Consumers Look For More Utilitarian Cellphones

hdtv writes "The Associated Press has an article about new generation of US consumers, who shun the mobile devices packed with features in favor of simpler devices that get the job done. One would think that as cell phones evolve into cameras, e-mail readers, Web browser and music players, mobile users would be happy with the device that fulfills their digital needs, but according to AP, 'a J.D. Power & Associates survey last year found consumer satisfaction with their mobile devices has declined since 2003, with some of the largest drops linked to user interface for Internet and e-mail services.'"

Comments

one would think?

[yagu]

From the slashdot summary:

One would think that as cell phones evolve into cameras, e-mail readers, Web browser and music players, mobile users would be happy with the device that fulfills their digital needs, but according to AP, 'a J.D. Power & Associates survey last year found consumer satisfaction with their mobile devices has declined since 2003, with some of the largest drops linked to user interface for Internet and e-mail services.'"

I, for one, don't think that. I also don't know why one would think that.

There reasons one actually might think otherwise is nicely laid out in the article... As more functions are built in to the mobile phone, by definition the interface gets more complex.

Heck, the desktop metaphor on the PC, ostensibly a device dedicated to the computing experience hasn't come close to perfection. And now the mobile phone industry is foisting increasingly complex devices with ever decreasing reliability on the naive public. And the embedded OS for some of these includes the not-yet-perfected-desktop-metaphor! WTF? It's nice to see there is starting to be some backlash.

Aside from the increasing complexity/decreasing reliability debacle, the mobile phone consortium should never be forgiven for abandoning what they ostensibly started out to provide: mobile phone service. I hate using a cell phone, and I can't stand talking to someone on a cell phone, and I can still easily tell.

It's an interesting industry when one of the advertising campaigns includes the boast: "fewest dropped calls of any mobile phone service". It kind of drives home what the mobile phone industry has failed most at, yet they continue to drive forward with other unnecessary and no more mature offerings.

Part of effective marketing is convincing people they want something they don't really need, or convincing people they need something they don't really want. The mobile phone industry sure has come close to perfecting that.

I don't hold out much hope, I've been using cell phones now for over ten years -- the service has declined, the quality has gotten worse, and somehow the mobile providers couldn't seem to be more proud. I'm glad they're not running airlines.

Re:one would think?

[mattmacf]

As more functions are built in to the mobile phone, by definition the interface gets more complex.

I call bullshit. I'm not sure what "definition" you're using, but a given interface does not have to become more complex as functions get added. As a matter of face, added features can simplify a given interface. I can't think of something specific atm, but I'm sure you can find an example or two in Cupertino somewhere.

I think the problem lies in the business model of the service providers rather than general ineptitude on the part of phone makers. I for one would be perfectly happy with a phone with a billion unnecessary gizmos, doodad, and whatnots, as long as there's a way to get them out of sight the minute they become intrusive. However, I think a lot of the clutter of most mobile phones comes from the exorbitant pay-out-the-ass-for-data plans that service providers are making a killing on. I doubt it would be difficult to design a phone interface that provides a "simple" mode that hides all unnecessary or obtrusive functions out of sight. But ask yourself the question, would it be as profitable?

Re:one would think?

[Mistlefoot]

I agree. I want a simple mobile phone that can text message. As seemingly does the average consumer. What does service start at for that? About $30/month? Add internet and you're now at $60/month so that I can what?

I am fairly certain that people don't want to pay for phones with features that cost more and more money to use. And how annoying is to have 50% of your phones capabilities 'in the way' when you don't activate them.

Imagine owning a car with a Radio or Cruise Control or whatever useful feature, but having to pay extra to use it. Would you be happy with it or find it cumbersome if you didn't pay that extra? Even in the best circumstances it would be an annoyance.

Re:one would think?

[timeOday]

The article certainly fits in nicely with your comment, which goes along with the backlash we see here on slashdot every time a new feature-laden phone comes out.

And yet the one hard piece of data in the article is this:

Consumers last year paid $8.6 billion for so-called data applications on their phones, up 86 percent from the year before, according to wireless trade group CTIA.

86 percent increase in a year. What a backlash.

And then there's always the "usability expert," in this case one Roger Entner, who always have to put in their two cents:

"What do (customers) do best on the phone? They talk. What do they do worst? Type. Why is every user interface based on typing?" Entner said.

Wow, what a genius. Except the industry has already been struggling for years to do away with typing. Problem is, nobody has found a better substitute yet. Of course Ertner doesn't suggest one, thus unintentionally answering his own question of why the devices still use keyboards. But there you go.

Re:one would think?

[miro f]

my girlfriend's parents are looking at buying new mobile phones. One of the ones they are looking at contains (this is true, I'm not making it up):

Ability to print pictures
Adobe Photoshop
a Movie Editor

Although "just make calls" mobile phones still do exist (they're quite cheap, like the 3320, you wouldn't get one with a plan) I find that if I want a feature like bluetooth on my phone, I can't get it without including Adobe Photoshop in the deal.

I think this is proof that the human race is doomed

Re:one would think?

[Ethan Allison]

How bout Exposé?

Re:one would think?

[Total_Wimp]

I love phones packed with as many features as can be packed. I've gotten a series of ever more complex cell phones and I've enjoyed each one more and more.

But guess what, you're right.

I'm not like everyone else. I've realized for a long time that the compromizes I'm willing to make for the features I want are not compromizes very many of my friends or family would be willing to make. I've gottent to the point that I won't even recommend a phone that I personally love if I think that the phone will be too frustrating to the person asking for the recommendation.

So here's the deal. Why can't you have your simple phone AND I have my complex phone? Is there any reason why one of these should be "better" as opposed to "better for you" or "better for me"? I applaud people making their oppinions known to cell phone providers and manufacturers so more simple phones will be offered. All I ask it that you don't tell them to stop offering phones with the great features I want. Really, we can coexist in peace.

TW

Re:one would think?

[misleb]

I call bullshit. I'm not sure what "definition" you're using, but a given interface does not have to become more complex as functions get added. As a matter of face, added features can simplify a given interface.

I think you are confusing functions and features. Certainly features such as voice activated calling (when it works) make a phone easier to use. Functions, on the otherhand, quite often make it more complicated to use... especially if you want to make them easy to access along side other functions. Then you start to add new features to compensate for the extra complexity of the functions.. and the cycle goes on until you have an interface that is many times more difficult to use than it would be if all the phone did was make and recieve calls and store a few numbers.

I can't think of something specific atm, but I'm sure you can find an example or two in Cupertino somewhere.

If by Cupertino, you mean Apple, I would say they are a perfect example of sacrificing functions (but not necessarily features) for simplicity and ease of use. Microsoft, on the other hand, loves to try to load interfaces (and APIs) with all kinds of functions. See the difference?

-matthew

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've hit the nail on the head there. The profit margin for these crappy services is wonderful for the mobile telecoms, so they require you to buy the extra crap if you want USEFUL features. Want extra minutes beyond the handful the basic plan gets you? Not without text messaging and a cell phone that has gaming functionality built in (of course, the games are grainy and all cost obscene amounts of money).

Most European plans get it right. Nearly everything with the phone is pay-to-use at time of use. Don't want dippy ringtones, an obscene of minutes, text messaging, chat capabilities, gaming, or crummy versions of software you'll never use? Cool, don't use 'em and you never get charged. You pay for the minutes you use, the messages you send, and the features you activate, nothing extra. American mobile telecoms are so obsessed with making the user bend over and bite the rawhide that we pay huge charges for garbage features.

Re:one would think?

[bariswheel]

The human race is not doomed. The features are fine, they just can't take away from the main functionality of a phone. Pull all the bells and whistles you want, just don't make the interface sluggish slow, etc..

Re:one would think?

[mattmacf]

I think you are confusing functions and features. Certainly features such as voice activated calling (when it works) make a phone easier to use. Functions, on the otherhand, quite often make it more complicated to use... especially if you want to make them easy to access along side other functions.

Meh, I think the distinction between functions and features is a semantic one at best. What makes voice activated calling any more of a feature than a function? I realize that adding either can easily lead to UI clutter, but it doesn't necessarily have to. I mention Apple because they seem to do the best job at keeping a UI clean and simple without sacrificing utility. While I'm not sure this is the best example, compare iTunes with something like Windows Media Player. Here we see something that has more features/functions and yet is subjectively much easier to use.

My point is, a phone can make phone calls and store numbers AND include other features without adding to the clutter. The problem is, if these "features" (taking and sending pictures, downloading games and ringtones, etc.) aren't IN YOUR FACE, Joe Sixpack probably isn't going to use them as much as the telcos would like. Like I said, I'm sure a "simple" mode for cell phones would be trivial to implement. Something that strips unnecessary menu items and limits the phone to its essential tasks.

The problem is, if I'm a telco, and your phone makes it easy for my profit margin^W^Wcustomers to disregard or ignore all the flashy widgets I'm trying to sell, I'm not going to bundle your cell phone in any of my contracts. The sad truth is, ultimately, it's not about you getting a solid reliable phone that does the bare minimum. It's about the service providers fattening their wallets and milking you for every penny they can get.

Re:one would think?

[xiphoris]

Some well-put points. I think the problem is that instead of listening to consumers, they're trying to tell us what we need. Or perhaps they're just listening primarily to the MySpace crowd -- I don't know.

FTA: One would think that as cell phones evolve into cameras, e-mail readers, Web browser and music players, mobile users would be happy with the device that fulfills their digital needs

See, that's the thing. I don't have any digital needs that I want satisfied by a mobile device besides text messaging. And the phone companies seem to think that charging $0.10 per message is still reasonable somehow.

I think the first phone company to start worrying about its customer's needs will be the Google of the phone companies. I mean, seriously, you hear stories about phone companies disabling features on phones they give to customers, such as uploading pictures to one's computer, so as to require them to purchase proprietary services that send the pictures to one's email through the phone network. Sigh. They just don't get it.

Re:one would think?

[grotgrot]

Incidentally the "fewest dropped calls" thing is a spin on poor coverage. After all a call can't be dropped if you can't make it in the first place! I think one of the biggest problems is how the carriers nickel and dime their customers. For example Verizon Wireless have been trying to prevent getting camera images over a cable and forcing you to do it over the air (for a price). Similarly they arbitrarily remove Bluetooth functionality to prevent users from doing things that VZW can't get paid for each time.

Re:one would think?

[BrokenHalo]

I want a simple mobile phone that can text message.

Agreed. And I want it to take up much less space in my pocket. I'm sure that would be perfectly possible if they got rid of those crappy cameras and other unnecessary bells and whistles that never get used.

Re:one would think?

[Tim C]

It's an interesting industry when one of the advertising campaigns includes the boast: "fewest dropped calls of any mobile phone service". It kind of drives home what the mobile phone industry has failed most at, yet they continue to drive forward with other unnecessary and no more mature offerings.

I never fail to be amazed at the state of the mobile industry in the US, at least as portrayed on sites like this one.

I live in the UK, and I can't remember the last time I had a dropped mobile call that wasn't directly attributed to completely losing phone signal (which at least for me, only ever happens when going underground on the Tube). Add to that some of the ridiculous pricing schemes that seem to be in effect (do you really still pay to *receive* calls?) and it's little wonder that everyons seems so pissed about things.

For a country that (rightly) prides itself on its innovation and technical advancement, you don't half seem to have some things completely wrong...

Re:one would think?

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

england = 50352 sq miles USA = 3537441 sq miles...a little harder to cover.

Re:one would think?

[tsa]

WTF??? I've always dreamt about Adobe Photoshop on my phone. Which model are you talking about? I want it! :-)

Re:one would think?

