone that works, and doesn't hang up on people. all the other stuff is just advertising gimmicks.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Instead of giving me cameras, games, hand jobs, with my phone; why can't you just give me a phone that works almost all the time and gets great reception?
I live in a moderatly sized city with plenty of cell phone vendors and (supposedly) a lot of towers. I can't even get reception with my phone in my own home, let alone when I'm at work inside a building built to withstand a hurricane (thick cement walls).
All this extra stuff is really an effort to divert the attention away from the base product, which, for most people, is still a sub standard product. Everyone I know (except those with Nextel's) has to jump through hoops to even write a grocery list down on their phone, let alone hold a real conversation. My phone was 215 dollars, has a big lcd screen, polyphonic ring tones, games, screen savers, internet access, but can not do what it was designed to do properly.
Last time I checked, I bought a phone, NOT A PDA! So why can't you give me a phone?
who really cares if a phone has feature x or feature y? why complain, just get the free phone if you don't want to pay.
First solid rule of economics: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
The cost of those phones, plus a whopping profit, are built into your cell phone rates. You bought that phone, by locking yourself into an overpriced contract. Then you bought it again, and again, and again.
Fortunately, once the design work is done MOST of the features of the phone have very low per-unit incremental cost. (Just a little more ROM, for instance.) Cameras are an exception, of course.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'd rather have a crapload of features I don't want and be able to turn them off, than something with no features at all, that I would have to walk over hot coals to enable.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Does anyone recommend phones with PDA features, or are you better off keeping the PDA separate?
My wife wants a PDA and asked my advice. I'm thinking a combo phone/PDA may be good for her because she can barely remember to bring her head along when she leaves the house. Carrying two electronic devices may be too much. As far as PDA features, she doesn't need anything fancy. She just needs calendar and address features.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Hi There,
I do have to agree with the poster about plain cell phones fading away. For those who are just looking for a phone that works well, try the Siemens S55. I absolutely love it. It is a great phone and the games are optional. You can connect the phone to your PC to delete them or use the phone's filemanager. So, it is upto the owner of the cell phone whether they want games not at the descretion of the manufacturer.
This way, the phone will boot faster. The phone has a camera, but this is optional and needs to be attached to the phone.
It has an excellent battery life.
I have longer than average fingers, and one thing I have trouble with is how closely spaced the number buttons are on most bar style phone. I almost have to get a flip phone just so the buttons are far enough apart not to cause my hand to cramp when I text message.
"My head hurts, My feet stink, and I dont love Jesus." -Jimmy Buffett
Why can't they make a phone with an address book that easily synchronizes with my computer address book? Why do I have to retype in all my phone numbers every time I get a new phone?
Features don't mean anything if your laying in a ditch somewhere and you phone don't work but you can play Pac Man on it or take a picture of the wolf thats putting on the dinner bib while waiting for you to expire. I'd rather have a more durable and reliable featureless phone then something that would make Captain Picard blush for being so out of it.
I still havn't gotten a new phone in years.. mine still works.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Which often results in products that suck, of course, cause the work that makes for a really good product is usually subtle, or even invisible. Which means you can't sell it. So you concentrate on crap that actually makes your product less useful. You might call it the Copeland Effect.
It's not that there's no market for simple phones, it's that the microprocessor revolution has reached the point that there's so much excess capacity in the cheapest phones they can make they might as well throw in some doodads.
Find me one cellular company -- just ONE -- whose cheapest phone doesn't have some basic games onboard.
I'm sure it's true that the plain old cell phones are dying away; have you tried to buy a "plain" cell phone lately? It's very difficult, almost all of them have color screens, cameras, et al.
Combine that with the fact that most cell phones break after a few years, and so need to be replaced by these new fancy ones, and the new ones "dominate."
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
Just think of all the IM spammers you're putting out of work by going with a plain phone! That's awful selfish of you.
The cell phone weilders never seem to have these problems, and my only theory is that it's a combination of denail (like users of the _fill_in_the_blank_ operating system who claim everything is perfect and glorious) and something the cell phone companies do to make sure the people *with* the cell phones hear a better connection than the beleagured call recipients on the other end. Some sort of imbalanced bandwidth allocation.
As for the advanced features, I work someplace where even audio recording devices are disallowed for security reasons. I looked into getting a phone recently, but the models with the form facotrs and displays I liked were NOT available WITHOUT a camera or voice recorder.
--- Ban humanity.
...my AudioVox CDM-8500vm that I use with my Virgin account.
Note, I do not use my cell phone extensively. A $20 top up generally lasts me three months, with a little bit to spare, and the money rolls over as I top up again. I currently have 27.40 available, good through April 7th.
Receiving Text messages so far has been free, and I have messaged my daughter fairly heavily one day with no cost, though she has a Virgin Mobile cell phone as well. (I gifted her with her own account on an earlier phone for her birthday.)
If you use your phone extensively, I wouldn't recomend it however.
As far as "featues" No games, no camera, basic callendar, basic address/phone book, Calculator and stopwatch. I get about a week of standby time, couple of hours of talk time (depending upon how long it's been since I charged up).
I hesitate to say it has a web browser, as it is locked into the Virgin eXtras site, and so far I have not seen any way to get out of there. Ring tones available from Virgin, which are OK.
For me it has been a good purchase. I don't claim the same for others, though I do know a couple other people with one or another of the phones.
-Rusty
You never know...
I think people will hang on to their old cell's till the day the things die, like they promised eachother. ..and now they continue to live happily ever after..
one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls.
If that's all you want, you'd better buy a phone, sooner rather than later.
Someone else mentioned Motorola 120e; I have a Motorola 120i, which is pretty much the same, and I agree with the earlier poster. It is a good phone which should fit your needs without too much extra fluff.
zach
I beg to differ - one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls.
...never assume that your preferences are the market's preferences. I simply want a plain phone too. And I think phones will lots of gadgets will dominate. That's not a contradiction. That is simply a realization that I'm probably not average. Why I buy AMD and think Intel will still dominate the mass market too.
Same with that incredibly cool geeky tech gadget - it might be a hit on slashdot, lots of support. And when you try selling it to Joe Average, it's a flop. Or the other way around. I know there are lots of products which I'd never buy, that are still huge hits. Maybe it's not for your market segment. Maybe it's not for you in specific. Neither of that may matter, though.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Strongly agree with that.
Cell phone manufacturers are concentrating on adding useless features on the phone.
Who the fuck really want to browse internet with a 1 inch screen, shoot photo with a 1M pixel camera, or play stupid pac man on a bloody phone?
They should concerntrates on PC connectivity instead of adding those useless gimmicks.
How can the author of this post "beg to differ" by saying one of things stopping him from buying a new phone is because of the fancy extras, when the article he pointed out says plain vanilla phones are fading away? If he really "beg to differ", he'd should be saying, no, they aren't fading away. Just nit picking. :p
Since when are you "paying" for these extra features? The service provider is the one paying!
For example, via Amazon you can pick up a shiny new nokia 6610 with T-Mobile and get $50 cash back (net after rebate). If you buy a simpler phone you won't get more money back. T-Mobile (and the rest) are betting on you using and paying for the extras in usage.
If you just want a plain-old cell phone, the extra features will not stand in your way...
"When the phones with the features are as cheap as the plain jane phones, then they will replace them." My cell phone, which has capabilities for Internet Access (if I chose to put it on my plan) and a handful of games, and a calculator, and probably some other stuff I don't even know how to use, came free with my cheapskate call plan. When you can get these extra unnecessary features without paying a dime for them, there's no reason not to get one if the part you want works.
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
// #define THE_QUESTION (TO_BE) ((TO_BE) || !(TO_BE))
//)
... and the // :-)
Does not work. And would not work even if it wasn't in a comment (started by the initial
THE_QUESTION (EXISTENTIAL)
would expand to:
(TO_BE) ((TO_BE) || !(TO_BE)) (EXISTENTIAL)
which can be a syntax error or not. I think you want:
#define THE_QUESTION(TO_BE) ((TO_BE) || !(TO_BE))
without the space
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
This is quite different from "the greatest part of its sales". All the above phrase means is that sales of lots-of-features phones are increasing faster than sale of just-a-phones. This is practically a truism regarding new product classes vs. old product classes. It doesn't necessarily mean the old product class is vanishing (though of course that's also possible).
I have a lots-of-features phone issued by my employer. If given the choice, I'd trade it in for a just-a-phone on which I can actually understand the other person (and vice versa).
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Now while i understand the camera issue, I do not realy agree with the idea that phones are bloated. I have an ericsson t610 thru t-mobile and it is silly awesome. The address book is more full featured than any phone ive seen yet(except for the pda/phone variety) and the display is 10 times better than a gameboy advance(IMO). I went out and bought a usb bluetooth adapter so that i could use my phone for internet access from anywhere i get decent service. I like the fact that i can download and install a java applet with no trouble at all. I like that i can play a pretty good version of bust-a-move/puzzle bobble whilst on the crapper. The camera has also come in handy af few times(although not in the same situation as puzzle bobble :)).
I think that the features on this particular phone are perfect. they help me to do things that i couldnt do before with my other phones. I would suggest that if you believe that cell phones are bloated overall, you check out another provider/vendor.
The / in
The AC who wrote this blurb tells us of a study saying that feature-heavy phones are starting to dominate the market. Cool. And then he tells us that he 'begs to differ,' because 'one of the few things stopping [him] from purchasing a phone is the fact that [he does] not want to pay for hundreds of features that [he] will never use.'
