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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."
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.
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
In most military installations you can bring the phone inside... It just cannot be turned ON.
Hmmm.
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.
I love my Nokia 6360. Yes, it is plain and it isn't sexy but it gets the job done and is durable. I've dropped more time than can be imagined and it is still alive and kicking.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
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
Your PDA should be able to dial your phone for you. I have the Palm Tungsten T2 and I use the dial program to dial my cellphone. I don't see why other PDA's should not be able to do it.
Security-aware organizations are facing more and more problems from technology and the concept of "information wants to be free"... not that it means "without charge", but that its getting harder and harder to keep secret information from leaking out.
Bluetooth could also be a serious problem, because theoretically a transceiver for a Bluetooth keyboard or printer could also host a Bluetooth connection to a cell phone... and that cell phone could then route data out to the cell network and from there it can go anywhere.
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...
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
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.
Actually, you're doing more microwaving of your brain with bluetooth, since bluetooth uses microwave frequencies (2.4ghz) and cell phones do not (800/900mhz usually). Not to say that cell phones are harmless, though, just nitpicking on the terminology...
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
I work at Best Buy and sometimes will be in the wireless department. I don't hear people coming in saying that they want a simple phone and hate all the extra features.
People come in excited about the camera phone concept, perhaps you haven't seen it, it's cooler then you'd think.
So 99% of the people out there want the features, Afterall the features are very affordable.
Some of the best digital cameras available also use a CMOS sensor.
D SA .HTME 10DA.H TMA .HTM
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/EOS1DS/E1
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E10D/
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/EDR/EDR
The quality of the implementation is the key, more than the specific technology used, as in most things. CMOS actually has a lot of things going for it in imaging applications.
As the owner of a Nextel phone, and someone who hates receving PTT calls, I agree. Ironically, PTT calls can (on most phones, anyway) be handled in the same way as normal calls: without the speakerphone function. Nobody bothers to set it up that way, is all.
If you look around, people have ways to get free access to WAP sites on your phone. The only thing that your phone company charges you for is to use their specific WAP server and the services that are on it. If you set up your phone (through the debug menus) to use a free WAP service, you only use airtime.
I know people on Verizon and AT&T have gotten it to work, and have verified that you don't get charged extra. Verizon, for instance, charges you to use their custom MSN WAP service, that's all. Paired with the Google WAP gateway (translates HTML into WML), that's a pretty good deal.
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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
Where I work, cameras are strictly prohibited, and basically under no circumstances can I ever bring one inside the building - and a camera phone would be much worse... Quite frankly, I wish bluetooth was more prominent in cell phones - I would definitely use that a lot more - and not just for internet access, just syncing contacts and content - and a lot of stuff that doesn't fit on my SIM card that I may want to easily transport between phones.
If your work is security-concerned enough to want to ban cameras and very scared of camera phones, then a Bluetooth-enabled phone will have them reaching for their tin foil hats. I
If any Bluetooth device is ever hooked to the corperate network in any way, be it through USB to serve a keyboard or printer, or sitting inside a laptop, then that cell phone could connect to the PC through Bluetooth, and then repeat the data out to a public cell phone network. Basically, Bluetooth is a wide open connect to the outside world waiting to happen...
Agreed, but over here some older Nokia models (3310, 3410...) , which were just plain cell phones with no frill, did sell years long, and not even at a very low price. Then recently, Nokia offered a new model with color screen & musical ringtone download, at almost the same price. The remarkable thing is, the look, ergonomy and default settings "clones" the older model : Most people buying one keep these settings. Needless to say, the default ringtone is just that : A "phone ringing" sound
One of those Europeans...