[thelamecamel]

Of course it wouldn't be profitable. How many people look at (or get a chance to look at) the interface of a phone before they buy it? But the real reason my friends are switching back to their old mobiles is because their new mobiles crash constantly. But you don't get a proper chance to test for that before you buy, so there is no short-term disadvantage to phone companies for shitty design. And because there is no short-term disadvantage, all companies are doing it. And so by the time you're in the market for another new phone, you're screwed.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you an idiot? Expose is worthless.

Re:one would think?

[tsa]

Most mobile phone calls are between people that are less than 10 km apart.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

or use that space for a larger battery

Re:one would think?

[iangoldby]

There are cell phones like this you know. I haven't researched the subject myself, except to say that I have a Motorola C115. It is tiny, it does voice calls and text messages, and if you only turn it on briefly once every few days or so, the battery lasts for more than six months (yes, really). I've had mine nearly a year now and only charged it twice.

Re:one would think?

[pecko666]

There's simple solution - just come to the europe. It's beggining to be pretty common that people here have 3G phones - even when they don't use 3G functions at all. This is simply because they get their cell phone for free with service that is about 30$ or 40$ monthly.

Re:one would think?

[BrokenHalo]

...and if you only turn it on briefly once every few days or so, the battery lasts for more than six months

!!

Sounds useful, if you don't want anyone to call you... ;-)

Re:one would think?

[magicchex]

I share a family plan with my brother and mother. The base price is $60 for two lines, costing an additional $8 per additional line. This includes unlimited nights and weekends (which I believe start at 8 or 9 at night), and 1000 "anytime" minutes shared between the three of us. This also includes unlimited calling to T-mobile customers. My mother uses her phone mainly to speak with the two of us, so most of the anytime minutes are split between myself and my brother. This is plenty of anytime minutes and we have never gone over (if it happened, we would upgrade our plan). We also pay $10 a month for unlimited text and picture messaging on all three lines to or from anyone. The $10 price can be used for up to five lines (great deal, it used to cost $10 for 1000 messages on one line.). With the amount of text messaging my brother and I do, this is a fantastic deal (I had months when I used to go over my previous allotment of 1000 messages by quite alot). For my own line, I also pay $6 a month for unlimited data. This allows me to use Opera and Google Local (as well as any other data apps I would like) as often as I want. With the Opera browser, this allows me to basically do anything I would like online from my cell phone while Google Local integrates great with my service and has saved my ass more than once. I love Opera's customizable homepage too, for quick access to the sites and services I tend to visit and use from my cell phone. Outside of taxes, which amount to $1.23 per line and a per-account charge of $7.64, the only other charges are insurance charges ($6 for the only insured phone, through a 3rd party) or one-time fee charges (think 411, downloadable media, etc). Of course, with the unlimited data package, 411 is unnecessary, while the un-crippled state of my phone makes the included USB cord a much more attractive option for downloadable programs and content.

I know I've gone off on quite a tangent, but my point is that some of the optional features are VERY affordable and can be quite useful. Some fairly simple hacking allows me to customize my phone to quite an impressive extent, effectively hiding any features I personally don't use. For instance, voice recording and some very technical settings (the ones that only change when you change providers) don't even show up in my menu system while Opera and Google Local (of which I use one at least daily) are bound to a single click of one of the keypad keys.

It's interesting to note that a friend with the same phone that I own, but with Verizon service instead, had quite a different experience. The most revealing comparison was the fact that pressing the menu key on my phone would take less than a second to bring the menu up, while taking somewhere around 5 seconds to react on hers. This is not a fluke either, as I tested it on another example of the same phone with Verizon service and got the exact same results. I offered to "hack" her phone in an attempt to make it more useable and realized, one hour in, that Verizon crippled the phone to such an extent that it took about 6 hours to upgrade the firmware and settings and still have a fully-functional phone. This, as opposed to the 5 or 10 minute process with T-mobile service, involved an insane combination of flashing the phone with an Alltel package before doing a lengthy series of hex and seem edits. Any other method and the phone would become a paperweight. Verizon doesn't use sim cards either, so her phone isn't useable with other providers or with temporary sim cards in foreign countries. T-mobile not only uses sim cards, but will gladly unlock your phone for you after a couple months of service, allowing use with any other sim card (Whether it's your friend whose phone died or you buying a $20 sim card while abroad instead of paying $.75 or more a minute with your existing service).

Sorry for the Verizon rant in this discussion, but the last 3 years with T-mobile have been amazing compared to the 3.5 years prior to that with Verizon, who did their best to lie and cheat thei

Re:one would think?

[maggot the shrew]

86 percent increase in a year. What a backlash.

I've paid a fair chunk of those because I had to buy a new phone this year and buying one without a bunch of useless media options was not an option. I mean, it just wasn't available. A lot of my personal backlash is the sheer volume of crap you are paying for when you buy a phone because they don't just have an "it just works" model on the floor.

Re:one would think?

[DrSkwid]

So, if I get this right, "dropped calls" is a meaasurement of how often a caller wandered outside of the coverage area, or radio cold spot.

So providers are trying to offset the capital costs of providing rurals with cell phones by gouging inner city users.

As the OP said, when hearing about US cell phone plans, us in the E.U. are flabbergasted at the things we hear. All except for data plans - I've heard stories of people using their phones to listen to internet radio on a US cross country trip.

That would cost serious money here : $2+ a Mb on basic plans with $150 pcm for 1Gb being the cheapest I have found (O2)
http://www.o2.co.uk/business/corporate/businesstar iffs/datatariffs/

Re:one would think?

[Vengeance]

Which means little, if they are 300 miles from the nearest cell tower.

Re:one would think?

[smacktits]

Me too. That's why I use a Nokia 1100. It's very small, makes and receives calls and text messages, and has fantastic battery life. I have never been happier with a phone. Pick one up if you can, I think it's just what you need.

Re:one would think?

[suv4x4]

Heck, the desktop metaphor on the PC, ostensibly a device dedicated to the computing experience hasn't come close to perfection.

Just like you can't grab a rainbow or reach the horizon, you can't "reach perfection" with anything. But I don't see how this means it shouldn't exist.

Convergence is not a myth, we used to have pagers only capable of displaying phone number and a short text message. Would you get a pager today?

I own a SE K750. It has a very good consumer 2MP camera, great FM radio and MP3/MP4 player, can shoot small videos if need be, has a very decent HTML browser, and is a very good and light phone too.

Apparently it can be done.

The fact that devices become less and less reliable isn't because they have plenty of functions, it's because companies are competing each other and trying to push the products on the market before they are finished.

You can't make a 20-in-1 device without the additional test time and design considerations, but companies do that. When they start producing less models and give them more time to mature, things will fit in place.

Re:one would think?

[celotil]

I bought a Nokia N90 that has those functions, but I'm one those people who actually uses them, and it was an outright purchase so I'm not locked into any plans with a particular telco. I'm currently considering whether to go with Telstra, Optus, Vodaphone, or 3, depending on what their month by month plans* are like. :)

I can understand that a lot of people these days just want a mobile phone to make phone calls. When I go to Murphy's for a beer, I'll sometimes get into discussions with other patrons - Hi Dave, Greg, Jody, Ben, and Brett - about technology, and we all have our opinions, and, to certain extents, we're all right.

Dave has a phone that he makes phone calls with. That's it. He doesn't even use text messaging. It's a nice little phone, and it gets a good amount of standby time.

Brett on the other hand wouldn't have a phone if you paid him, and would throw it on the floor with the intention of breaking it if you gave him one - in front of you too.

But that's them. They know their options, and they've stuck with what they feel that they want and need. I have my portable phone-pc unit, Dave has his calls-only tool, and Brett knows that people who want to get into contact with him will find him either at home or at the pub.

People who complain that there are no options for buying a mobile that can only make phone calls are simply not looking. They're being persuaded by advertising to look at things that they don't want, and instead of asserting their right as a customer with cash to spend, they're either giving in to the marketing, or walking away without even taking a cursory glance, or demanding that the salesman show them, the plain old, ordinary mobile phones.

I wanted my N90, and I got it. Dave wants to make phone calls, and he's got that. Brett doesn't want a phone, so he's ignored the marketing.

There is no reason to lament the lack of any sort of mobile phones these days, only lament the slack-jawed twits who've lost the ability to think about what they're doing, or educate themselves about their options, when they go shopping.

*There are typically three sorts of plans you can get in Australia - the heavily advertised, 12 to 24 month contractual "Get The Phone for FREE! and ONLY pay $30-$200 per month" (depending on the phone); the Pre-Paid Monthly which comes with a simple phone, that may or may not have a low-quality camera; and the Month-by-Month Sim only which is for when you already have a phone.

Re:one would think?

[iangoldby]

Only a couple of people have my mobile number, and they know not to use it to contact me unless they don't mind waiting a week for a response.

On that basis, switching it on a couple of times a week to check for messages/texts seems fine to me.

Re:one would think?

[celotil]

It's not Adobe Photoshop, but it does have some useful picture editing functions.

Go to the Nokia web site and download the user manual for the N9x series - not sure about N7x's - and look at the range of options for editing pictures and video. :)

Here's the N90 page - http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/N90/ - and here's the link to the N90 user manual (PDF) - http://nds2.nokia.com/files/support/nam/phones/gui des/N90_US_en.PDF

Re:one would think?

[Oldsmobile]

I discussed this with my friend who works for a mobile phone company and here is what we came up with:

Simple phone with nice clicky buttons, thin (close to a closed motorola razr) small and light. Made from one piece of plastic. Monochrome LCD display, phone book on sim-card, ability to send and receive SMS messages. Nothing more.

Offered in a variety of nice in-offencive colors. Price around 15-20 euros.

As a bonus, you could throw in a bluetooth chip and gprs/edge/3g, though nothing on the phone would control those functions (except maybe to activate the bluetooth). That way you could connect your laptop or whatever through the phone.

Re:one would think?

[petermgreen]

or you just keep your old one...........

or if that fails buy on ebay (i heartilly reccomend the nokia 8210 btw if you wan't a phone thats reasonablly simple small and light and your buying in the used market)

Re:one would think?

[MoonBuggy]

I'd just like to add a note of agreement here. I've said more or less the same on a few phone related topics now, but I'll reiterate: basic phones don't get the news coverage that the latest new feature-phone does, but they still exist. You don't hear about the latest model because more often than not there isn't one - basic has been perfected (Nokia 1100 IMO, but plenty of others out there) and it's already cheap. There's nothing more for the media to say about basic, so let them tell us about the latest (perhaps pointless) innovations in the new round of phones.

Re:one would think?

[Oldsmobile]

I don't get it. Why does everyone go on about there not being a simple phone available?

The Nokia 1100

The Motorola C139

The Samsung
SGH-N625

Happy now?

Re:one would think?

[ExKoopaTroopa]

well that just depends on where exactly you live in Europe. In Belgium the operators aren't allowed to give away free phones with paying service attached. You can get reasonable disctounts on certain models if you purchase an intro pack from a service provider, but even then the phone can't be locked to be used with only one service provider (which is the case in the UK, I believe). But hey, this is Belgium, where you're obliged to have ID on your person all the time, but as good consumers, our governement does protect us (to a degree) against market abuse

Re:one would think?

[Clovert Agent]

Look at phone interfaces - they're definitely more complex. Just count the number of keypresses (or screens to progress through) to accomplish basic tasks - it's increasing all the time. But that's not real complexity: if you ignore irrelevant menu items then the interfaces aren't really more complex, just more clicky.

But I don't really mind that, because most of the phone interfaces have some sort of "favorites" list to get more quickly to common tasks.

What I do mind is that phone interfaces are becoming steadily less reliable. Interface crashes, slowdowns, sudden poweroffs - they're all now daily occurences, and it drives me nuts.