/. blurb is not the place for you to tell us about your cell phone preferences, your cat or the tiles on your patio. But most of all,your reasoning is flawed. A report says a certain taste is starting to predominate, but you beg to differ because you have a different taste? I know this post is trollish/OT but this is the kind of reasoning flaws that just drive me up the fucking wall. Either you think that the market analysis is wrong because your personal tastes don't match with that of the rising trends and it means you have an overinflated ego and are an idiot, either you meant to say that you beg to differn with the people buying the feature heavy phones and then you are (arguably) out of place in a /. blurb, and cannot formulate simple thoughts clearly and are, therefore, an idiot.
Ass.
First of all, what do we care what kind of phone you like? A
Thank you, now feel free to moderate me to the gates of Hell.
I hate to see the demise of plain cell phones. I don't mind if others want to waste their money on these "services" (really, just methods to entice fools to part with their money), but as the phones get more complex, they are more likely to fail.
I'd hate to be in an emergency when I really need my phone, only to have it fail because of some bug in the software which is related to a game or the camera.
Proverbs 21:19
The word "phone" means sound, meaning speaking to someone. The way to think of cellphones now is to think of them as "all the electronic devices I need to carry with me all in one package." That is the future of them, and it's great. Sure, a lot of people still just want voice and a phone book, but that is a commodity market now. Manufacturers don't make money selling those. Manufacturers make money selling camera/PDA/Web/music/video/game phones. Hey, you can always buy the lowest-end phone and you won't be paying for extra features you don't want. However, you can't really buy a phone without messaging and wireless web these days. Just don't use those features and let the rest of us have fun sending phone pictures.
"I beg to differ - one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls."
Most companies are giving you the phones with all the features when you signup. What is a bummer is that you have to switch carriers every so often to get a newer phone.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
To be honest, to me this smacks of Luddism; the additional features you bemoan clearly don't add to the cost of the phones, as the 'baseline' phone price hasn't increased in the past 3-5 years - in fact, it's decreased. I don't know of any phones on the market which do not have "an addressbook and a way to make calls", so the argument is basically pointless.
On the flip side of the argument, I've been using a Sony Ericsson P900 since it came out (and the P800 before that) - it's at the other end of the spectrum to the type of phone you describe, having a full-function PDA, Web browser and camera included - and it's been a total revelation. Having instant Web access wherever you are is astoundingly useful, and applications which make specific use of this feature are starting to appear - for example, I use a nifty little program which downloads the weather forecasts and exchange rates every day (or on demand), so that these data are always available to me. Until you try it, you won't think it's any great shakes, but once you have, you won't go back...
In short: the additional features aren't useless. If you don't want to use them, don't use them, but most people will get utility from them. And they're not adding to the cost of the phones; the increased sales of new models lead to economies of scale which bring down the cost of all phones. Win-win.
At some point this morphs into believing that "because we're offering it, it must be what the market wants". Basically people making the standard mistake of confusing cause-and-effect and also cause-vs-correlation.
Market "researchers" who make a living off this play off this fuzzy thinking all the time. Obviously if you tell people what they want to hear ("you're doing a great job trying to put an expresso maker in a cellphone"), they like you more and pay you money!
Technology should be used for its original purpose. It is completely ridiculous that cell phones contain so many useless features.
The factors to consider when buying a cell phone are no longer call time, standby time or address book capacity. Instead customers want to know "How many Java games can it run?", "How many MP3s can it store?" or "How many photos can it hold?".
Cell phones are slowly loosing their original purpose as communications devices and becoming nothing more than fashionable toys.
When I purchased a new phone about 6 months ago, one of the features I was looking for was a phone WITHOUT a camera. The problem was, that all of the high end(ie small) phones had cameras built in. I finally found one, but this is going to be a problem for many employers/employees. Where I interned last summer (a major defense contractor), cameras of any kind were not allowed on site. This means that if I had purchased a camera phone I would not have been able to take it to work with me. Many people were already starting to bring camera phones to work, and this was last summer. This is where the problem for the employer begins. Does the employer fire an employee that brings a camera phone to work? In the case of defense contractors this can get really ugly, because the company can get in big trouble if they find out that there are unauthorized camera going to and leaving the plant site every day. This puts the employee and the employer in a bind because it is very reasonable for an employee to want to bring a cell phone with him to work, but even if they leave it in their car while they are working, if it is a camera phone it is still illegal.
Who decided cellphones should have tiny buttons, in staggered rows? Hint to you designers: look at a Western Electric POTS 2500 (touchtone) set.
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
* 0 #
There! Do it like that!
The latest Slashdot meme.
The problem is that the manufacturer's idea of "enough computing power" differs from mine. The free Sony/Nokia phone that I got has a color display and all sorts of whiz-bang features. Which is fine with me, except that every time I try to do something like pull up a phone number from my address book, the "please wait" thingy has to churn for about three seconds. I can't tell you how many times I've dialed the wrong number because of this ridiculous lag time. Not to mention the fact that it takes another six seconds to disconnect after you realized you dialed the wrong number.
they're for p0rn - how else are people going to get their fill of secret under-skirt views and unattractive people having sex in public?
I thought the first role of technology was to give easier access to naked pictures of people. Maybe it just seems that way...
So I recently had the opportunity to get a new cell phone (Read: My old Motorola StarTac got busted.) I went out and did a little shopping. Not only did I find out that there was no compelling reason for me to upgrade, but that the new phones actually got a worse signal than my "old" StarTac. So I tell the counter person that I just want a new StarTac. Thankfully, they still make these, and I was able to get one. And the reason I think this article is BS...is that he told me that, STILL, the old clamshell StarTacs are their best-selling phones. I think I got mine over 6 years back. That says alot. I can't see myself getting a new cell phone until they combine a fully-functional PDA and a cell phone into one, and sell it at a cheap price. And that's only because I've been needing a PDA recently, but hate carrying more than one electronic gadget.
Quote:
Offered under the aegis of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), OMA DRM 2.0 allows music, movie and games providers to offer "premium content" to mobile phone users safe in the knowledge that handset owners aren't going to copy the material anywhere they shouldn't.
Help fight continental drift.
I find it amusing that the gist of this article is that they no longer offer "vanilla" cell phones, and at the same time the author wants a cellphone/address book. I thought a vanilla phone would simply make phone calls?
People don't realize, and it's not really documented, but *any* nokia phone with a IR/BlueT/serial connection will export the addresses in a XML format. check it out.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The cell phone market is slowly evolving, just as the automobile market did.
In the beginning, cars were simple and unreliable. Then lots of extra fancy features got added, but the cars were still unreliable. Finally, the cars got reliable, and now you can get them with or without the fancy features.
Right now, the cell phone manufacturers are foolishly thinking that they can cell more phones by adding more features. And for a short while, their sales will go up. But the sales will drop again as people learn that the phones still aren't reliable or easy to use.
Slowly, the manufacturers will learn that reliability is important for both simple phones and snazzy ones. If a phone isn't durable, is difficult to use, doesn't get good reception, or has bad sound quality, nothing else matters.
Market forces do work in a true capitalistic economy... they just take a long time to balance out.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Is a step up from the Kyocera 7135:
:)
- Palm OS 4.x on a 40 MHz Dragonball processor
or
Palm OS 5.x on a 200 MHz ARM processor
- Graffiti input*
- 16 MB memory (or more)
- MMC/SD or other memory expansion slot
- Analog and Digital (prefer CDMA so I can get it on Verizon)
- Decent digital network (Verizon's Express Network is the minimum acceptable)
- GPS, available to the OS (not E911)
- Color display**
- Clamshell form factor
- Decent speakerphone capability
- Ability to record digital voice memos to the expansion memory in a standard format that I can synch to my PC/Mac.
* T9 predictive key-entry would be a good addition, too.
** Standard 160x160 is acceptable, 320x320 would be better.
I don't want a camera, since cell phone cameras suck. I don't really need Bluetooth. I don't need an MP3 player in my phone, although I don't object to it.
Is this too much to ask? In a stable platform that doesn't suck too much juice?
Failing that, I'd settle for a memory expansion on my 6035
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Actually, "plain old" cell phones could be fading away: there are tendencies (mostly "imported" from Japan) that mobile phones will be more like fashion appliances than utility devices. There were some fancy design studies for UMTS prototypes (see a few here, although they are mostly harmless) and, a good example, are the Xelibris from Siemens. Agreed, none of those phones is selling strong, but the tendency to move phones into the fashion department is there. It won't happen tomorrow, and it may not happen at all... but you never know!
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
" one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls."
Anybody else read this and feel like the dude's being way too picky?
a.) Avoiding use of the extra features is not a chore.
b.) You're not going to find a phone without those features and have it be so much cheaper that it's worth the time to find it.
c.) Has he tried any of those features? I thought games on my phone would be stupid until I ran out of reading material in the bathroom.
Maybe I just don't like people being righetously close minded.
"Derp de derp."
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Let me rephrase that...
I care about functionality related to its being a phone, and being useful to me as a phone. I don't care about it being used as a web browser, game system, PDA, remote terminal, phone, instant messaging client, or any of the other new features they're merging into today's phones.
I do care about ease of use, clarity of signal, size, weight, expected time on a single charge, cost and availability of replacement chargers, and hell, I'd even like to have it receive phone calls, as well as be able to make them.
Better?
