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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.
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"
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?
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.
In theory, one could make a Bluetooth device that itself has no interface other than Bluetooth and whatever celluar network system, and then depend on other devices for the microphone, speaker, etc.
However, the cost of including a microphone, speaker, and small display, especially in mass-marketed form, is so small I just can't see that happening. It'll be cheaper for the cell phone makers to just hand you a standard cell phone with Bluetooth, and just tell you to ignore the features you don't want or need.
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.
The vast majority of people in the US, especially /. readers, have very little connection to agriculture. Invent a new phone, don't, it really doesn't effect 3rd worlders. So rather than do nothing but try to make more food/apply economics to solve the starvation problem, a problem which ideally takes less than 5% of the U.S. population to solve, we deploy the remaining 95% to 'frivolous' projects, such as new technology, etc. WTF else are we supposed to do?
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
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,"
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 =)
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.
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.
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
I've got a cheap little phone that includes a web browser. I find it extremely useful because I've taken some of the information I need to access frequently on my web site and added it to WAP pages that I can now access from my phone. It's much easier to whip out the cell phone than to drag out the laptop, find an internet connection, etc...
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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}
I use it too. You can get cheaper phones and not worry about how long you talk. I'd love for them to go data though. The biggest problem is that they don't have roaming. Just because they are in different cities doesn't mean that an L.A. user can use his/her phone in Denver.
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Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
He was not fired over that incident. We contacted his company's security officer and reported the incident. They took disciplinary action.
My point was, if the other person was fired on the spot, he probably had other incidents. You can't just fire someone without building a paper trail to backup the company's actions.
CT
I concur; no one in my immediate family or (considerable) extended family has a super-high-tech phone. None of my friends have high-tech phones. Who needs all that nonsense? I bought a cell phone so I could make telephone calls, not take and view pictures, download ringtones, browse the web, etc. Once we get the "all you can eat" plans (as erick99 so aptly put it), we'll all be happier.
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.
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
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
- 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.
- Take notes (most recently, I was looking at a shelf for my kitchen, and needed to take the measurements, price, etc. Instead of writing it all down, I took a picture).
- Take a picture of every person whose number I put in my phone. I am absolutely horrible with names, and in my last phone I'd say that maybe 20% of the people in my phonelist I had no idea who they were, but was hesitant to delete them in case one day I'd think, "Oh, THAT'S who Taro is! Damn, I should've kept the number!". Now, whenever someone calls, their name and picture shows on the screen, so I know who is who. Also helps to separate "Taro #1" from "Taro #2" for people whose last names I don't know.
- Take pictures of anything that would be a pain in the butt to describe to people. For instance, talking to my girlfriend and saying "yesterday, I saw this really cool looking poster in a store window. It was, like, an abstract blue and green thing with like these spikey things coming out...well, it was really cool. I guess you'd have to have seen it yourself". Now, if I see something cool, funny, etc., I can just snap a picture and send it.
- Personalizing mails. For example, if I get a mail that makes no sense, I could send a "WTF?!" response, but instead I'll just make a WTF face, take a picture, and send it. Much more personal than just words.
- My phone can take both screen-sized pictures, to send to other phones, and full size (1024 x 768) photos, which I can transfer to my computer through the SD card in the phone. This comes in handy on those days where I see something really beautiful (a sunset, a festival, etc.) that I wasn't expecting, and therefore wasn't carrying my normal digital camera around for.
Like I said, these are the ways I use it. You may find them incredibly retarded, but it doesn't change the fact that I (and most of my friends) get a lot of mileage out of these features.And really, the ability to have a person's face appear when they call is an absolute lifesaver for me (as well as to browse through my phone numbers with a face displayed next to the name). I don't use my cellphone for work, at all, so necessarily most of my uses will be casual. Still, that feature alone has made my phone amazingly more useful.
As for web browsing, games, etc.:
First, I live in Tokyo. That means no car. Public transportation only. Having a game you can play with one hand on your cell-phone is incredibly convenient for crowded train commutes. Other than that, honestly, I don't use java much.
The web browsing is incredibly useful, but, ironically, not for browsing the open internet. Instead, there's a site I use several times a week that will tell you the quickest train route between where you are and where you're going, what stations to change at, what time the trains leave, when you will get there, etc. Without this site, again, I would be pretty much screwed.
You sure dind't search so hard. How about tab separated values? My phone does, and it is not a strange model.
I'm sure you guys like to complain about bloat, but you know, cell phone manufacturers aren't (allways) stupid. They know about market segmentation, and they sell exactly what you want.
Just from nokia:
Want a plain cheap color-screen phone? nokia 3100
Color too fancy for you? nokia 2100
Want it with IrDA? nokia 6100
Want it with FM radio? nokia 6610
With integrated camera, fm and IrDA? 7250
And that just looking at the product page from one manufacturer.
People. I really don't know how many articles are going to be posted about cell phone feature bloat. But it is not true. You can get a simple-cheap-i-only-want-it-for-calls phone anywhere!!!.
The fact that they advertise heavily the most complete phones is because there are people that are willing to pay for it and throw away the old one. In Europe, manufacturers have to do that because everyone has already a phone, and they want to keep selling something.