The obvious answer would be to buy a phone without all the glitzy features, and when I asked for one I was offered a Nokia model for "businessmen who just want a great phone without the gizmos". Uhuh. No camera, no music player...great. But also no Bluetooth. A business phone that I can't interface my PDA and laptop with for dialup? Give me a break - they obviously didn't want anyone to buy it.

No, I'm stuck with an endless succession of phones with more features than I want, shitty interfaces and steadily degrading reliability.

Re:one would think?

[fiddlesticks]

Yeah, and Europe= 4,000,000 sq miles.

I have total coverage within this area, and most of the rest of the world. As does almost everyone in the world apart from US cellusers.

`

Re:one would think?

[mattkime]

>>For a country that (rightly) prides itself on its innovation and technical advancement,

Its not an issue of technology but geography and economics. We have 38 times the land mass and only five times as many people. The UK is roughtly the physical size of Oregon.

>>do you really still pay to *receive* calls?

Yes, you pay for your own air time. In the UK, the caller pays for the air time. This is annoying because it creates another tier in paying to make calls. In the US you're never going to have someone complain about calling your mobile because of the cost.

Now, if you want to complain about cell phone service in the US, I'd start with the per text message fees. It should be much cheaper for the network to send a text than one second of voice but we're charged more.

Re:one would think?

[IHateChoosingAName]

I am not completely sure, but don't some mobile providers have something in their contracts against using them for only checking voicemail?

Re:one would think?

[garylian]

Bingo!

I hate cell phones, too. But, I work from home, so I made a cell phone be my work phone, so I could run little errands during the day without interrupting my work, since I do technical support for an application. So, it is a necessary evil, and a godsend to a new parent when they want to make those quick shopping runs without the spouse and baby.

However, if you look at these phones, I can't help but see a nice parallel relationship to PDAs.

How many people do you know that bought a PDA, and walked around like they were important simply because they had it? PDAs became a status symbol to the tech crowd and the tech geek wannabes. From what I saw, over 75% of those that had a PDA didn't come close to needing one, but they pulled one out during meetings to make themselves look important.

The cell phone has become the same thing, especially to today's young crowd. They simply HAVE to have one, and the more features it has, the cooler they are. Remember (if you are old enough) when the pager stopped being a drug dealer's friend, and became a status symbol? Remember how girls started coming up with stupid page numbers to indicate things, like 143 being "I love you"? Well, today's young people can't live without text messaging and a camera, plus internet access and 50 different downloaded ringtones.

Lets look at some of the features on today's phones.

Text messaging: I've only met one person over the age of 35 who used this. It seems to have the sole purpose of sending messages silently without tipping off teachers/administrators in a school setting. Apparently, passing a piece of paper with a hand-written note is too lame. Really, why pay extra to spend all that time "typing" that message in when you could say it in a few seconds? Oh, yeah... These kids burn too many minutes, and can't get to the point and end the conversation.

Camera phone: If this is the best you can do for taking pictures, dear god are you hopeless. While the newer camera phones do produce better images than a webcam from a few years ago, those pictures are mostly stuck on your phone, unless you want to pay to transfer the file. Me, I'll stick with my real camera.

Email/Internet: Ok, just another fancy way to hit kids up for silent messaging and stuff they really don't need. This isn't Blackberry, it's cheesy AOL/Yahoo! or whatever. And the amount of spam that tends to get through those accounts makes it worthless.

So, to sum it all up, today's cell phone makers have targetted one audience, teenage girls. The problem is, they don't really make nice cell phones for the rest of us that just want a cell phone that can store numbers and speed dial them.

Man, do I miss my last cell phone, that did just that! But, it started to lose reception because they were cutting back the signals for older digital models, so I had to upgrade. My new cell has a camera in it, and it is too easy to activate, impairing with my scrolling through numbers backwards. The only reason I got it was because all the simple "I'm a phone with only phone and phone # memory" phones were pieces of crap, or cost 3x more than the Nokia I got.

So, let some phone maker come up with a nicely made phone that is just a phone for the non teenage girl crowd, PLEASE?!?!

Re:one would think?

[ilyag]

Yes, in the US you do pay to receive cell phone calls. On the other hand, calling a cell phone costs exactly as much as calling a landline. If it's a local call, it's 0.00 dollars /minute. From other places/countries, it's cheap.

All in all, it's a different pricing scheme that usually results in the same net charges for average use of the phones.

By the way, I don't know about USA as a country that "prides itself on its innovation and technical advancement"... Maybe it does, but it is definetely not Japan.

Re:one would think?

[Eideewt]

I think that kind of defeats the purpose of having a cell phone for most people though. I'm not saying that you don't have a very good reason for the way you use it (although I'm a little curious about what it is), but your battery life example means almost nothing to me. I've found that battery life is extremely variable anyway. In an area where I get a strong signal, my battery can last for days with the phone always on. Where I live, the battery lasts a few hours. It's pretty frustrating actually, because I live in the middle of the city, where I would expect a strong signal, but I frequently get absolutely nothing.

Re:one would think?

[adamjaskie]

Sounds exactly like what I was looking for, and was unable to find. I don't need to browse the internet on a tiny screen, but it is nice to hook my iBook up via Bluetooth and get online anywhere. Unfortunately, in order to do that, I had to get a phone with a web browser, camera (kind of nice, since I don't always carry my A75 with me, but it takes shitty pictures), mp3 player (pointless, since I have an iPod with 2500 times the storage), and even an FM radio (that I can't use, because it uses the wire of your headset as the antenna, and I use a Bluetooth headset).

/ take one in black, please // lameness filter doesn't catch slashies?

Re:one would think?

[tylernt]

Ah yes, that appears to be the successor to the venerable 5190 (http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/5190/). The 5190 has the best interface of any cell phone I've used yet. It's not as "intuitive" as some interfaces because it doesn't have dedicated call/hangup buttons, but I don't consider that a shortcoming. And you figure it out after making your first call and life is good.

The 5190 is actually superior to my current Nokia 6800 (http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/6800/) when it comes to speed of navigation. The 5900's display responds to keystrokes about 4x faster. But they're both better than the Kyocera crap my wife has.

Re:one would think?

[adamjaskie]

I want Dave's phone, plus Bluetooth. I don't want a camera, I don't want an mp3 player, just a plain, ordinary phone that happens to also have Bluetooth so that I can connect my iBook to the internet, or synchronize my contacts and calendar without carrying yet another cable around with me.

Unfortunately, such a phone doesn't seem to exist.

Re:one would think?

[TheRaven64]

I own a couple of Nokia devices, of one persuasion or another, and the interfaces just amaze me. They feel like they're designed by someone who has spent a lot of time and effort learning about good user interface design - and then implemented by someone who can't read a specification document. Some things are really neat, like the way opening and closing the lens cover launches and exists the camera app. Some are monumentally stupid, like the way the up and down buttons are forward and backwards in the music player and the left and right buttons turn the volume up and down (maybe it's designed to be used with the 'phone rotated, except then the text would be at the wrong orientation), or the way the call logs are in the same submenu as games (seriously, WTF?). I'd send them a full UI audit, but mobile 'phones have such a short lifespan that they're discontinued before they could get the bugs out.

Re:one would think?

[tylernt]

Yeah but don't you have to go out and buy those on your own? Most people don't realize you can even do that and just pick from whatever their carrier offers... which is going to be one of the overcomplicated 3G units.

Re:one would think?

[adamjaskie]

Not to mention the half-arsed way they do all these functions. My cell phone camera is next to useless. It takes blurry, grainy pictures with no detail. It isn't a matter of a low-res sensor, it has to do with the shitty, tiny lens they used so that the phone would still fit in the pocket of some teenager wearing tight jeans. The FM radio (WTF?) in my phone is useless. It won't operate without a headset, because it uses the wires as an antenna. Of course, I use a Bluetooth headset. So the FM radio doesn't even turn on.

Re:one would think?

[iangoldby]

I'm not saying that you don't have a very good reason for the way you use it (although I'm a little curious about what it is)

I resisted having one for a long time, and my friends kept telling me I should have one for emergency use. Eventually I saw this one for £20 (pay as you go) on Amazon and caved in. In fact I have also ended up using it to tell someone what time my train is due in if I'm expecting to be met.

Re:one would think?

[TheRaven64]

That would cost serious money here : $2+ a Mb on basic plans with $150 pcm for 1Gb being the cheapest I have found (O2)

I have a fairly basic plan from T-Mobile. It includes 40MB of data and 100 minutes of calls a month, and costs about £18 on average (half price for the first nine and last three months of an eighteen month contract and every subsequent month if I stay on the same plan works out to about that over the contract period). 40MB is about as much data as I need. It's enough for me to check my email when I'm on the train or IM people when I'm waiting to meet them in the pub.

When I looked a few months ago, 3 were the best for large volume data, giving 512MB for £55 - although O2 does seem to be cheaper now. These days, however, I'm rarely far from a wireless access point, so it's less useful. I was tempted by one of the lower volume O2 tariffs, but when you add in the fact that you need a voice contract as well it becomes a bit more expensive.

Oh, and my pet peeve with O2 (and most other operators); they only use the cost of the voice contract when calculating the 'phone you are eligible for. If you are on a £10/month contract, then you only get the cheapest 'phones, even if you add on a £25/month data bundle. Oh, and most of the 'phones available on a £10/month contract don't have bluetooth support, so you can't make use of the data bundle.

Re:one would think?

[whoop]

They charge you so much per month no matter what. I don't see them having a problem of someone not tying up their lines. It would seem like an extremely expensive voice mail service though. You could probably find some place on the internet to merely hold a voice mailbox for $5 per month or something.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm not like everyone else."

You're not that different either - there's a heck of a lot of fucktards out there.

Re:one would think?

[timeOday]

But the 86% figure doesnt refer to phone sales, it refers to sales of wireless services that require those phones.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

The most revealing comparison was the fact that pressing the menu key on my phone would take less than a second to bring the menu up, while taking somewhere around 5 seconds to react on hers. This is not a fluke either, as I tested it on another example of the same phone with Verizon service and got the exact same results.

What phone do you have? Low end Samsung? Audiovox 8910? Motorola T720? I work with Verizon phones all day, and that's a fluke.

Verizon doesn't use sim cards either, so her phone isn't useable with other providers or with temporary sim cards in foreign countries.

Of course not, Verizon uses CDMA. I'm pretty sure you don't need to unlock CDMA phones, but you do need to call the provider you want to switch to and have them activate the phone on their network. (which they may not do)

And of course it has to be a CDMA carrier. If you're planning on using your phone in Europe, you should probably do some homework first and get a GSM phone that works in the right band. If the phone can't talk to their towers, it doesn't matter if it's locked or unlocked.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm glad they're not running airlines"

Ummm... this one does...

*runs and cancels holiday flight*

Re:one would think?

[Jerf]

People have pointed out the size differential, and that's part of it, but not the whole story. The real reason is... for all we bitch and moan, the service is good enough.

People like to bitch and moan. But for as much as they bitch and moan about dropped calls, just try raising their cell phone prices to pay for more towers in places where they go perhaps 1% of the time. Watch them skip over the bitching and moaning and go straight to "switching or dropping their service".

Certainly we could afford near-total coverage of the country. Therefore, obviously we have decided via the market that it's not worth it.

There's no empirical standard by which you can judge this "wrong". It's just an economic choice.

What really drives this choice isn't just the size disparity directly, it's the sheer quantity of towers that you'd have to put up that would cover only 1-20 customers. Why shoud we put those towers up if they aren't going to be profitable? So we can win a pissing match?

(I can almost smell the replies complaining about how the market has made a sub-optimal choice. Well, I don't think regulation is stopping people from putting up tower enough (a little regulation just raisese the prices a bit, it doesn't prevent things from happening), and, well, the "I'm smarter than the market" fallacy certain has a long, pedigreed history.... but it's not usually a good bet in this sort of situtation. I'll bet on the market having something pretty close to the optimum here over the handwaving arguments of a Slashdot poster.)