[And I also miss rubber buttons -- these all metal ones might look nice, but you have to look at the phone to use it, as they're so slick, you can't tell if you're on the button or not when holding it]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
When I got back from working in London, I was looking for a new carrier that had some of the features I had seen in while I was over there, namely SMS and WAP.
How stupid and pointless is SMS? I mean, really, all I need is a phone to make calls with. I don't need silly doo-dads like text messages! It's a phone! I just need to use it to call people!
Yet, text messages have completely penetrated American culture (as they had in London). Conversations have overhead. "Hi, how are you, how's the weather, how are the kids [INSERT REASON FOR CALL HERE] Well I should be going, have a great day, yeah we really should go skiing some time, okay, I'll call you next week, have a great week, blah blah blah". Text messages, on the other hand, are concise. "I got tickets to the superbowl, yay me". And if the recipient is away from her phone? Fine, she'll get it whenever.
And, thus, almost everyone who bought their phone "just to have a phone to make calls on" and conceded to having text message capability has really enjoyed the text capability. A couple months ago, my father got his very first mobile phone and was sending me text messages within a week.
WAP hasn't taken off as strongly in the United States, probably because it costs an extra couple of bucks (and, thus, unlike text messages can be averted). However, those who did break down and pay the extra couple of bucks think it's the best thing since sliced bread. If, for some God-awful reason, I have to be away from televisions on Sunday, I can get the football scores immediately. Just 45 or so minutes ago, I checked the weekend weather and ski reports at lunch.
So why are we so averse to technology (or techno-creep)? I constantly hear even technophiles saying "I don't need my phone to do that". Get with it: YOU DO NEED YOUR PHONE TO DO THAT, YOU JUST DON'T KNOW IT YET!
Most of the "new mobile phone technology" has been alive and kicking in Europe, the UK, Asia, and Africa for years before coming to the antiquated United States. It has all been tested in those climates. It is all successful technology before it reaches the United States.
Which brings us to the latest debacle. Camera phones. Camera phones have seen wild success in the UK. As they caught on, the Brits found new uses for them and just continued until millions and millions of images were flying through the clouds over London.
Personally, I'm just waiting for my contract to expire so I can get the best and brightest camera phone out there. I already know I can use it to take pictures of the goofy things I see every day and send them to my friends. It also allows me to have a cheap digicam on my person at all times. Sure, it's only 640x480, but all I usually want is a "look, it's me on top of Mt. Everest! Hi mom!" for the ole' website. I'm not shooting weddings.
Whoever said necesity is the mother of invention is dead wrong. Invention is the mother of creativity.
:wq
... computers you could talk to.
But what do we get?
Telephones you type on.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
I have just moved to a new area and my current contract expired at the same time. Thus I am in the market for a new phone.
Unfortunately the phones that I like - i.e. good battery power, great reception, tri-band, all seem to come with cameras these days!
Personally, I have no use for a camera in a phone, and my employer has explicitly forbidden cameras on the premises. This morning they sent out an email stating clearly that this restriction applied to phone cameras as well.
So, by tacking on a rather underpowered little slug of a camera, the manufacturers have made it impossible for me to buy one of their nicer phones.
This is a very important concept. It addresses our natural proclivity to project our response, or desires or thoughts onto others. Its okay that you don't want all those silly features but it seems most others do. Address book, camera, sms, and alot of ring tones to choose from are for me. I would never bother with the games.
I think these new features are great, but I think it's kind of stupid to add them to a Cel Phone. It's like starting out with a remote control, and adding a small monitor on it to make it easier to use, and then putting games on it, and then allowing you to watch TV on the remote control itself.
Some things are meant to be specialized, and some things are meant to be general-purpose. Cel-phones are specialized. If you want something general-purpose, stop calling it a cel phone and make it a PDA.
I've actually been dreaming of what the ultimate PDA would be like. First off, pen interface, although a clamshell keyboard would not be at all objectionable. Then a reasonably sized hard drive. Then the ability to connect to a Cellular Network and/or Wifi. And a camera, although that should probably be a detachable feature, what with all the security concerns people have voiced with camera phones. (Also, it would probably jack up the price to build it in.) And generally extendable, with some sort of public standard for adding hardware.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
I think I may have located just the phone for the poor Anonymous Bastard.
Radio Shack Mobile Phone
Error encountered in IAWebSig.clsSig.Create: Last Procedure: sPrc_Ins_tblSig
Cameras on most cell phones are currently of such poor quality that they might as well not be there at all. You really need 1-2Mpixel with acceptable quality and noise levels co call something a "cell phone with camera".
is to make and receive voice calls. If they can accomplish this I'll then consider the other crap. I don't need a phone that's a PDA, camera, MP3 player or game machine. I don't need fancy ringers or color screens. I want a phone/service that works 99.999 percent of the time within the service area, that is small and has long battery life. That's all.
and this chair, and this TV.
That's all I want.
I've seen several comments on how 'bullshit' this trend is and bemoaning the lack of choice. To that I can only offer the following:
If you are certain that you are not the only person who wants a vanilla cell phone, then get busy.
1) Write a business plan that outlines your target market, your manufacturing options, how you plan to market your product, and how you would like to finance your venture.
2) Get someone on your team who has had previous experience in the telecommunications industry to join your Board of Directors, or get them to Chair the company.
3) Get your vendors lined up with some good ballpark estimates of your per-unit-costs. This should be done in conjuction with #1, but you will have to constantly negotiate for better prices.
4) Start pitching your business plan to ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN.
That means working hard to get your company off the ground. Don't count on a 40-60 hour week. You will be living this thing for at least five years, pushing 80 hours a week. Things will start getting easier (could be fewer hours, but don't count on it) once the company is running and is selling phones.
Until then, you can only take what your given and like it.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
The thing is, it's probably heaper to have a single model of phone with all the features you could ever need than it is to have several models with only the features you need. Cameras and colour screens are still a little pricey, but most of it costs virtually nothing. Most of the features are a part of the chip. They could make a chip without a lot of the features, and it would cost a fraction less, but then it would cost a lot of money to develop and test it.
mine pretty much is already.. I keep buying pda's then using them for a month or two before they find their way into a drawer.
:P
I havent been without a cellphone since '94 so having a phone means my diary, addy book, rmeinders, notes are all in one place.
added to that the (somewhat crummy) camera and i have as much as i would ever use a pda for + it fits in the back pocket of my jeans. - oh yeah, i think it makes phone calls too
btw - the phone is a sonyericsson t610 and i love it..
bah!*@%!
Does anyone know of a site selling *basic* ringtones? You know, the ones that sound like a phone? I just got a Sony Ericsson T616 and it has *1* ring that sounds anything like a phone. I generally hate musical ringtones, but would like a few options that still sound like phones.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
That's shell oil and hell when turned upside down, for those who may be alpha-numerically challenged. of course the fours (4) looked different in those days.
Many a 1980's afternoon was wasted with these new and exciting games.
/me blinds people with his phones built in LED flash light
g at), and fancy ringtones (my self-esteem is so low that I need some fancy song to play when my phone rings so everyone thinks I'm cool),
There's a purpose to all the variation in ringtones, apart from any ego boost: if you've got an unusual ringtone, you know it's your phone that's ringing, and not someone else's.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I have a Motorola StarTAC and I recently had the chance to upgrade, I turned it down because this phone does what I want, when I want. No reason for those power sucking color displays. I just hope I can keep this phone forever.
"If it has screws, it was meant to be taken apart."
Yes, of course. The Rice Crispies machine. A simple set of photos of the outside allows them to clone it. Here's a roll of film I took of my car. Make a fuel injected 4-cyclinder DOHC engine now, please.
Oh, you can't? Hmmm. Funny.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
If you look at the responses that've been modded up, you'll see that there are a lot of people claiming all they want is a phone, "and ..."
This is why more and more phones are having more and more features. One phone that has an address book, camera, games, or whatever else is going to have a lower unit cost from having to produce and carry one phone for each subset of features. And when carriers charge for ability to use features on their network, they can get more subscribers to these pay features (even if they don't get used) because its just a couple bucks a month, and the phone can do it anyway.
There's a horrible tendency to put way too much state in the controls of portable devices. BMW, in a monumental fit of stupidity, did this to their car controls with their "i-Drive" system. They put a joystick-based GUI on most of the vehicle functions. This leads to what pilots call "too much head-down time".
It took years for the VCR/DVD player people to get this figured out, and now the cell phone people are botching it.
I know I'm in the minority, but I don't own [i]any[/i] cell phone, and fail to see the draw. I won't be buying one any time soon.
I generally don't want random people deciding that, just because the mood strikes them, I should drop what I'm doing and talk to them. The world is small and crowded enough as it is; why would I want to be able to "virtually bump into" anyone, anytime, anywhere?
Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
I can get a phone that includes a color video camera, but I can't get a phone (not a PDA cum phone) that will store street addresses. I don't carry a PDA. I don't need one. But when I ship a birthday present to my niece, I have to write her mailing address down on a PostIt and carry that with me to the FedEx dropoff so that I can fill out the shipping label. If I want to give directions to a friend's house, I don't have the street address unless I'm at home or call my friend. My phone will store 60 gazillion phone numbers and email addresses (and who sends email from their phone) but won't store a street address. I mean, how hard is it to store a simple street address in the "address book".
The phone itself should have maximal durability and battery life. For more advanced stuff I have Z.
All I need on my phone is phonebook, claendar and timer.
You say this now:
"All I want is an address book and a way to make calls."
but you don't hear people bitching about this anymore:
"All I need is a computer to do word processing and spreadsheets. I don't need it to play games or color graphics."
I always thought that the vibrations in your pants would be a sure sign... Unless you keep other things that vibrate in your pants pocket!
- It is usually with you and having it don't make you geek. :) - will fly! :)
- It's smaller and easier to fit in pocket.
- Usually GPRS is available and easier to use than other wireless methods available for PDAs
- Having Java, at least compatible with Turing machine
- Or having WAP+GPRS and webmin shell connection -
same thing (but unsecure
- Address book is safe, it's in flash, possibly also copied into SIM card and can be immediately transmitted to your online address book. Having had a lot of troubles with the power-dependent RAM in PDAs, I can say that it's really a good feature.
I work at a major defence contractor. Currently we were not allowed to use a cellphone within 6 metres of a pc connected to the secure (ie. seperated from the world by air) network, which is awkward, but work-around-able.
Cameras at work are absolutely forbidden, however. Pretty soon it will be impossible to buy a new cellphone that I, or my co-workers, can bring to work.
Which suits me just fine, as I hate the fukken things.
T&K.
Political language
You know what's really funny? If you weren't switching carriers every so often, your carrier would probably sell you a nice new phone for cheap/free. I've been with the same mobile phone company since 1997 and they've replaced my phone for me twice, for a nominal price, with no extension in my contract.
I had a nice little Motorla StarTac awhile ago. It went from vibrate to ring after three rings. Then it sounded like an electronic phone. I was happy. With my new phone, I can't take it off vibrate because all of the ringers suck.
All I want is a cell phone! I don't want to take pictures or read email or chat or surf the web or play games. I can do all of that at home (or at work for that matter). I want my phone to be a phone.
just like the Phone companies did with local/long distance. Pay one fee and have unlimited calling, but voicemail, caller ID block / unblock / block unblock/ unblock block unblock (ad infinitum) are overpriced IMO.
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Throw in the fact that there are only so many fabs for the chips and available capacity, it's almost inevitable that the older and less capable chipsets are phased out in favor of the newer ones. Pentium II, anyone?
You can still get basic cell phones, but the pressure is on the seller to give you something with 'features' that they can eventually use to push/provide a service.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
...about extra features on phones. Until these damn things have decent bandwidth, processor speed, storage and battery life, all those extra features will be largely ignored. Sure there might be the occasional teen who likes to play games or IM on the phone, but these functions are not well served by a cell phone.
My wife uses her cell to make phonecalls. That's it. She doesn't even use the programable address book.
Sounds to me like this is just sales hype.
Here's what will make the extra features really take off:
-1 Mb IP networking
-Gigs of data non-volatile storage (starting at 100 and going up)
-Equivalent performance to a P4 2.5 GHz processor
-Battery life that lasts a week without a charge
-External peripherals (eye visor for high resolution virtual displays, alternative input devices)
-Speech recognition to the nth degree (Being able to say a person's name and have it dial is OK, but why can't we have this thing be a personal secretary on our hip? Dication, queries, personal DB, lactation, and all completely automated with no monthly service fee since it's all self-contained)
Mark my words folks, if you want the future to be free (as in freedom), the time is now to break the business model of the monthly payment. The rallying cry of the future should be "Pay once, Play forever!!!!"
It doesn't count as being given away if they make you sign a contract for 2 years at $50/month.
The US Government, including the US Military buys tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of cell phones (and various other consumer-grade communications devices) for its personnel & civil servants every year. And due to security restrictions, and rules regarding communications devices within restricted work spaces (or even restricted compunds), phones with cameras, voice recorders, 'walkie-talkies', and any other features which can be utilized to physically - or even virtually - transport data/information (including SBU [Sensitive But Unclassified] and FOUO [For Official Use Only]) are strictly and unequivocally verboten . Some spaces forbid even carrying your phone into it, even if it is turned off - and irrespective of what features it has! Therefore, there will always be a market for "one-trick pony" cell phones. I highly doubt that the manufacturers would shoot themselves in their collective foot and obviate probably one of their biggest customers world wide. And it's a fairly safe assumption that other world governments/militaries have similar restrictions for their personnel's use of phones as well. So, unless they come up with a way for the government(s) to permanently 'lock out' those features that could be construed as "security risks", I can't see the simple 'entry level' cell phone/communicator going away any time soon.
Regards
- Que profuturus est maeror causa sententia Caelestis
The main characters communicate with each other by a method like the one you described. They are persecuted as mutants because of it. Great book, John Wyndham rules!
An eye for an eye... leaves the whole world blind.
If I ever get a phone where I can set the ring tone, I will try to get Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings for it.
Slow news day? I mean it's a story about plain cell phones becoming scarce...who gives a shit really?
If you're looking for a cheap, basic cell phone-- and, importantly, if you don't make or receive that many calls on it-- you should consider picking up a "pay-as-you-go" phone (e.g. Virgin Mobile)
The phone itself is $60-$125, and calls are expensive-- something like 25 cents a minute for the first 10 minutes a day, then 10 cents a minute after-- but there are no monthly fees whatsoever (so if it sits in a drawer for a month, you don't pay anything.) You get a phone number and a voicemail box, which is free to check from a different phone. And-- best of all-- it's relatively anonymous. You can buy the phone and top-up cards with cash at any Target, and don't have to give anyone your name or address to register it.
http://www.mobtastic.com/artists_bio_ringtones_log os_picture_messages/w/william_orbit_ringtones.asp
Get a Nokia 3390. It does that and is usually free when you sign up for a service plan.
I just picked up a a new cell phone Friday. I've gone nearly 10 years without one and gotten along just fine. However, I'm taking a new job soon and I'll need to have one then. Unlike everyone else, I'd like a contact list and calendar that can make phone calls. The emphasis is on the PDA type features, not the calling features. I had a Visor for the last few years, and I can honestly say that all I really ever used it for was the contact list. So when this nice company also bought me a shiny new TiBook which has Bluetooth, I had another reason to go gadget hunting.
I ended up picking up a Nokia 3650. Yeah the camera's kinda gimmicky, but what the heck. Anyway, I hooked up the Visor to the USB, enabled the Bluetooth on the phone, opened up iSync and synced everything up and ditched the Visor. I can't yet say that I don't know how I've gotten by without one yet, but I'm very happy so far.
What you need is a sub-vocal mic.
The consequences of a "thought mic" could be pretty catastrophic. If you don't think so, try speaking aloud every thought you have for an entire day. If you haven't been fired, beaten up, dumped by your SO, arrested or something along those lines, then you probably aren't interesting enough that people want to talk to you on the phone anyway.
But, I want a mobile wearable multimedia hotsynced broadband convergence device with voiceactivation, that girls think is cute when it's chrome. Call it a "cellphone" if you want, but I'm done schlepping a notebrick around.
--
make install -not war
Features are one thing, but I can't find for the life of me a cell phone that isn't silver.
Remember the good old days when cell phones were black?
... we could tell you, but then we'd have to shoot you ;-)
CT
A big chunk?
You have either vastly underestimated the market or believe that their income from such a small segment matters a lot.
That said, while most phones will get feature rich, I do believe each company will have 1-2 low end models.
The ideal market is the "high disposable cash" 16-30 year olds.
Next is businesses - the same folks who pay last minute airplane ticket prices ($2500 for NYC -> SFO!?) where phone costs are a minor part of doing business.
When you have pictures and voice messaging and movies, you rack up charges. That's GOOD to the carrier.
Folk who don't want those are like the family at the long end of a rural road who get (land) phones and no extras (callerID, forwarding, etc) and don't make many calls. They are all cost, no profit!.
Lose them and you actually SAVE money.
I had to carry (literally) a cell phone in the late 80s for film. It had a handle to pick it up. $1000 bills were not unusual from a set.
At this point everyone's mom, coworker, kid has a phone.
Like the PC makers, once all the people who were going to buy one had one, cell phone makers are in that space where they either need to say "Okay, we're done; expect us to trim down by 80%, investors" or come up with new features.
Cameras? I don't get it (tho I did just contest a parking ticket with pics from my cell camera). Perhaps they looked at the digital camera boom and said "sure!".
Me? I just moved to bluetooth (wireless sync - CRITICAL, wireless headset - kinda sweet; wireless data access - I suppose I'll use it) and WAP (killer - turn on house heat while driving home)
What features would y'all like to see in a phone (aside from bluetooth keyboard access - I hate using a 1950's designed phone keypad for alpha)?
"is it really worth all that extra money?"
Why should I care? The network operator foots the bill in massively subsidising the phone.
Preferences > Homepage > Customize stories on homepage > Authors > Zonk > Uncheck
I prefer chocolate or Rocky Road, anyway.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I think, from the consumer's point of view, that these features don't add to the cost of the phone - you can easily get free phones with all sorts of fancy features (AT&T was giving you a camera phone before Xmas) if you sign a contract. So you're getting a more advanced phone for the same cost as your plain vanilla phone was a couple of years ago. I think it's dandy, & I'll be getting a camera phone next time I see a free one.
I had previously very plain phones (GI Joe had a better cell phone than me). This month I upgraded to an LG vx6000.
1. Fancy phones are higher quality (you get what you pay for) - it's very evident that the plain phones are for cost-concious consumers. Cheap plastic all over, and bad antenna. This new phone is much more sturdy, I can feel it just by holding it. Also has much better reception in places where my old phones had almost none.