Re:one would think?

[netringer]

call bullshit. I'm not sure what "definition" you're using, but a given interface does not have to become more complex as functions get added. As a matter of face, added features can simplify a given interface. I can't think of something specific atm, but I'm sure you can find an example or two in Cupertino somewhere.

I think the classic problem with the user interface is it ends being designed by the coders who, try as they might, cannot fully grasp how the user would expect it to work because they have to deal how the code and the hardware, etc. behind the scenes are organized.

I'm not a professional developer but learned once when I implemented a user menu for my LAN users. I set up the menu to map a networked printer so it asked you the questions in the order I needed to make up the DOS command rather than what the user would think was the most important question the ask first: which printer do you want, not what port do you want to map to a printer as I had it.

You can tell that the UI in these phones is set up based on what was built into the base OS, what drivers did the chip manufacturer supply us with, the camera code came from a third party, of course, and then what we had add to talk to the customer's peculiar phone network. Oh. And then the carrier got in and messed around a bit. So it ends being tough if the user can't figure out why the phone network options are three menus in rather than under "Call."

I think we can guess that the Cupertino guys have UI and hardware designers that tell the coders to make it work this way rather than letting it be an afterthought.

Re:one would think?

[esper]

I was going to say the exact same thing, but you beat me to it... I think there's a definite market for basic phones with one or two useful features (i.e., Bluetooth and internet connectivity) without having all the crap fluff features (cameras, games, etc.) forced upon you in the process.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

all i ever wanted was a phone that worked ..... sprint doesn't seem to be able to do that . instead of coming up with a phone with better reception they pack it full of games and web content and services that i have to pay extra for . i never have and never will play games on my phone a phone is a phone not a game station .. i never have and never will surf the net with my phone again a phone is a phone not a web browser ...... they just dont get it , i would pay twice what im paying now if i could get a phone that was a good phone and not just an ok phone with a bunche of crap that i will never in my life even think about using. if they just for once listened to the people that rely on their phones for a living and not the 14 to 20 year old kids that seem to be the ones dictating what the future of cellphone technology will be , then maybe someday i could finish a phone call with out with out having to yell " did you hear me " " are you still there "

Re:one would think?

[tmortn]

But due to that you also do not often get the best form factos. How much slimmer could a razr be if it only tried to be a phone ? Or perhaps the case could be made more sturdy since there would be less attempt to cram things in and thus more space for structural re-enforcement.

The Nokia 1100 is a great functional phone don't get me wrong. But its a bit lacking in the style department. I am the last one to champion style over function. But that does not mean you cannot add some style once you have functionality. iPod is of course the quintesential example at the moment. It does one thing very very well with a great deal of style. Yet I am not aware of a single example of a stylish 'Just a Phone' Cell phone.

Re:one would think?

[Eideewt]

That makes sense.

Re:one would think?

[AaronLawrence]

That's because in the current market, the intersection between "simple" and stylish is a tiny market. Or: those who want a stylish phone mostly want all the features as well.

Re:one would think?

[MoonBuggy]

Fair point, and it's definitely a matter of personal taste, but have you looked at the Nokia 8910? I have one myself (I use a smartphone during the day but I need something simple and stylish for when I don't need the features) and it's absolutely excellent. It's a very visible monochrome screen (avoid the 8910i, that 'i' means it has an early model colour screen which is unresponsive and not especially visible) and it does calls, SMS and that's near enough it - no camera, no MMS, no additional software, and a battery that lasts forever (another disadvantage of the 'i' model, that old school colour display drains a disproportionate amount of power).

The only 'extra' features are bluetooth and GPRS, both of which can be switched off to save power, and I can't say I've ever turned them back on, but remote synch and the ability to use it as a laptop modem could come in handy I guess. The autoslide and titanium casing certainly turn heads when you use it, but it's a little more subtle than the "look at me" razr that everyone else seems to use.

Re:one would think?

[AaronLawrence]

Text messaging: used very frequently by me and my 30-something friends. Work and play.

Camera in a phone: IF they did a decent job, I would like to have this feature. They are moving toward decent.

Email/internet: if you have any actual *need* to check email (i.e. on call for something), then why would you not want to be able to do it from your phone? It used to be a pain to drag my laptop around, now I can check it from my mobile.

Why is Slashdot so surprisingly full of people who are extremely conservative about new technology, and unimaginative about possible uses of it?

Re:one would think?

[h4rm0ny]

I too just want my phone to be a phone and I have an old Siemans model. I will upgrade my phone for one feature and one feature only - when they produce a mobile that I can throw at a wall and drop in the bath without it getting damaged.

I got hassled by a phone salesman last month as I walked down the street and his face visibly fell when I pulled out my phone and showed him what I used. I despise the [UK] marketing campaign that asks: "Ashamed of your mobile?" No, actually.

Re:one would think?

[masdog]

They make a service for those people too - Iridium.

Re:one would think?

[h4rm0ny]

Correction - I would upgrade for one other feature: A phone where I can put in the public key for a friend's phone and vice versa, thus having an encrypted conversation with them. Now surely that wouldn't be so complicated, but what a selling point! Great for big business, great for government and police work; and great for people like me who are fed up being spied on all the time.

Re:one would think?

[IamTheRealMike]

I wonder if it's not just the cell operators but also the phones themselves that are different. One of the more popular makes of phone here are the Sony Ericsson K750/W800 line of phones which have tons of features including cameras and web access. A lot of people use the cameras, sometimes even the games, probably very few use the web access. But people rarely (if ever) complain about the user interfaces - perhaps because they're really quite good? I've seen a lot of phone UIs in the past few years and of all of them the SE consumer phones have the best IMHO.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

The world needs cute teenagers in tight jeans a hell of a lot more than you need a camera on your friggin phone. Request for bulky lens: DENIED!

Re:one would think?

[Metex]

*cough*I can't think of something specific atm, but I'm sure you can find an example or two in Cupertino somewhere.

Anyways add a camera to the phone requires another interface in software or hardware = more complex
Adding ANYTHING to a phone requires another interface = more complex

Re:one would think?

[enjo13]

Unfortunately, this is not true. Particularly for the larger manufacturers (such as Nokia and Motorola). They employ large groups of human computer interaction experts that study, design, and test these interfaces. Its incredibly sophisticated in reality.

The problem here is two-fold. The biggest is the overall immaturity of the technology. Symbian has been around for quite awhile, but its base technology is incredibly poor. They've been very slow to embrace modern programming techniques, and the overall quality of their product is quite low. As a result, third party applications end up full of weird little work-arounds that further compromise their stability. This is made worse by requirements (by the symbian signing process) to work in low disk/low memory conditions properly which often destabilizes the OS even further, requiring even more cunning workarounds which inevitably lead to issues under non-standard use cases.

The linux situation is just as bad right now. Motorola is currently using a hacked up version of QTopia at the interface level. Other manufacturers have taken Linux and run with it in their own direction (its not terribly clear what Nokia is planning with Maemo for example). Again, in many cases we have single purpose architecture (the controls and libraries are tested and verified against only a small set of use cases) which leads to more and more issues as these components interact in new ways.

The other big issue is the way phones are currently developed. Nokia (for example) is fragmented into several different 'phone groups', and each group is capable of making arbitrary changes to the base OS. The truly bad UI decisions are made at this level as they face pressure from timelines and mechanical issues. The original UI vision is often compromised for the sake of getting product out the door.

There is a bit of hope, however. Symbian recently released 9.1, and while manufacturers are quite late getting devices out (both Nokia and Sony Ericcson have announced devices at this point) all signs point to an improved experience with this new OS. I expect some more problems for the next 12-18 months as the new Kernel and security model are actually released to users. However, my experiences with this newer technology has been more positive than previous versions. I do question many of their decisions and frusturating problems remain. For example: they do use C++ exceptions now, just wrapped up in their own leave/trap mechanism which means throwing an arbitrary exception object actually brings the whole application down. However, the problems have largely been pushed up a level (the biggest issues seem to be in the UI layers at this point). At the same time, Trolltech seems to be close to bringing out QTopia 4.x which promises to be much more 'turn-key' for OEM's. Hopefully this will eliminate a lot of the Linux fragmentation and create some stability there.

At the same time, most OEM's have recognized the UI issues are going to a MUCH more 'platform-centric' approach in which phone groups must work within the bounds of the overall platform when customizing the OS for a specific phone. I think this will help greatly for future products and should help them to start getting their arms around the complexity of these new devices. I really do think consumers want higher end features, they just want it done in a more coherent (and less bulky) way.

Re:one would think?

[tmortn]

I dunno. Purely anecdotal but most folks I know that get fancy feature filled phones don't care for the features, generally they just curse them. Ask them why they got the phone and they say "cause it looked neat", "It was the smallest one" or some such other. Mostly I think the phone companies just don't want to make these plain jane models look attractive. Cause if they did many more people would opt for them. At least more of the people I know would. Sheeple are strange like that. Will pay more for something they know they won't like just cause it's "Shiny".

Re:one would think?

[SillyNickName4me]

I think the problem lies in the business model of the service providers rather than general ineptitude on the part of phone makers.

Living in another part of the world, where most mobile phone providers have a bit less insane business models (amazing what actual competition does..), I can tell you you are completely wrong. While the business models you are talking about cause additional issues, they are nowhere the root of the problem the article is about. The phones themselves are the problem.

I for one would be perfectly happy with a phone with a billion unnecessary gizmos, doodad, and whatnots, as long as there's a way to get them out of sight the minute they become intrusive. However, I think a lot of the clutter of most mobile phones comes from the exorbitant pay-out-the-ass-for-data plans that service providers are making a killing on. I doubt it would be difficult to design a phone interface that provides a "simple" mode that hides all unnecessary or obtrusive functions out of sight. But ask yourself the question, would it be as profitable?

1. If my phone has a camera, I can leave it at home most of the time, because I am not allowed to carry any form of camera on me in many locations where I have to work, so having a camera on it simply makes it USELESS.

2. A color screen wastes energy and battery life. To witness ancient t39m with bluetooth enabled has approx the same standby time on its standard battery as a much newer k300i with a standard battery (and yes, the batteries are comparable in capacity, with a slight advantage for the k300i, not to mention 3 years less battery lifetime, which matters a lot for a li-ion). When bluetooth is turned off, the battery lifetime is approx 80% better (!), not to mention using a high-capacity battery (having upto 2 weeks standby time, or over 10 hours talking time is kinda nice)

3. Everything that is there that I don't need can break and cause the phone to malfunction without ever having been usefull.

Re:one would think?

[localman]

Why can't you have your simple phone AND I have my complex phone? Is there any reason why one of these should be "better" as opposed to "better for you" or "better for me"?

You know, that's a great question, and one that has bugged me for a long time. There is an idea (in the tech world at least) that there is the "right" way to do things, and all companies chase after that. You'd think that someone would try a different tack, offering something actually different that appeals to a different type of consumer, but in fact most companies merely copycat each other. There's no reason for complex cell phones to go away, but there's no reason for simple ones to have gone away either.

When I look at cars, there's a much wider margin of option. It's well understood that some people want a Lexus, some want a Ford Pickup, some a Prius, and some a Taurus. But even there people (not the companies) still argue about what is "best", which is a ridiculous concept.

People just have too much an idea of "ultimate", and they feel they need to guard their preference by putting down and calling for the death of the other options. The way Mac, Windows, and Linux people bash each other. Who cares? Use what you like! And let there be more variety of companies and products out there!

Cheers.

Re:one would think?

[aussersterne]

Your marketplace argument relies on the assumption that the consumer is actually aware of the possibility of phones that work.