2. Features can be useful. For example, flip phones are space savers. Fit better on your belt (rather than a 5 inch long phone). Rather than wear a watch, a good phone has a second LCD on the front, so you can see the time/date, and if someone called. A nice phone also has caller ID on the front panel, so you can tell without even opening it.
3. Camera can be pretty useful. Car accident (insurance companies *strongly* recommend you take photo's on the scene... easier than keeping a disposable camera in your car). Good for just random occasions. I personally don't have the service. With most phones, you can buy a third party USB cable, and hook it up to your computer. Software is often available to download images from your phone.
4. Can't tell you how many times the calculator has come in handy. I'm a geek, but I enjoy programming (read: lazy).
5. Alarm Clock. Yes, that's pretty useful when you need it. Remember, your phone doesn't die if the power goes out. And it's normally loud enough to wake you up. A perfect backup alarm clock on a stormy night.
6. Voice Memo. Haven't used it much, but it is rather useful. And not nearly as lame as walking around with a mini-casette recorder.
All in all, I think it's worthwhile to get a better phone. Most of the features are worth while.
I'm not a fan of IM's on phones, or even text messaging... rather wasteful IMHO no need. Nor am I a heavy cell phone user. But a basic plan, and a few common tools on your phone is rather helpful.
It's an electronic sport-utility knife.
...but I want to have the ability to back it up.
I keep a fairly large list of people on my phone, but there is no way for me to back it up. If I could connect the phone to my PC via USB to copy off all the information, I wouldn't consider that an added feature, I'd consider it just part of having an addressbook.
I personally don't enjoy devices that attempt to be other devices when its obvious that they won't come close. If I want a camera, I will purchase a camera. If I want a phone, I will purchase a phone. If I want a PDA....
If manufacturers can integrate all of these features into one device without making it large, annoying to use, or mad expensive, then thats fine with me, but once you start losing a bunch of the (essential) features of each individual device by throwing it together into one "convenient" package, I get annoyed.
Currently I use an AudioVox CDM8600. It was free so I gladly use it but there are features that lack and features that make it just plain annoying. I enjoy the colour screen (but definately do not require it).. I'm not partial to the pictures I have to choose from (like the little clown that pops on the screen when it starts up), and there are no normal ringers. There are annoying tones or stupid songs... no decent ringers like on my Kyocera 2255 or Qualcom 26XX series phones - you know, ringers that sound like a PHONE is ringing. I imagine I can "download" great ringtones but over the web there is a "Buy" button instead of "Download" when I attempt to. I don't even think you can listen to them before buying them. I can also "download" screensavers and background images but I imagine that those are for sale as well. I think the strategy here was "hey lets sell screensavers/pictures and ringtones over the internet, but wait, the only way people will buy them is if we include sub-standard ones in our stock phones, so lets provide really stupid pictures and make people buy to be less annoyed."
At one time, I thought new features were great on cell phones.. I have never been interested in the games that come with phones (a plus in this case.. my phone didn't ship with any.. but I can DOWNLOAD them), or the crazy songs that go with them. I did, however, like the idea of next-gen phones with more bandwidth for surfing. Finally I realized that this was also a waste. I have no need to surf the web on my phone. I say KEEP VANILLA PHONES AROUND!
A Lot of people use phones for business and half these things are like little kiddie game machines that definately don't scream professional with a picture of a clown bouncing around while some sports song is playing for the ringer. On top of that, older people especially, but younger as well, just want to purchase a TELEPHONE. A simple device that stores names, numbers and makes/receives phonecalls. A Vanilla phone should definately come free with any cell service or atleast be GREATLY reduced in price. I'm sure there is still a market for such a phone.
What I propose:
A Modular cellphone. Some open cellphone (perhaps based on linux), with modules that can be purchased from your provider or as a download over the internet via your phone or computer. Cellphones with USB (!!!!) access instead of proprietary connectors/data cables. Your phone has a finite amount of memory in it.. you could download a module that lets you use up the majority of space with an address book. If you don't like address books, you could fill it all up with games or sounds or pictures or integrated voice mail capability (which my phone has). Any feature that you don't want is deleted from your phone until you choose to download that module. No skipping through menu after menu of features you don't want. New specialized modules could be created for the phones (like apps for palmOS) in the future. For example, in my address book, I may only want to store 3 pieces of info for each person, maybe I don't want AIM/ICQ numbers etc.. I could create a module that only has the features I want. If I want a grocery list module, I could code it up to add my total at the bottom, or download new layout modules to give my cell a new look and feel etc etc etc.. It would also be cool to have network-enabled phones that could reference an address book/date book in some format over the internet. I could
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
Here's a copy of the front page in case you ass lumbering shit-rafts slashdot the motherfucker:
... it makes no sense to go for a low-end handset," ABI Research analyst Kenil Vora said. "The definition of low-end shifts from monochrome handsets to phones with a little bit of something on it."
Qualcomm Inc., whose CDMA (news - web sites) network technologies serve as the basis for two of the four largest wireless carriers in the United States, said recently its rapid growth was being driven by demand for phones supporting features like color screens, cameras and multimedia capabilities.
Such features -- once considered "advanced" -- are now increasingly mainstream, especially as prices fall. CDMA-compatible phones with color screens can be had for as little as $30 and with cameras for $100.
Texas Instruments Inc. said last week the greatest part of its sales growth was coming from a heated demand for wireless technology, including processors that let phones run multimedia applications.
As prices fall and demand rises, Qualcomm Chief Operating Officer Tony Thornley told Reuters recently, the market for plain old phones -- no color, no camera, no music or downloadable games -- is drying up in the United States.
"I think that that part of the market is going to decline quite rapidly," he said. "I think black-and-white screens are going to go the way of the black-and-white television very rapidly."
The cameras in the new generation of phones in particular are improving -- Thornley said Qualcomm's roadmap for its chips supports resolutions of 4 megapixels
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--------
Elmond, 45, delivers boxes to old women in Seattle.
Although I have missed a couple of good upskirt opportunities because I have one of those "simple" phones....;=)
I beg to differ - one of the few things stopping me from purchasing a phone is the fact that I do not want to pay for hundreds of features that I will never use. All I want is an address book and a way to make calls."
This argument is bullshit considering that phones without any features cost the same as phones with tons of features since almost any plan will give you a free phone with tons of features. The plans that don't give you free phones generally give you some discount towards a phone of your choice.
The n-gage is a great example of this. It has loads of features, but they're all crap.
I've got a T610, and I'm very happy with it..why? Because it was free to me. In fact, I got $100 cash back from "buying" it. It's a cell phone where i can make calls flawlessly AND has those "snazzy" features that i didn't pay for but can still use. Of course, you can argue that the cost of the phones is built into the ultra expensive plans in the US(compared to a $6/mo 500 anytime unltd. night/weekend I had in Taiwan), but I am a lowly consumer with no control over those factors, so I might as well be satisfied with what I have.
h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org
A fool and his money are quickly parted.
- J. Bridges (1587)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Who needs a cell phone that awkwardly plays Tetris or Space Imvaders when you have Gameboy Advance SP?
Speaker phone. Nowadays, I won't even buy a phone that doesn't have a speakerphone. The old way of holding a little contraption against your head is not just outdated, it's dumb. We are advanced enough that there is no reason to ever have to touch a piece of plastic to your head to communicate.
Portable address book. Cellphone address books should be easily portable to a pc. Don't the people who design cellphones use computers? Oh, and this *has* to be done using non-proprietary hardware and software or it doesn't count.
That's what I need on my cellphone.
Cell phone manufacturers like Motorola spend millions of dollars every year on market research. They ask people exactly what features they want, let them try new features to test usability, test colors, sizes, weight, everything you can think of.
But you have to remember that when introducing a new product, you have to attract someone first. That person, the adventurous early adopter type, is going to have somewhat different tastes than the mainstream. They buy first, then the mainstream, in increasing numbers, wants to be cool too and buys them as well (i.e. the mainstream tastes change to accept the new product out of desire to be cool). What results is a bell shaped curve of product adoption.
Very few things are aimed at the mainstream and are an instant hit. Nearly all go through the phase described above.
So it's possible that right now that "most users" don't want all the added features, but it's been proven time and time again that they will indeed want them soon. If not, trust me, Motorola and the others wouldn't be building them into their phones. They spend millions on market research and they've been around this long precisely because they are good at predicting which things the mainstream will want - not exactly when the product is launched, but soon afterwards when the mainstream sees what all the cool folks have.
-Slim
(p.s. fwiw, i only use my cell phone as a phone)
Digital phones suck.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
I have a nokia 3650 and I love it.
I use it for sending emails, chatting on icq and aim. Sometimes I'm idling on irc with it.
I hardly ever make phonecalls on it, that's way too expensive. I pay a fixed rate for GPRS so I use icq / aim as my main way of communicating, since it's "free", i e i don't pay anything extra for it.
People should start realizing that this is the way to go. There are free icq/aim clients and even irc nowadays. To be honest, I'd even pay a few dollars for such clients.
Let's review.
1. Michael posts a story on TiVo which has been discussed ad naseum on /. before.
2. Michael posts a story which claims the writer doesn't want to pay for hundreds of feaures (s)he'll never use.
Enough people have beat up on Michael on point one that I won't bother to.... whoops.
As to point two. Does no one look at Anandtech forums? Amazon PAYS YOU to get a new cell phone. See such threads as this one.