I'd suggest that a large portion of American consumers have been led by marketing, the corporate and public infrastructures, and a failed educational system to believe that everything in American life is already "the best it can get."

In my experience, people believe that dropped calls are intrinsic to the technology of wireless communication in the same way that they believe that mistake and instability are inherent to the technology of computers thanks to their experience with Windows. They don't pay more for reliability because a) there are no more reliable choices, b) they wouldn't be aware of them if there were, and c) they wouldn't believe they were actually more reliable anyway, given their own experience and what marketing departments and regulatory agencies imply, and because they wouldn't therefore rush to switch, any new entrant that actually did have a reliable network would struggle to compete thanks to the marketplace belief that in truth they're the same as other carriers and thus overpriced since no dropped calls is impossible as everyone knows.

"Fewest dropped calls" is an implication by the cell company that dropped calls happen and are a cost of using wireless, something to be mitigated; the fact that these companies aren't better regulated is an implication to most of the American sheep that government also doesn't believe that wireless technology can perform better, since Americans by and large believe that their government and its regulatory policies are always ideal--that is to say that if things aren't better, it's because they can't realistically be better, otherwise American (capital 'A') government and industry would already have made them better or imposed regulation to punish failures. After all, this is America, by definition the best on Earth. If we invade Iraq, it is by definition moral. Similarly, if our cellphones don't work, it implies by definition that the technology is unreliable. It's a conspiracy that links the American ethos to willfull miseducation of consumers by marketplace and regulatory forces with vested interests in the policy and production realities that they support.

And of course government and corporations are happy to maintain such misconceptions among the general public.

Before you assume that the consumer has made a choice in the marketplace, you have to account for forces in the marketplace that conspire to keep all consumers misinformed and without choices that might inform them, thereby benefitting the marketplace.

The solution (that "marketplace" people hate) is regulation, something sorely lacking in helpful ways in the US economy and on the other hand overabundant in damaging and detrimental ways that benefit only the wealthy.

Re:one would think?

[PatriceVignon]

Yes, I second that. I want a phone that is simply the best phone, as in connecting you to the world. I.e. I want features like Bluetooth, it should synchronize its address book with my Mac, work worldwide (quad-band). And it would be even cooler if I could connect to high-speed data services (EDGE, UMTS, Wi-Fi, etc.).
But what I do not want is a camera, or a browser, or games, or ringtones or all the other crap phones come with nowadays. Do you think there is a single phone that actually does all this? There isn't. And don't tell me to just get the most expensive phone and ignore all the other bs features, because they just make the phone unstable and drain the battery.

Re:one would think?

[tmortn]

I actually looked at those for a while. Mostly for the quad band than anything else(Travel to Europe now and then). Got a Nokia 6820 for the realistic IM capability instead (was still tri band and could be used over seas). Wish I had gotten the 8910. Keyboard was useable on the 6820 (easiest contact entry ever) but the firmware was so dog slow and the screen so small it was not really useable. Fine as a phone though. I think Nokia is really the exception when it comes to the UI problem. Normally the phone features are easy while the features get buried.

I am not really one who is after the simple stylish phone. Have a cingular 8125 that I love. But until the smart phones hit their current level of capacity I looked pretty much in vain. On the otherhand if you could say get a 50 dollar Razr form that just did phone calls I'd be tempted to have a second less bulky phone... like to put in the car. Or for a second handset around the house etc...

Re:one would think?

[drivekiller]

Except the Nokia 1100 doesn't appear to be available. And they sure want to sell you a plan -- Hey look, the phone is $50. No wait, it's really a Nokia 6230 and it's $249 if you don't sign up for our plan. WTF-- I already have all the vendor lockin I need.

Re:one would think?

[l3prador]

I don't get it. Why does everyone go on about there not being a simple phone available? The Nokia 1100 [nokiausa.com] The Motorola C139 [motorola.com] The Samsung [samsung.com] SGH-N625 Happy now?

Because those are all GSM, and the only provider that has coverage where I live uses CDMA.

Re:one would think?

[Zemran]

Well put :) I am happy for my g/f to have her easy to use phone but I would be lost without my gadgets. She laughs when I try to look at a cut down web page on a 2" x 1.5" screen and I laugh with her but we are both happy and that is what life is about.

Re:one would think?

[cloudmaster]

iTunes doesn't have more functionality (or featurality, since you claim those words describe the same idea) than Media Player. It has less, as far as I can tell. That's why iTunes is better, though - it does a few things well, and presents them in an easy to use interface. The interface is easy ot use, because it doesn't have as many things to do.

Apple in general does this often. They take the things most people won't likely have to do, and hide or remove the ability to do those things.

Back on topic, all of those extra features in phones generally mean less time to properly debug the critical features. The phones I've had which just did phone stuff - dialing, keeping address books, and maybe a calendar - have all been rock-solid reliable. Since I've been using phones with more features, though, I have more quirky prolems.

Some examples: My Nokia 6225 has been reliable, and though it does have a couple of bundled games, I was able to remove them - so now I just have a phone with a calendar/scheduler (which doesn't work well and I don't use) and a camera (which is only able to upload images through Sprint's photomail service, depite the infrared link capability). My wife's Samsung "Blade" has UI problems and occasionally hangs up - but it has more features. Our olf LG phones had more features, and they would occasionally crash. My phone would crash! How does an embedded device get released with the potential to randomly crash?! The Samsung phone I had before these, had more features, and occasionally had interface glitches.

In general, people like flash and features. No one buys a phone for stability. That's why PCs all come with Windows now, and phoens aren't stable. Because the development efforts have to choose between stability and features/functions, and stability usually loses.

Re:one would think?

[cloudmaster]

Yeah, buying a car with satelite radio functionality or On Star, and then having to pay an extra fee to use it would be painful. No one would do that. /looks around and notices that most of GM's vehicles come with OnStar enabled for just one year, but that the capability remains unusably in the car after the subscription runs out (for example)

Re:one would think?

[Alioth]

Most the people I know who are over 35 use text messages. They can be extremely convenient. For example, when riding on the bus, instead of phoning someone and shouting over the noise of the engine "I'M ON THE BUS BE HOME IN 20 MINUTES!" and annoying all the passengers, you send a brief text message which is discreet and doesn't annoy anyone who's travelling on the bus with you. Similarly on trains or in other public places.

We use text messaging extensively in the glider club. One person will check the weather in the morning then send a broadcast text saying "Weather good, flying" or "Weather not good enough, no flying". You can save a pre-made text message for this, then broadcast it. Much faster and much cheaper than phoning 20 people.

Text messaging is extremely useful for sending quick (mostly one way) messages. I didn't start using text messaging until I was in my 30s. Text messaging has been available in even the cheapest phones for probably over a decade here.

Re:one would think?

[kiddailey]

In the large major southern U.S. city I live in, I have dropped or broken-up calls when I call my parents, brother and sister who each live only about 20-30 miles away.

It happens so often that you're pretty much guaranteed a laugh if you ask "Can you hear me now?" when you get the connection back.

Considering that the cell phone companies (three different ones in the case of my family) can't seem to even get good coverage over that small and flat of an area in a large city, I seriously doubt that the size of the U.S. has anything to do with it.

Re:one would think?

[tsa]

Then they have no connection and they can't have a mobile telephnone call.

Re:one would think?

[icebrain]

Sounds like my current phone (Samsung SGH-365, IIRC). My first phone was an LG, one of their early models. Yeah, it was a bit clunky, but the interface was fairly reasonable.

Then, I got the Samsung. The physical phone is very aesthetically pleasing. But some of the "features" in the UI just suck ass. For example:

Having a button on the outside that triggers the camera causes many, many pictures to be taken of the inside of my pocket.

Setting an alarm (or more precisely, just arming one whose time is already set) takes 5-6 keystrokes. The LG (and every other phone I've seen) does it in one.

I can't search my phone book by number, only name.

Changing the ring volume has to be done from inside a three-level-deep menu, instead of just using the volume rocker on the outside (instead, this control keypress tone volume... who needs that?)

Re:one would think?

[Jnfields]

I hear you...I don't have any digital needs that I want my cell phone to fulfill except completing incoming and outgoing calls. I still use a Sanyo 4700 cell phone that was bought over 4.5 years ago that suits my needs perfectly. It has a kick @ss speaker phone a great battery life and a terribly simply interface for doing exactly what I want it to do - make and recieve phone calls! No camera, no fancy ring tones, no downloadable games, no MP3 player...

Re:one would think?

[sconeu]

Mostly I think the phone companies just don't want to make these plain jane models look attractive. Cause if they did many more people would opt for them. At least more of the people I know would. Sheeple are strange like that. Will pay more for something they know they won't like just cause it's "Shiny".

I think the issue is not just that the CellCos realize that people will pay more for "shiny", but because the overloaded non-plain-jane phones let them charge monthly for:

* pictures
* email
* data
* texting
* MP3
* this
* that
* the other
* anything else they can think of

Re:one would think?

[llefler]

It's funny, the MP3 player capability is the only new feature in the last 10 years that I have had any interest in. I don't want (don't have) a camera. Don't need internet access. Don't want games, or AOL IM. Don't need bluetooth, if it comes with a cable to load the MP3s, whatever is cheapest. The ability to connect my laptop to the internet seems useful, except being practical I have to admit that my laptop hasn't left the coffee table in 6 months.

And a feature I used to have with my old Sprint Qualcomm phone would be nice to have again... None of the Nokia or Samsung phones that I've had with Cingular or TMobile set their clock from the network. Which wouldn't be so bad if someone could figure out how to make a phone (or computer) that kept correct time these days.

Re:one would think?

[sconeu]

The issue is that those of us who don't want those features have trouble finding one without them.

I work in defense. Many defense contractor facilities allow cells, but no camera phones. You'd think that the CellCos would recognize this as a small, but regular market.

I think the reason is that the CellCos have no financial incentive to offer such phones.

Consider: If CellCo sells me a voice only phone, they have no potential monthly income from:

* data services
* picture services
* mp3 services
* etc....

Re:one would think?

[Planesdragon]

Great for big business, great for government and police work; and great for people like me who are fed up being spied on all the time.

You DO know that what the NSA does (logging all calls and looking for patterns) isn't even going to notice if you scramble your call, right? It's kind of like inventing a number-system for your spedometer, and thinking that it'll keep the cops from firing their radar detectors at you.

Re:one would think?

[lysergic.acid]

Just cause cellphone manufacturers are working on new cellphone features doesn't mean that cellphone service providers aren't trying to improve service.

Also, people who don't want expensive phones with robust features can get cheap ones that have minimal function. As has been brought up many times, there are plenty of options for people who don't want extra features, so this is all a moot argument. The only reason consumers would be disatisifed with their phones because of having too many "superfluous" features is because they're an idiot.

You can easily go into any cellphone store and buy a phone with only the basic features. Even if you got your phone from signing a long-term contract they still provide bottom-line phones without any fancy features. The only reason people are still complaining is because they chose to go with a phone with all the extra features and are now complaining pointlessly because they were too dumb to realize that they didn't want those features. Well, too bad for those people. Mobile phone manufacturers shouldn't stop making advanced phones because some people are idiots and don't know what they want.

This is akin to saying that airlines shouldn't provide kosher meals because I'm a goddamn retard and I keep ordering a kosher meal even though I don't want one, and the only way I'll stop is if they simply remove that option--it's fucking ridiculous.

Re:one would think?

[tmortn]

Thats the funny thing. Most people I know don't get those features. I know all about the nickle and dime routine on the extras. I actually have an unlimted data plan on a phone that can make some use of it (Cingular 8125).