"Population 1,656"
When you sign a contract for two years. Otherwise all these phones are well over 100.00, plus you have a monthly fee, plus many of the 'special features' require you to have additional fees per month, etc...
;)
There is no such thing as a free lunch
I completly concur with our assertions. Now what I find interesting is that the 'older' Nokia 6310 series seems completly bypassed by newer/colorfull/camera oriented devices. But more and more business men I meet seems to get these older but very stable and long lasting devices.
I'm always amazed at how many types there are within the collective 'geek'. I work with a number of other engineers of various ages and backgrounds, and I seem to be the one most susceptible to wanting 'new and improved' (I'm also the youngest, draw conclusions as you will).
;-)
I'm the only one who's modded his case, the one with the color, polyphonic, camera phone (Nokia 3200), use IM software (Trillian), and games regular on said modded PC. Yet my boss considers his PC to be on the same level as his hammer, simply a tool.
Recently we upgraded our corporate plan and everyone was allowed to get new phones. They even gave us a choice of two phones for free, one color and one in monochrome. Some people still chose the monochrome phone, even with the color one being free. It'll take a while, but eventually I'll get through to them.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
There is definately a market for cheap, simple cellphones.
I too don't want to spend much money for things I don't need, and are pretty useless (WAP comes to mind).
All I need is something to phone and SMS. Good quality and long-lasting batteries are also an issue, but all the fancy wistles and bells...forget it, I don't want to pay a dime for that.
As soon as some companies realise this, they will have found a considerable niche; that of good-quality, yet cheap and simple cellphones.
For the most part I don't care about most of the bells and whistles. I WISH CELLPHONES WERE RATED FOR VOLUME!
Volume, Battery Life, and Range. Can't the industry come up with a way to compare Cell phones on those three categories? Right now many of them are obscuring rotten phones with gadgets.
Volume
How often have you had trouble hearing a phone under wierd situations.
Battery Life
I know its related to everything else but its still a consideration.
Range
Why do I have to buy a cell phone and hope it can reach the network????
LS
but WHAT IF you ran into the BOOGEYMAN! or.. or EVEN SASQUATCH! oh man, you are gonna wish you had that camera
I don't know about your country, but I've noticed that many engineers here (USA) are actually very anti-tech, as am I.
The problem with technology is that it's usually pushed onto consumers, and marketeers try to convince everyone how much they need the latest crap. They're solutions in search of problems. However, instead of creating quality products to improve our lives, they're creating cheap, shoddy products with as high a profit margin as they can devise.
As an engineer, I don't really care much about what the latest features are. I want devices that are well designed, perform excellently, and have extremely high reliability and durability. Other features are secondary. But I find it very hard to find products with high reliability and durability, as these have been sacrified in the race to expanded feature sets and market windows, so I've just become cynical about it all.
If cameras become pervasive in cell phones, something will have to give: I for one work in an R&D organization where cameras are banned - a policy that is common in many fields. While my employer bans cameras but has been slow to latch onto camera phones, one of our customers now inspects cell phones to prevent camera phones from coming onto the premises.
I've been using GSM phones since 900MHz-only years around the world, and when I finally got a GSM phone for using it in the States as well, I didn't realize that I needed to be careful about reception issues. Apparently, 1900MHz (the main -and until recently only- frequency for GSM phones in North America) is not as good as 900MHz for rural areas. That means that, while it's probably great in big cities, it's no good elsewhere around the States.
Moral of the story: I got burned badly with an Ericsson T68i, which I had replaced 4 times before finally giving up on it ever working well as a phone. Sure, it was one of the first phones with color, bluetooth, PDA-like capabilities, it could even iSync with my PBG4 and my Palm, but I expect a phone first of all to work fine - as a phone! Is that so unusual?
So I looked and looked, and finally found a good independent source of information about phone's reception qualities (since no phone company nor cellphone provider will tell you anything about which phone works better in terms of reception: I've tried asking a lot of them).
I ended up with a Motorola P280. It does what I need, in order of importance:
- great reception on all 3 main bands (1900,1800,900MHz)
- SMS with enough characters on the screen at once
- it can sync phone numbers (even calendar entries?) with iSync (despite the fact that no documentation admits it, its icon appears happily on iSync's panel when connecting it with a USB cable).
- if necessary, it can be used as a GPRS modem (again, through USB)
It has no color, no pictures, no camera, no bluetooth, its games really suck... but it's an excellent phone in case you need to actually use it as a phoneApparently, Nokia's 3650 is a good phone despite the built-in gadgets. But the keypad... that's what I would not want to have when typing SMSs...
all i really want is a phone that runs linux.
and has bluetooth. and 80211b.
and no keypad: then i'll write my own bluetooth keyboard driver.
Australia's experience is that all cell phones have much more features than needed, it's just the evolution of the device. We now have one company offering video calls for the same price as voice between phones on the same network. Even the cheapest phones are full of goodies. A smaller market also means that we get older model dump into our market as pre-paid services.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I agree with Michael. The only two neccessities in a cell phone for me are the size (small and thin) and the battery life. I have the LG VX3100 which is probably LG's last "vanilla" cell phone but I love it. Its tiny and because it has only one old fashioned, monochrome screen (no screen on the outside of the flip phone) the battery life is great. As long as it keeps working I don't think I'll every want a super happy color screen camera phone. They're larger than mine and their battery life is much shorter.
ahh my old and trusty nokia 6150. from my pc i just upload really unique ringtone (thats not in web, paper and other stupid ringtone charts) and thats all. i don't like and don't need those new fancy shmancy phones.
Email addresses belong in my email client. I occasionally back them up to a comma delimited file. I will copy them to my PDA, but only for relatives, close friends, or those that I might want to refer others to. Usually email addresses change too often to make it worthwhile anyway.
Phone numbers and addresses belong in my PDA and corresponding contact management software. This is a system that backs itself up every time I hotsync. This allows for triple redundancy because I also hotsync it at my work machine.
My cell phone just stores frequently used phone numbers. Getting numbers in and out of the device is often problematic, but I certainly wouldn't want to upload my entire PDA contact list to it - it would make it too time consuming to find a specific entry. I store numbers that I call frequently (or at least occasionally) in there because sifting through the rest of them would take more time than just looking them up in the PDA and typing the numbers.
I never JUST store a number in my cell phone. If I care about a number, I make a PDA entry. You may notice that any PDA/Cell phone combined device is still more expensive than the two separately.
Appropriate information in appropriate places. It's like your house. You don't try to pack everything you own into the room you're in most often, do you? Even if it would fit, it would make things difficult to find. Attempting to keep updated copies of everything everywhere is what a good programmer calls a "maintenance issue" - a very poor trade of bang for the buck.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I suppose that featuritis is partly caused by market research ("whould you buy this plain phone that doesn't do anything, or this fancy phone which has all these cool features?"). But that has nothing to do with "what people want".
I kid you not, in the Washington DC area I can not find a plain cell phone. They are giving away the color ones with plans. As far as cameras and Mp3 players and Video games, ever hear of N-gage? I didn't think so.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Such features -- once considered "advanced" -- are now increasingly mainstream, especially as prices fall. CDMA-compatible phones with color screens can be had for as little as $30 and with cameras for $100.
It's not that there has been any great increase in technology of the past year that has caused these phone to plummet in price, but that the carriers are willing to sell phones at a loss to reap huge profits on the service that they provide.
For a good historical reference, think of traditional film cameras (including original such as kodak). Makers sold the actual camera at a loss only to make up their profits on the sale and development of film...a cost that will always reoccur.
I was at a game development conference a while back aimed at small/portable game platforms. One of the talks I attended went into the expected growth of the phone gaming market, and what types of games are the most popular (and why).
One of the important facts that came out is that most people who buy a phone that can download and play games will eventually do it, even if they didn't know or care about the ability to do so when they bought the phone.
It was also mentioned that the major carriers are aware of this, and plan to start only selling phones that support downloadable games and ringtones. They all those additional $1 and $2 purchases.
I also found it interesting that one of the best selling (and most consistant) games is hangman. It was strongly pointed out at the conference that most of the phone game market does NOT consist of traditional gamers, and their interests to do lay in the same things.
PS:
I recently bought a new phone with bluetooth. I didn't want the camera, but couldn't get the rest of the stuff I wanted without it.
Since then I've used it quite a bit, and not for the reasons you expect. For example, it's a really great way to entertain a 5 year old at a restaurant.
plus-good, double-plus-good
As the Japanese mobile market has accellerated ahead of most other countries, its a good idea to look to them to see whats to come.
I was over on a trip there recently: Clamshell phones with 1 to 2 mega pixel cameras, 10000 channel polyphonic melodies, large full colour tft screens - and even tv tuners, are quite the norm. Oh and as for games, you can play games as complex as Ridge Racer, Metal Slug or Strider on them, i even saw some guy playing what looked similar to Ogre Tactics.
However there IS still a market for the plain jane vanilla phone. However they tend to be very avant garde minimalist design, and advertised in Art and Desginer magazines... targeting the creative crowd i think. But this is a very small market.
Personally I would go for the simple phones, without the bells and whistles, that looks stylish, and can take a beating.
The advantage of having phone+camera+mp3player+gamepad in one, is that you only have a small device that fits in your pocket, instead of having to carry a satchel with all four. So that if you see something nice on your way, you can always take a picture (admittedly of poorer quality than it would be with the camera). And if you have an unplanned long wait ahead, you can always kill time playing or listening to music. For me, that hate carrying along bags, this is a bonus. For this, and to make practice with J2ME & Co, I broke my golden rule "A phone is to make phone call" and bought a fancy phone-with-all-bells-on (but I'm not sure I will do it again).