But for a lot of these folks they might certainly miss the chance these people will TRY the extras. But often they never do. They just have a Voice plan, don't know what SMS or MMS is. Bluetooth sounds like a strange disease (and when they see the ear growths in infected users their suspicions are born out). So they buy a neat looking phone because it doesn't look like a 5 year old reject candy bar and complain about the features they never use that clog up the menu's and make it difficult for them to understand.

I blame the people as much as the cell phone providers really. If they didn't buy the feature phones they would probably stop making them. Though largely I imagine its just a generational gap. My gen was Gen X. Current Gen are the Thumb People. They love the Features on the new phones.

Re:one would think?

[flosofl]

Unfortunately, those phones are pretty useless for travellers. They only have dual-band GSM. At the very least I would need Tri-Band. I travel all over the world for work and would like my phone to work in as many places as possible. These phones aren't it.

For a good simple phone, I had a Moto V180. It's quad band GSM, and I haven't found anywhere it won't work. I am now using a RAZR and while I don't use the other tech doohickeys, it has a great antenna, it also quad-band, and has bluetooth. If the v180 had bluetooth, I would probably still be using it.

Re:one would think?

[worf_mo]

It's not about the size, honey; size doesn't matter.

Re:one would think?

[Vellmont]

Lets look at some of the features on today's phones.

Text messaging: I've only met one person over the age of 35 who used this. It seems to have the sole purpose of sending messages silently without tipping off teachers/administrators in a school setting.

I'm not quite yet over 35, but the text messaging is quite usefull to me when I don't want the bother of a full phone call. It's also usefull when the person you're calling might not be able to take a phone call, but can read a simple text message. I don't use it much, but I wouldn't buy a phone without SMS. Not using SMS for anyone over 35 or so has more to do with the culture of the baby busters and baby boomers. There's a bit more resistance to technology since they didn't grow up with computers as much as the under 35 crowd.


Camera phone: If this is the best you can do for taking pictures, dear god are you hopeless.

I don't have a camera on my phone, but I tend to agree. The whole thing sounds pretty useless to me, and I've never thought to myself "if I could just take a picture right now!!"


Email/Internet: Ok, just another fancy way to hit kids up for silent messaging and stuff they really don't need.


Email on my phone isn't terribly usefull to me, but I often use google though SMS to get phone numbers/addresses of local businesses. If I had real internet on my phone it'd be nice to more directly find out information on it like movie times, wikipedia entries, rather than hoping google figures out what a I want (which is surprisingly most of the time).

Re:one would think?

[dabadab]

"Just count the number of keypresses (or screens to progress through) to accomplish basic tasks - it's increasing all the time"

That's simply not true.
I have a Nokia 6230 - it has all the features that a modern cellphone is supposed to have (camera, music player, java apps, calendar, whatever) but accessing basic functionality actually requires the same or less keypresses than on my old Nokia 3210 (a quite basic phone from the last century). Most of them (entering the phonebook, viewing a newly received SMS, entering the calendar) require a single keypress, but more complicated things, like entering my Inbox now takes 2 keypresses as opposed to 3 on my old phone and entering a calculator now requires only a single keypress while it took 4 on the 3210.
So, to summarize it, newer phones DO offer a faster interface.

Re:one would think?

[Oldsmobile]

So another words, you don't actually want a simple phone, instead you want a Razr which you already have.

I have one too BTW, have no major complaints though a few niggles. The excellent hardware design makes up for many of the failings.

Re:one would think?

[evilneko]

After reading this, I am so very glad I have an Audiovox brick phone. It doesn't even have any games. The only "extra" that I can think of off the top of my head (I don't use it very much, so I forget!) is voice activated dialing, which I never use anyway. I've programmed a couple voice entries, but never bothered using them. Holding down the '4' button or whichever I'm trying to call is easier.

Re:one would think?

[shifty_cow]

I would like to respectfully dissagree with the general feeling that kids only use text messaging to say" omg, I Really, why pay extra to spend all that time "typing" that message in when you could say it in a few seconds? Because it is easier to type. Yes, you could say it in a few seconds, but you have to actually call them, wait for them to pick up, and say what you have to say and hope it can be understood over a crappy [US] network. If they don't pick up, then you have to leave voicemail. And then they have to listen to voicemail. Listening to voicemail happens to be infinitely more inconvienent than opening your phone and reading the message that has magically appeared on the screen. My friends and I use text messaging all the time to organize get-togethers or ask quick questions while AFK and it's likely that if people got over the fact that a few kids use it for something supurflous, they might find it to be a very useful tool.

Re:one would think?

[sd_diamond]

My biggest complaint about mobile providers is the business model that requires your phone to be purchased from, and programmed by, the service provider. Imagine if you could only buy your computer from your ISP, and they only had a handful of models available.

The device should be purchased separately from the service, and then programmed by whichever service provider you choose. Of course, they will never do this willingly, because:

1. People would no longer have to buy a new phone every time they switched providers, and
2. It wouldn't be long before someone built a combination WiFi-VoIP/Cellular handset, and cellular providers would see their profits drop as users took advantage of the proliferation of open hotspots.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I want a simple mobile phone that can text message. As seemingly does the average consumer"

I for one, don't have any use for text messaging. The less contact I have with the phones alpha capability the happier I am.

Re:one would think?

[ceoyoyo]

That's the problem... too many people just buy their phone from the carrier. The carrier is giving you that great deal on a phone for a reason! A lot of people who like custom ring tones could probably save the cost of the phone just by getting an unlocked on that lets them upload their own clipped from MP3s.

Re:one would think?

[gregmac]

I'm 25 so I don't quite fit your demographic, but I SMS my friends all the time- sometimes it's very convienient to ask quick questions, or say something quick like "be there 15 mins". Especially if you know they're unavailable to answer (ie, at work, at a movie..). I also prefer to receive simple messages this way, it takes me 2 seconds to open my phone and read it, versus 30 or more to check voicemail.

I'm not sure if you've typed recently (probably not), but most phones now support "T9" (or some other name) kind of input, where you just press the numbers corresponding to the letters, and it figures out the word. My current phone even has an autocomplete feature, so when you press enough letters, it shows the words that might spell, and you can just pick one.

A camera was one of those things I resisted for a long time, then I finally got one in my new phone because it's basically impossible to get one without it. It's a 1.3 megapixel so the pictures are at least usable. It's actually alright, I've used it to take pictures while out with friends, or when the situation arises. For example, my girlfriend was looking for a car not too long ago, and I took pictures of a couple cars I happened to see for sale while driving by. I definately wouldn't carry a digital camera with me all the time, so it has its uses. It wouldn't make a buy or no-buy decision for me on getting a phone, but I don't mind having it. Now, I can also get the pictures (for free) to my computer with bluetooth - if I had to pay, I doubt I'd do it.

As for email, nah I don't bother. If it's important than you can call or SMS me. :) The only thing I've used internet for is to check the weather. I could care less about ringtones (my phone is on vibrate 95% of the time anyways, and I like it to sound like a phone anyways), wallpapers (if I open & look at my phone, it's for a purpose.. not to stare at the background) etc. Even if they didn't cost a fortune I wouldn't bother.

Oh yeah, and the other thing that half the people at my office use SMS for is receiving alarms from some of our monitoring systems. It sends a message with the details of the alarm and site where it happened. I don't even know what else to compare this to.. Carrying around an alphanumeric pager in addition to a cell phone? Our phone system also sends an SMS to the on-call technician when someone leaves a message in our (shared) emergency mailbox, saying "New 1:04 long message from 123-555-1234 in emergency mailbox".

Re:one would think?

[wtansill]

Agreed. I want my cell phone so that I can call someone in an emergency, to let them know I'm running late, etc. I turn it on when I'm driving (I pull over when talking), or if I'm generally out of the house. At home or at the office, it's turned off. Don't want or need text messaging, cameras, browsers, weird ring tones or any of the other crap that the hypesters are peddaling as the must have latest thing. If it works when I need to call (or receive a call from the few people who have my cell number), that's all I care about.

Re:one would think?

[Dralnu]

I use an old Ericson: Thing is too dang small to hardly use. The keypads themselves these days are getting uncomfortably small for people with fingers that can handle a tool. Overall designs of phones these days are becoming more and more complex in the programming, meaning more and more bugs, and when you try to replace the OS the phone uses with every release instead of keeping one basic system and using a plug-in system (there is an idea: buy a phone that is JUST a phone, and be able to buy additions to it online or in the store, which can be downloaded into the phone, installed, then used) so that as you release newer and newer phones, you have a stable OS that you can work on optimizing, with additions to support new tech that goes into them (the decive manufacturers make a basic driver, and if they would release it as open source, then it could be ported to work with the phone's OS with some work). As for features, they have gone from cell PHONES to PDAs. Email, web browsers, games, ect., are what PDAs are for. Personally, I like the bluetooth headset, text messaging, maybe even email, but then again, laptops are getting fairly cheap for a low-end model (which is a fair bit more powerful then a cell phone), and while they do take up space, they can do a whole lot more. Stability for a cell phone is a secondary aspect, as reception and coverage are a bigger issue with some companies. Granted both the soft and hardware can be worked on, until they both come to a point at which they can start to do some serious advancements (I think the OS problem is trying to do to much with to little, plus you have heat to deal with, no HDD that I know of. Its alot of stress on a RAM chip), they will have problems. the hardware is outrunning the software, and when you make quick, cheap hacks in the system you end up with some very poor coding, and what will in the future end up as a serious security issue. I mean, how would you like to go to a website on your phone, get a virus, call a friend, it transmit to them, and evryone else you call, and suddenly there is a very large number of phones out there that are being used as IP proxies for a denial-of-service attack on some server? I think that handles that :)

Re:one would think?

[tombeard]

"Some are monumentally stupid, like the way the up and down buttons are forward and backwards in the music player and the left and right buttons turn the volume up and down"

They copied the TV remote UI.

Re:one would think?

[DeadChobi]

Get a Samsung SGH-X495. All it does is make calls, send/recieve text messages, give you a calendar, and store phone numbers. It's also got some game/data stuff on it, but overall the interface is uncluttered for people who just make calls. I've also never had it crash on me, and the battery lasts 50+ hours(according to the manual). In actuality, I've left it on at a friend's house for a week without charging, and when I picked it up it still had enough juice to where I could make a call or two. Beat that, Nokia.

Re:one would think?

[Confuzzled]

OK fine, let's limit it to an area. Let's limit it to San Francisco. Modern, beautiful city, one of the nicest around, with the most amount of tech-savvy people. I still loose calls while driving around. Sure you could argue that the hills (lots of ups and downs) is hard to cover, but come on!

-c

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit putting words in my fucking mouth, you tard. Some of us actually disagree with what's going on in our country. We dont appreciate being bashed with the rest of our sheeple. It's as bad as American tourists assuming that everyone else speaks English, and I'm tired of it. I'm sick of people looking indignantly at my country and saying that all of its people are terrible, and that we'll never improve. Our government only reflects on 50% of our populace at the moment, so leave those of us that are trying to make a change out of your hatred please.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe you should try the nokia 5140..and the now discontinued nokia 6250..that was solid!

Re:one would think?

[Catbeller]

just jumping in with my wish list.