Ciao
----
FB
I remember when they were considering adding V-chips to TVs a while back. Everyone was either complaining that they hadn't already done it, or that they didn't need a V-chip in their household so why should they have to pay for it? But this sort of thing happens all the time. The first Nintendo gaming systems had an internal hookup that could send data back and forth to Nintendo USA Corp (if you don't believe me, read Game Over by David Sheff).
I'm for choice. I think they ought to make the phone/PDAs, camera-phones, PDA/camera-phones, as well as plain jane phones that only have a phone book. Well, as many variants as the market will support, of course.
One thing I found a bit ironic is that, in the blurb, the author complains that all he wants is a plain phone with an address book. Well, my phone doesn't have an address book--only a phone book. The point: even this guy wants some PDA functionality added to his cell. Kinda weakened his point if you ask me.
sev
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
Lots and lots of cellphones are sold cheaply on eBay. You'll amost certainly be able to find the simple phone you're looking for there.
After doing some research I've found that the Ericsson "T-series" phones (T10, T18, T20, T28, T29) are the simplest phones and you can find them for $10-$50 on eBay. Some of them are only available to the Euro markets though.
I'm sure we did. Anyway, if you want a basic cellphone, buy a secondhand one. Meanwhile, I'm travelling soon and my N-Gage will give me all the access I need to my email and Slashdot, as well as providing video game entertainment in the evenings should I require it. Heck, I'll probably even have an Ogg Vorbis version of an episode of Retro Gaming Radio on there to listen to. I'm sure the hotel will have TV, but as an Optus subscriber my N-Gage gives me access to two free-to-air stations and CNNi. By being so many things in a small package, I'm hoping to travel with just carry-on luggage.
Wow, complaining about cell phones having too many neat features. Anyone remember when cool new gadgets used to be appreciated on slashdot instead of cynically trashed? Is slashdot getting old and cranky?
Sigs are awesome huh?
My Motorola A920 is a PDA and 3G phone (video calls etc), and is free. The future arrived last year ;)
This is exactly why I switched to Nextel. Most of their phones are designed with the buisness/blue collar type in mind instead of the average high school teen girl.
An example is the Nextel i305. B&W interface, no games, no camera, etc. It IS; however, rugged and weather resistant.
Bottom line: It's a phone people! I just want one to take it with me, call other people at inappropriate times with, and not have it break when I drop or sit on it.
I used to believe that if a phone accepted and made calls it was exceeding my expectations. Then on a whim I bought a Nokia 3650, and I cannot live without it now. First of all I have installed Blacklist, which is an app that prevents me from getting ANY calls that I dont want. I have an extensive white list of people I accept calls from, anyone else gets voicemail. Also I installed an eBook reader, and I have all the Harry Potter books, the LOTR triology and At the Mountains of Madness on it, and I can read them any time. And I DO. The eBook is one of the most handy things of all. I also have some games for fun, and I use text messaging and WAP for a few things as well, such as scores, weather, etc...
I love this phone.
well i for one am using a lowend (as compared to the new ones today with camera, MP3 players, J2ME, color, etc) phone. why?
:) ) and also this clunker is allowed IN our office.
my old phone still gets the job done. i still can recieve SMS and phone calls (except for the blue screen of death, my backlight is blue, every now and then
with the growing concern over IP protection the newer phones are considered dangerous inside R&D centers. built-in phone cameras could be used to get proprietary data or phones with MMC cards can be used to store files. im not against the use of these modern phones inside the office its just i dont trust everyone to be ethical and moral enough to do the right thing anymore.
selecting a new phone is also a chore! some phones have some features you like while the other phone has some of the other features you like.
- not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted
Panasonic GD-55. It is tiny, has pretty decent reception, speaker phone, super loud ringer. Got it off ebay a few months ago. Get comments all the time about how small it is.
Panasonic has a similar phone with GPRS and a color screen that I'm eyeballing.
For a while I gave up carrying a phone with me since I was getting bat-belt syndrome and needed to loose a few pounds in the gadget department. Now I can carry the phone in my jeans pocket and forget it is there most of the time. Nice basic phone. Get it.
The market you describe is at most hundreds of thousands of units. There are a thousand times more normal users. Any rational producer would concentrate on consumer models. The "secure" ones will end up being made by a niche manufacturer and costing $500+. :)
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
It is funny how some people here don't understand that other people have other needs. On guy here goes on an on about how the extra features on his phone are useless. Except for the GPS, which is good. Another one argues that only Direct Connect (whatever it is) is useful. The third one says Bluetooth is all he needs. The fourth argues that exporting/importing the contact details in XML format is a must.
Come on, people! Can't you understand that all the features, including a calendar for the menstruation periods and a hole to hitch a cute toy to the phone, all the features are actually needed by someone. And since it is not really feasible to make custom-designed phones, the manufacturers are going to design a few phones with different bundles of the features. Yes, the chances are there will be a useless one on the phone, but it's the same with any other mass-produced product. I would go as far as to argue that Linux is 90% useless. On most computers most features of Linux are not needed. And so what? Then why should we complain about extra features in phones (as long as they don't reduce battery life and decrease the usability of basic functions).
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I work in a military-related business (flight simulation) where security is a reasonably big deal - and like many companies, they don't allow cameras on company property.
If the only phones you could get had cameras, I would be able to own one. Even if I didn't need it at work, the risk of accidentally walking into work with a camera phone in my coat pocket and spending the next 10 years in Guantanamo Bay would be too great.
Fortunately, we aren't at that stage yet - but I can see it coming.
I'm also not overly fond of digital phones. Where I live, cell phone reception is kinda marginal. The digital phones either work completely - or they don't work at all (depending on the phase of the moon or something). With analog phones I can always get a connection - although it may be a little noisy. Better noisy than nothing.
www.sjbaker.org
what will you do when your plane jane phone dies?
hint, that's why the # of feature phones are outpacing plain phones, there are none.. attrition does the rest
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I use a 4+ year old Nokia 6190. This thing is better than any other phone I've ever used. I had nothing but problems with newer phones, so I just dug out my old 6190 and put the SIM chip back in it. The 6190 can make calls where other phones have no service. The voice quality is excellent. It's built like a tank. (The thing has hit the deck several times, and it's still alive.) If I want to play games or be on the Internet, I won't be doing it on a 2 inch screen! I want my phone to be a phone.
voice recognition
Useful for hands-free operation.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
My daughters, wife and I use StarTac's. We share the data synch, car adapters, hands free and batteries.
I might have to stock up on a few US$8.00 aftermarket batteries while I can still get them.
Screw color and polyphonic ring tones that make me want to drive a pencil through the forehead of the dickhead in line behind me at Starbucks.
The only thing I would like is more than 99 Phone book entries.
Commercial companies wanting to protect their trade secrets would also have the same requirements e.g. no camera-phones and possibly strict no-nos for voice recording during certain meetings.
--- root@127.0.0.1
Oh, ya.. that god awful device i had turned off a few years ago.. as i dont want to be that 'connected'....
Privacy is a good thing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's an outfit here in Silicon Valley called Vazu that just launched their service.. it pushes contacts from either their website or your email app (Outlook, Apple Mail, Ximian Evolution, etc) to your phone. My friend works there and he says it works on Nokias & Sony-Ericssons so far, and that they're doing a free public beta right now. www.vazu.com
Here's my knee-jerk response. I recently got tired of DoCoMo's (dis)service, and I went shopping for a new phone. Almost all the phones from the big-3 carriers (DoCoMo, Au, and Vodafone) had cameras of some sort. Browsers have been integrated into these phones for a while, and same with email capabilities. Thing is, these phone manufacturers need to offer something new in order to differentiate themselves, but the differentiation cannot be a lack of feature. So if manufacturer A makes a phone with a camera, they all will make a phone with a camera (though one may make a 2MP and another may make a 3MP camera).
I have an LG 4050 with probably the same ringtone. Its crazy, you hear it and you'd expect it to be some old black bakelite desk phone, but its this little silver thing.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
...when you pry it from my cold, dead ear. Best. Phone. Ever.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Four hundred and thirty-nine posts and the most important thing above all else isn't mentioned.
A universal service phone. When you buy a regular phone, you can use it with any carrier. The phone may be made by AT&T or Bell South, or any of the others, but used anywere in the US and a lot of foreign countries. The same can't be said for cell phones. Give us that, then all those features.
I am not interested in a PDA that is also a phone. A guy I work with has one of those PDA/Phones (Sprint) and its HUGE! He is always lugging it around etc.
I prefer my small flip phone that I can comfortably wear on my belt, or put in a pocket. I have found that I use the address book in my phone, and also the calendar for reminders. All of which I can sync with on my PC.
As for other features (Picture phone etc), no thanks. I think that's a fad, and will go away in time. I don't think I have ever said to myself, "Gee, I wish I could take a picture and send it to you".
Those "You got to see this moments" which happen 1-2 times every couple years are not worth the $10 extra a month you have to pay.
and here I'll relate one time it worked as a lifesaver
picture this admitted stupidity, dealing with INS, getting an appointment letter, driving to Newark NJ to get there at 4-5am (the reccomended per usenet forum time to arrive at newark for date scheduled but not hour scheduled appointments)
and in standing on the corner of a nasty area of downtown newark, reviewing the letter, realize your ass needs to be in Cherry Hill NJ on this date..
I've been to newark/ny many times,
and been to cherry hill/philadelphia many times, never went from one to the other... no problem, whip out kyocera 6035, write in maps.yahoo.com/dd and get excellent directions, and still arrive at cherry hill at the correct time (7am) to be 2nd in line.. (idiocy just cut 4 hours of sleep and 200 miles off car...)
but the damn in phone map with regular html saved my ass that day...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Why exactly the original poster (Ungrounded Lightning [Rod]) gave the rather dubious example "(That's why it's so much harder to get tours of manufacturing plants these days. Kelloggs, for instance, used to give plant tours all the time. Was a regular tourist attraction. But they stopped them entirely after the Japanese cloned the rice crispies machine.)"
I mean, really. What grand process is there in making Rice Cripies (TM) is there to be learned by a picture of the machine involved? What process? I'm not saying that industrial espionage doesn't happen, but I am saying that this person (UG[R]) was essentially spouting random conjecture to support a weak anti-Japanese story that sounds very like an urban legend.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
When did slashdot represent the majority?
Watch TV
Camera Still/Video
GPS
Internet
Games
MP3 player
Pedometer
Address Book
Bone speakers
These are just some options with Japanese cell phones.
Even the US market as a whole is just a fraction of the world market. Large manufacturers could easily afford to ignore the US Government/Military markets.
No, I don't want to explore the Recycle Bin.
I don't have a lot of experience with any manufacturers other than Kyocera, but my experience is that they do have phones to meet most needs out there. They may not have a phone for all networks and standards out there, but here in the US, there CDMA products are quite reliable. For starters, the Kyocera 2235, descended of the 2135, descended of the Qualcomm 2035, a very reliable phone. I have seen 2035s out there over 4 years old still in use today, without a single problem from their owners. I myself used a 2135 for over a year with no complaint....I just wanted a better phone hence the purchase of a Kyocera 7135 shortly after my provider made them available. Yes, the Palm Pilot phone. I can't say enough good things about this phone. For all the troubles I've had trying to remember to carry my Palm, this phone is better than I imagined it. Being able to have one on me at all times has more than doubled my Palm useage. Not to mention the concept of being able to run custom apps on your cell phone. Syncing the phone backs up not only the Palm files, but all phone related material as well, including the recent calls, and all phone preferences. Not to mention there is a windows app available to convert .mp3 files to new ringers and system sounds. I could even upload a different tune for each person in my phone book. The phone also has an external display for caller id, so opening the phone to see who's calling is not necessary.
One of the major issues that I've observed in the cell phone/provider consumer reputation area is that customers tend to blame their service problems on the hardware, when their provider's network is insufficient. (I live in a rural area and this is still a huge issue here.) The customers tend to purchase new hardware which continues to perform poorly and blame the hardware.
Let me guess?
You're presently in charge of customer relations
at your present job?
That's average revenue per user.
The service providers can't compete on price for plain phone calls - that way they'd all go broke. So they compete with value-added features. They suck you into spending money on new thingies you don't really need.
For handsfree, i've even seen a guy take a normal earpiece-and-mic handsfree kit and insert it in an old BT-style rotary-dial telephone handset. it surprised people when he pulled it out of his pocket...
What I really want is better acoustics and I'm willing to pay for it. I'm willing to pay in price, size and weight. Why should a wired phone that costs $6 at Kmart sound better than the newest cellular model? I want a phone made for talking, not one in which the acoustics seem like an afterthought.
Longer battery life and durability is important. I want a simple and uncluttered user interface.I want to be able to access my phonebook and recent calls with a thumbwheel UI and be able to make calls with one hand. I don't care if the screen is small and black and white but I need good contrast - it should be readable in direct sunlight.
Small size is overrated. My wallet is bigger, thicker and heavier than my cellphone and I have no problem carrying it around in my pocket.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The article and all the industry "interviews" in it read like pure sales. They just want you to buy the latest thing. That's their job - to sell shit.
A lot of my friends HATE the stupid colored backgrounds and frilly menus. I also like my old blue on gray Nokia. But I'm sure it will be impossible to find such a thing soon, just because the chip sets will be cheaper for the dumb ass ones.
This is a slight conceptual leap, but I think this is a specific symptom of a generally decaying society. We are so immersed we don't even notice how bad things are -- how bad the important things are like quality of life and personal fulfillment. But we notice the stupid little things like hysterical product design and hyperbolic merchandising. We are a society in serious decay...
Lord protect us from the terror within.
1. Phone/address book
2. Phone on the go, like if I need it when I'm stranded
3. Long distance like local calls (aka "free" long distance)
4. Clock (no more need for annoying watches)
5. Calendar/datebook (hey, if it's there...)
The rest of the phone's features are either standard (too obvious to mention, such as Caller ID and such) or not necessary (such as custom ring tones, camera options, etc.). I don't care to have my phone sing to me, but unfortunately right now it does because mom bought the same phone I did and I don't like running to my room only to find that her phone is ringing.
So I guess...
6. The only good thing about custom ring tones is that I can use the overworld music from Super Mario World as my ring tone. Booyah!
It'll all blow over in a year or two.
-Rich
The moral? Killer apps aren't devised, they're experienced. Something which may seem to be fantastic on paper really sucks in reality. Train schedules are probably a very good example. Sounds like a good idea to have them on WAP, but it turns out it isn't.
A noted problem with technology is that each advancement attempts to use metaphors from previous technology until it develops its own. Early cinema was a fixed camera recording a stage play and most notably, early web sites tried to emulate television. Thusly, WAP has often tried to emulate the web. However, there are some key problems, namely related to screen size and selection frequency. A train schedule, for example works great in a webby table; just scroll down to the train you're looking for and you're ready to roll. However, on a phone screen, a better interface is to select the source and destination station and display only the times. On a full-size website, that interface would suck, but on a wapsite, it kicks.
Digital Darwinism. The strongest features survive.
:wq
True, but the US govenrment and military are not restricted to the borders of the United States. It buys cell phones EVERYWHERE. Our military has bases in hundreds of foreign cities around the globe, the State Department, and the other "State Departments" (CIA, NSA,et. al.) plus all of our Consulates with all their support personnel (i.e. from the "other" State Departments"). Then there's Customs agents, BCIS (nee INS) agents, Treasury agents, DEA agents, all their support staffs - man, we're like cockroaches! We (governmentally) have people in every country on the planet. And yes, while a lot of them use encrypted satellite phones, the desk jockeys and seat polisher admin folks also get phones too and they get 'plain vanilla phones' (granted many are 'secure cell phones' that you or I could not get our hands on). Anyone who works for the government, who ever steps foot on a plane on company time gets a cell phone. The US Government is probably the largest employer of any 'company' on the planet. Don't discount its presence or its influence. All of these people have to use the system local to them, hence GSM, CDMA, whatever. Not to mention probably ALL or the world's government agencies and militaries buy cell phones and have similar security requirements as we do (at least if they are smart they do). So when you do the math, that number would appear to climb somewhat. Now, yes, I know I'm making a blanket statement here, but I'm trying to prove a point - namely that this product line is not as dead as would appear, simply because there is a whole hidden market that consumer spending analysts never see. I'm sure if you looked at the company sales figures for non-consumer/contract sales you might be very surprised.
Also, seeing as how the US Government hands out lots of large military contract every year to contractors such as Seimens, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Sony, Matsushita Electric, and literally thousands more too numerous to list, and how lots of these contractors subcontract to other contractors, I find it hard to deny that should the government want a certain product to remain in the market, they could exercise pressure in some form to persuade a manufacturer to rethink the killing off of a product line/type it wants or needs. Sure this is draconian, and sounds like a bad spy movie, but the government manipulates contractors every day, just by holding a money bag over their heads saying "jump". Its economics, pure and simple. While yes I agree there are milions of worldwide users who are not under gummint employ, I'm just saying that these companies who make the equipment would be awfully remiss to blithely kill off a product that is one: still viable, and in demand, and two: not a huge burden to keep producing, since most of these features are controlled via software, and can easily be disabled. I'm not saying that the government will never buy phones if they are not "plain vanilla", but I am saying at this time their use on secure installations has been severly curtailed (if not eliminated altogether), and if the manufacturers want to keep the government's business, they will need to seriously consider its needs, and provide it with options to mitigate what it sees as security risks.
Regards,
- Que profuturus est maeror causa sententia Caelestis
With T-Mobile, you dont need "t-zones" to get WAP access. Every customer has free WAP access. It's been decided that essentially all t-zones adds is the custom t-zones home page. Kinda silly if you ask me, but then most people don't expect this and so they pay the $5/mo fee.
BTW, this is a well known fact. Just check any phone site like howardforums [howardforums.com] and see for yourself.
Wow, very interesting. I'm browsing those forums now. I like my service now, but it would be good to save the $5/mo. I'll ask my other friends with T-Mobile what their access is like.
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Having just received my new motorolla phone with T-Mobile service since I wrote that, I can tell you that it does indeed work for free. :)
It's funny how they set it up. If you try to use any of the T-Zones icons directly, it won't work and I believe it says you have to pay for it. However, if you just open the web browser and "Go to URL" it works fine. Anything to trick people into paying for it, I guess...
Web browsing isn't as reliable as the voice service, but it mostly works. I've used it to check the weather a few times, log in to yahoo and check/send email, and to Google. I forsee things like dictionary.com or mapquest being useful in the future!