1. Simple telephonic keyboard.
2. Simple on/off.
3. Simple one-button voicemail.
4. Tiny, sharp screen.
5. USB cable port for PC for backups or phone transfers.
6. Built-in charger that folds out to plug into a wall, or 12 volt cig lighter in a car. NO EXTRA CABLES. NO BRICKS.
7. GIANT BATTERY. I don't want a cosmetic clamshell, I want a battery that lasts more than a day in use.
Hell, use standard batteries available at Radio Shack or online. Enough of the precious non-standard form factors. Standard lithiums or NiMH. Why not both, my choice. AA's or AAA's.
8. The GPS tracking chip to be on a separate power circuit than the phone. I want to enable the GPS to send for help, and to have it SHUT OFF when I do not. I do not want to be remotely tracked at the will of whomever. If necessary, I'd like the ability to spoof the GPS code or block the frequency of the satelites.
9. Use the GPS intelligently. If I lose the phone (and the GPS circuit is powered), let me call it up and get the coordinates and let me plug them into google maps. I can get the location within feet, no?
9. Black is The Only Color for Gadgets.
10. I want a built-in voice scrambler with unbreakable encryption. It can be done. No doubt it will become illegal. I still want it.
11. No text. No camera. No games. No Suggested Restaurants Nearby. I want A PHONE.
12. It should cost no more than fifty bucks US, retail, and a lot less to build. All the functions can be put onto one chip, for godssakes.
13. Hm. How about using the USB cable to POWER the phone in an emergency?
14. WATERPROOF THE DAMNED THING. I'm sick of losing phones when raindrops hit the openings in the case.
15. Toughen the phones up. I'll take stainless steel, please, even if it isn't black. Titanium? I'll pay extra. Just keep it safe from dying if someone bumps it. I'm a big boy, I can carry a little weight.
16. STOP TRACKING ME. STOP GIVING MY INFORMATION TO ANYONE WHO PAYS, especially those paranoid ineffectual proto-totalitarians in the Bush administration. (Caught bin Laden? No? Doesn't seem to be doing any good then!)

Re:one would think?

[Yavi]

Cingular offers versions of our PDA phones without a camera for just such a target market. It's not only government contractors that have such a restriction on cameras, it's actually quite common.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word "compromises" doesn't have a z in it.

Re:one would think?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I live in the UK, and I can't remember the last time I had a dropped mobile call that wasn't directly attributed to completely losing phone signal (which at least for me, only ever happens when going underground on the Tube.

Nor can I. I've found that most people who complain about dropped calls in the US either:

• Have a crappy phone (e.g. one of the older Sony Erricson phones such as the T300m)
• Have unrealistic expectations about their cellular service (like getting coverage underground)

No, you don't always get coverage in the backcountry in the US, but that's not surprising at all - it doesn't make sense to put up a tower that has few or no regular users.

Add to that some of the ridiculous pricing schemes that seem to be in effect

Go actually compare prices, and you'll find that cellular services are actually cheaper in the US. T-Mobile in the UK charges £35 (about $65) for 500 minutes. T-Mobile in the US charges $40 for 600 minutes, including free nights and weekends.

Yes, we pay for incoming calls. However, the caller only pays the same amount as calling a regular landline, which, considering that mobile phone plans almost always include long distance, means that I can call any number in the US (excluding those scam toll numbers) using the minutes on my plan.

Roaming fees are also now rare in the US, so I can go anywhere in the US (which is more than twice as large as the entire European Union, area wise) and use my phone without paying extra.

Consider this: my state, Colorado, is larger (in area) than the entire UK. The UK has 59 million people. Colorado has 4.3 million. That's not even the hardest area in the US to cover, though. Consider Wyoming - also bigger than the UK, but with less than 500,000 people. It just doesn't make sense to put 1000s of cell sites in a state with fewer than 500,000 people.

It gets worse, though. There are two reasons you need cell sites - coverage and capacity. In an area with high population density, you have to put in lots of cell sites anyway to meet the capacity demands. Once you have tower density, coverage becomes much less of an issue. There are areas like this in the US, and they have good coverage, but they represent a minority of the overall geographic area of the US.

The dynamics of the US cellular market are very different. We have 4 major national carriers (Cingular, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile), three of whom have more than 50 million customers. There are well over 150,000 cell sites, many being shared between carriers.

We do things a bit differently here. That doesn't make us "behind the times". I'll take my unlimited EDGE for $20 a month, thank you very much.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

What's really funny to me is that I have a Samsung SCH-a90 (also known as the red phone) and there's a button on the side of my phone too, that also turns on the camera. Except no amount of pressing will get my camera to turn on, so I don't think that is really supposed to happen. You might want to get your Samsung looked at, because my camera won't turn on when the cell is closed. I can, however, turn on the camera if I open up the phone, press the side button, and close the phone after the camera turns on. I guess it's a way to take self portraits.

It takes 5 keystrokes to get to my alarm settings. I actually prefer this, because then I can't turn on or off an alarm with one button. I would rather my phone not go off in the middle of a class.

The thing with searching by number is that you'd have to actually know the number. And if you know the number, wouldn't you also pretty much know the name? It's rare that I know 555-6978 but I won't know who it belongs to.

I highly recommend the SCH-a90. Apparently they've resolved the volume problem because I can change the ringtone using the side volume rocker. It even gives you the option to play the ringtone to see just precisely how loud it is. I've never used the menu within the phone interface itself to change the volume.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

Case in point. I used to have Cingular, and I was a happy customer. The town where I go to college doesn't have Cingular phone towers, thus my poor Motorola didn't work in that town. I happen to accidentally drop my Motorola and it breaks...actually, it still worked, but I had to hold both pieces of the clamshell together. By then I might as well have been duct taping it back together.

I go home for Thanksgiving, head into Verizon. The Verizon phone I have (Samsung SCH-a90) is massive compared to the Motorola I had. It was wider, longer, and thicker, all around. I'm very happy with my phone, but the thing was, Verizon does not sell small phones, whereas Cingular has a lot of very small phones.

The LG C1300i Cingular sent me was hands down, the worst phone I have ever used. The Ericsson I had ten years ago was better than the LG. It was way too tiny, the clamshell design was stiff, and the antenna was practically half as long as the phone itself. The keys were stiff and it took at least 3 keystrokes to get anywhere. The screen was too tiny, the font was too big, and I couldn't search my phonebook. Of course, that might have been because I became so frustrated with it that I opted to use my phone as less as possible, rather than just deal with the horrible interface.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

What phone do you use? I use Verizon and I have never had problems with menus coming up too slowly. In fact, reading your post, I picked up my phone and flipped through all of my menus within 5 seconds. Each menu came up instantaneously.

Re:one would think?

[E IS mC(Square)]

And I am taking great care of my old Nokia (brick one, of course).

If I ever lose it, I am not going to find it in market again - which simply means I am going to cancel my mobile subscription.

If those @$$holes can NOT give me an option NOT to buy phones with shitload of features I do NOT want (three NOTs! Ha!), I dont need their service. I will go back 10-20 yrs and start using public phones in case of emmergency.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

My Samsung works very well as an MP3 player. It uses transflash/microSD to store data, and it slips right into the phone, so the amount of music you want on your phone varies by how much you're willing to spend on a microSD card. I also have a camera and internet access, and AIM. I don't use AIM, because isn't that practically the same as texting someone anyway? and I only use internet access to check movie times. That said, the mp3 works extremely well and the audio is surprisingly good.

Also, I believe my Samsung does set their clock from the network. I took a trip to the West Coast last week, and my phone switched right away from EST to pacific. I use Verizon, and my parents are both on Cingular. My mother's Samsung didn't, but my dad's Motorola did.

Re:one would think?

[magicchex]

It's the Razr, on which there are VERY noticeable differences between providers.

Re:one would think?

[h4rm0ny]

That's a terrible analogy but a very good point (assuming you mean encryption wont conceal 'who' I am calling). Still, even if there isn't a convenient way of hiding who I'm calling yet, concealing the contents still has a lot of merit.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

I agree, I think the user is just as much to blame as the companies. The phone companies are peddling the newest and shiniest phones and ignoring the plain jane phones, but they at least have a reason: profit. The people who buy them, then complain they're too hard to use, have no excuse. They bought into the idea, and they expect fairly competent technology to comply to their standards. Granted, I've used a lot of phones that are horrible and no amount of wizardry can make them become good phones, but I've also used a lot of really good phones which stump other people.

I think the key is not exactly to get a phone that is basic, it is to get a phone that suits your needs and your standards. Don't expect the phone to become simpler, it won't. But find the one that you're comfortable with using. I love my phone. It has all the bells and whistles and I can use it just as fast as any of my friends with a plain jane. The reason? I've picked a phone that suited my needs and my standards. If everyone else did too, there wouldn't be all this complaining about phones that aren't easy to use.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

What's your carrier? I was in San Francisco last week and this week, and I didn't have one dropped call! In fact, I had full service everywhere I went. The lowest signal I ever got was 2 bars.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

Ugh the Razr. My roomate had that phone on Cingular, and she loves the thing, except for the fact that we don't get Cingular service at college. Oops! I've used the Razr on and off (using her phone), and I don't like it...perhaps it's that I have small hands because I'm only 5'3, but I found it too wide and the keys too hard to push with my thumb, especially since I can't actually stretch my thumb all the way to hit 1, 4, 7 or *. I did want one at first though, before I found it just too wide for my hand.

Re:one would think?

[iangoldby]

Here in the UK, pay as you go is quite popular. Unlike monthly contracts, you have to pay for the phone initially, but then after that you only pay for the calls that you make. When your credit runs out you can't make any more calls until you add a bit more credit. For people like me it's an ideal solution, because if I don't make any calls, I don't pay anything. And if someone steals my phone, they can't do any worse than use up the £5 or so credit that is on it.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Camera phone: If this is the best you can do for taking pictures, dear god are you hopeless. While the newer camera phones do produce better images than a webcam from a few years ago, those pictures are mostly stuck on your phone, unless you want to pay to transfer the file. Me, I'll stick with my real camera.

Why do you willingly let the operators violate you in the behind? It doesn't HAVE to be that way.

Me, I'll transfer the pics from my phone to my computer completely free either through 1) bluetooth 2) usb cable 3) by simply taking the memory card out and inserting it into my memory card reader in the PC. (Optional: 4) transferring them directly from the phone to my webserver with FTP. Flatrate GPRS helps a lot.)

Re:one would think?

[Frogbert]

Well Australia is larger then the US and I can't remember the last time I had a dropped call. Except of course when I was going through a tunnel or simply in the middle of absolutly nowhere, and in that case if I had a CDMA phone I would have had coverage. Face it your mobile network sucks.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is fine to say "I call bullshit." but when you admit you don't know what definition is being used and you can't think of an example to support your assertion, then you really should sit back and thinhk a little more before you call bullshit.

You may have decided you were wrong, for example.

I say the grandparent is right. When you get more functions the interface HAS to get more complex. If you add a camera you HAVE to have at least 1 more button or 1 more function for a pre-existing button--the one to take a picture. Really, is it that hard to understand?

A phone that dials numbers is simple. A phone that remembers numbers and lets you call them up can be simpler to use, for making phone calls. A phone that adds on features unrelated to the core functionality of making phone calls (which is what the fucking article is about, hey) can't be simpler to use. Well, unless you get rid of the "phone" feature.

I want a phone. That is light weight. Reliable. Has excellent receiption. Is small. Has good battery life (great is better, but not required). If the phone companies were making what lots of people want, there would be such a phone. I don't want a camera in it. I don't want it to play music. Anything, ANYTHING, that detracts in the slightest from what I'm looking for is bad. By definition. My definition.

I had an Eriksson T28, and I loved that phone. The receiption could have been better, the reliability could have been better, the interface could have been better (remove the worthless games, for example). But it was small, light, worked pretty good as a phone, and some asshole named Neal has it, curse him.

Re:one would think?

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

austraila is some 2 million sq Km smaller than the us.

Re:one would think?

[magicchex]

Interesting, phone width has luckily been a non-issue for me. How is Cingular service?

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the idiot. Expose has a lot of uses. If you can't find the utility in it, don't blame the OS.

Re:one would think?

[Browncoat]

I was very happy with Cingular. The only issue I had was that it didn't work where I went to college. Overall, I think Cingular is very easy to use. It's not like Verizon, where ringtones are subscriptions, or by use. For Cingular, one price means one ringtone, for as long as you want it. But because Cingular wasn't working at school, there wasn't a point to having it -- why pay for a service you can't use?

I switched to Verizon and have been very happy with it. It's just a good thing that I've never been too download-crazy when it came to special ringtones and games.

Re:one would think?

[CodeBuster]

There is an idea (in the tech world at least) that there is the "right" way to do things, and all companies chase after that.

It is my opinion that there are three main factors driving this type of forced integration:

1. The engineers working for these companies enjoy finding the optimal solution for any problem, particularly one of a technical nature, and they assume that everyone else will either agree with them or at least appreciate the unseen hand that provides the "right" solution even if the general consuming public does not understand the details.

2. The marketing people love to hype new features so that they can generate "buzz" and gain exposure for the new phones because no marketer or salesperson wants to sell a low margin, boring, and unexciting (at least in their minds) product. It may also be a form of job protection since the marketer must generate more and higher margin sales in excess of his cost in salary in benefits or the company in question will eliminate his position. Thus, they want to convince you that you need features that you really don't want or that you want features that you really don't need.

3. If the cell phone companies can get as many people as possible to pay higher rates for the gadget phone then they can maximize their profits by selling higher margin features and services while at the same time driving down the manufacturing costs on the fancy phones through economies of scale. It is less profitable for them to offer more choices to the consumer so they prefer not to do it. Remember what Henry Ford said, "you can have any color you like as long as it is black."

You'd think that someone would try a different tack, offering something actually different that appeals to a different type of consumer, but in fact most companies merely copycat each other.

It is difficult for someone to try a different tack because the industry is structured as an oligopoly with significant financial barriers to entry for new firms. There is also the issue of almost perfect competition between the existing providers. There are few features that one firm can maintain, for long, as a comparative advantage over their competitors without pricing themselves out of the market so the winning strategy for each firm is to be as close to the competition as possible.

There's no reason for complex cell phones to go away, but there's no reason for simple ones to have gone away either.

They haven't gone away per se, but rather they have not kept pace in the style department with the gadget phones so if you want the candy bar/brick you can still get that, but if you want the sleek titanium GQ style phone then you have to pay for all the bells and whistles.

When I look at cars, there's a much wider margin of option. It's well understood that some people want a Lexus, some want a Ford Pickup, some a Prius, and some a Taurus. But even there people (not the companies) still argue about what is "best", which is a ridiculous concept.

Cars are major durable goods purchases wheras cell phones are mostly considered to be disposable or perhaps semi-durable at the high end. However, the point is well taken.

People just have too much an idea of "ultimate", and they feel they need to guard their preference by putting down and calling for the death of the other options. The way Mac, Windows, and Linux people bash each other. Who cares? Use what you like! And let there be more variety of companies and products out there!

There is a perception among consumers and businesses too that unless their preference is the majority or preferably the only format then their investment in a technology product is threatned. This goes back to the whole Betamax vs VHS format wars. Nobody wants to be stuck holding the bag with next Betamax when it comes to tech gadgets.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they get it even more than you do, because their business model is clearly doing well. Why should they devote more resources to pursuing smaller niches, especially when those niches are *already* their customers?

It seems like there are only a few major players, and they've quite neatly divvied up the cell-using population with a minimum of fuss.

Re:one would think?

[aaza]

They copied the TV remote UI.

Which is also a stupid design...

Re:one would think?

[whoop]

Your lucky over there... Here, even the pre-pay phone companies like to rip you off. You buy some time, but it has a soft expiration date, 30-90 days usually. I used Tracfone for a while before switching to a normal contract cell phone. The way it works is if you don't buy more time (even if you didn't use it all up), they cancel your phone. Only when you buy yet more time can you regain that old unused time. Oh, and when you then renew, you get a brand new phone number from their pool of numbers for your area, even if you are only one day late. They like to keep it as inconvenient as possible for you.

Re:one would think?

[Doctor Faustus]

Text messaging: I've only met one person over the age of 35 who used this. It seems to have the sole purpose of sending messages silently without tipping off teachers/administrators in a school setting.

That might be true for outgoing messages, but I have my programs at work send an email to my phone when something goes wrong and they need attention. That's quite nice.

Re:one would think?

[Frogbert]

Fine minus alaska.

Re:one would think?

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

even without alaska the US is still over 1 million sq Km larger than austraila.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing that once, Alabama (50,750+-) ruled the world. ;)

Re:one would think?

[droyad]

But only a 1/12th of the population.

Re:one would think?

[Oldsmobile]

Actually, not a terrible idea, the problem being, it would weigh a ton. I hate big and heavy phones, so this would be out.

I do think there is (or used to be) a Swedish phone manufacturer that made a phone that sort of approximated what you were thinking of. A really professional style phone but with no frills and the encryption you were talking about.

The problem? A price tag of over a thousand.

Re:one would think?

[thatnerdguy]

ignoring most of that, which was a rant anyways, but you want tough? I have a Sony Ericsson T616 which has fallen out of my chest pocket (keep it there at work) many times as I bend over to lift something, and still keeps ticking, although with a few small dents on the corners. This is why I will never get a clamshell.

Re:one would think?

[ShmuelP]

You may not be able to drop it in the bath, but there are ruggedized phones available. At least many of the Motorolas (available for Nextel) meet military specs for pressure, vibration, etc. If you're the type of person who throws cell phones against walls, I'd look at that. Then again, if you're in the UK, I'm not sure if there is an iDEN carrier. But if so, there are some ruggedized GSM phones.

Re:one would think?

[wheany]

That would be the worst phone ever.

Re:one would think?

[edgr]

And the population density of Australia = 2.65/km, compared to 30/km for the US. Remember, we're 2 million square kilometres smaller than the US (around 20% smaller) but we've got around 280 million fewer people (that's around 94% smaller).

Re:one would think?

[h4rm0ny]

Thanks for this. That second link might turn out to be very helpful. The Motorola i530 seems just what I'm looking for if I can get it in the UK.

I have to say that the first link made me laugh, though. The Nokia 5100 also features fashlight, calorie counter, stereo FM radio, sound meter, thermometer, and stopwatch.

I will not be getting one of the latter!

Re:one would think?

[locofungus]

I've got a sony ericsson with about 10million functions I don't want.
My first call was made on 17th June 05 to "Bolt ons" - I was turning some automatic facility off. My first proper call was made on 8th October and I've made 7 "proper calls" in total. My last three calls were to "voicemail on", "voicemail off", "voicemail" when I accidentally called voicemail and then needed to turn it off again. (I generally don't even use the phone book, preferring to know the numbers I need to call)

I've had to charge up the phone once (other than immediately after I bought it) and that only because I accidentally left it turned on in my bag.

Very occasionally I've also turned it on because I'm expecting a call. But I find it embarrassing to have my phone go off and interrupt while I'm supposed to be with someone else or have it go off on a train and annoying when someone elses does. (ditto watches that beep every hour although that fad at least seems to have gone for the most part - don't think my watch even has an hourly chime although it can be set up to alarm if my pulse rate goes above or below a preset threshold and I'm wearing the chest strap)

Tim.

Re:one would think?

[bhiestand]

The lowest signal I ever got was 2 bars.

And what the hell is a bar, anyways? I mean, honestly, what does that translate into in radio terminology? 10dB? Or is it completely arbitrary?

Re:one would think?

[bhiestand]

Amazing that once, Alabama (50,750+-) ruled the world. ;)

Slaves only count as 3/5.

Re:one would think?

[ShmuelP]

Just remember that even though iDEN phones take a sim card, they don't work on GSM networks. So if you go for the i530, you'll need a UK iDEN carrier, if such things exist.

Re:one would think?

[dgatwood]

IMHO, you have it backwards with your "less bulky" comment. The bulky cell phones were actually better from an end user perspective. They might not like carrying them, but they were definitely easier to use.

The real problem is that cell phones have gotten fundamentally too small. They are so small that it is hard to the average person to press buttons without hitting two. They are so small that they can't pack enough buttons to conveniently access the most commonly-used functionality (like the phone directory), so you end up having to navigate through a complex menu hierarchy just to get someone's phone number.

If I were designing a phone, it would be the size that phones were about five years ago---preferably thinner and lighter than those old phones, but with similar face space. They were comfortable. They had enough buttons to get things done without the UI getting in the way. They didn't need a full color screen with a backlit LCD just to be able to add phone numbers to the phone book and stuff. Add a full color screen with a backlit LCD to one of those designs, and you will see good UI starting to appear. Keep making devices that are too small to adequately serve their primary function, and you'll continue to see crap.

Re:one would think?

[Sarcastic nerd]

They copied the TV remote UI.

Which is also a stupid design...

Don't let the Nintendo fanbois hear you say that...

Re:one would think?

[zenslug]

I wish I could mod you up. Thanks for the info.

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having to spend at least $20 every 90 days (Virgin or Boost) is a little obnoxious, but even in the unlikely event I don't use all 80 minutes I've bought, $30 up front and $7/month is still far cheaper than any contract I've ever seen.

Re:one would think?

[icebrain]

It would be useful for the times when one of my friends gets a call from a number, but doesn't recognize it, and asks me if it's anyone I know. I might have them in my phonebook...

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe) has an area of 4,010,000 miles, is comprised of over 25 countries with their own languages and laws.

I doubt anyone in Europe with a mobile phone even knows what a dropped call is, the term is practically meaningless. You only drop a call when you lose contact with the base station, for example when you go into an underground car-park.

Re:one would think?

[Avatar8]

I agree with the comparison to a PDA, and I'll take it one step further from a techie/power point of view.

I've played and worked with computers for (OMG, I'm old) 24 years now. I've often seen and believed that computers were designed to do one or a few specific jobs. No machine can do everything yet that is exactly what these phones and phone companies are trying to make consumers believe.

I dislike laptops. They are not powerful enough for me and therefore cannot become my core system where I store and do everything. I see them as temporary solutions for when you must travel. You can do some things, but not everything. As you get smaller, you sacrifice more functionality for more portability: palm computers, PDAs and mobile phones. I also disgree with game consoles trying to emulate computer functions: surfing, e-mail, networked games.

Computers can do anything and everything these smaller devices are trying to do. They do it better, they do it faster and generally they do it cheaper. I think the market is really missing the mark here. Instead of trying to make other machines to emulate computer functions in a more limited way, why not give us a remote interface to our computers so we can do anything from anywhere ala Star Trek comm badges and LCARS. "Computer... call work, tell them I'll be late, order a pizza and log onto my WoW account and check my auctions."

Re:one would think?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, so now Apple is making phone interfaces? If expose doesn't work on a phone then it is pointless. And guess what, it isn't an extra feature in the sense of an extra function (what we are talking about), it is something intended purely to try to cope with a shitty and overly complex interface.

Re:one would think?

[adamjaskie]

So you want me carrying my phone around in tight pants? /me ducks

Re:one would think?

[GWBasic]

I agree, to a point.

The problem that I have with my phone is that they bury features under layers of menus, but put customization options first. It seems that they think that I'm going to spend most of my time with the phone downloading ring tones and wallpapers! I usually use the 4-function calculator and calendar.

Re:one would think?

[flosofl]

I do want a simple phone. I don't want internet, camera and all that other cruft. The only features I want/need is quad-band and bluetooth. That's it.

If the V-180 had bluetooth, I never would have upgraded to a RAZR.

iWon is slashdotted - here's another AP link

[tepples]

You may have a better chance of success in RTFA if you get it from Yahoo.com.

Correction: Not slashdotted, just bad CSS

[tepples]

Oops -- it was just a layout problem on iWon, affecting at least the Mozilla-based browser that I use. I saw a blank screen and didn't notice the scrollbar. Page down and I can RTFA.

Just A Phone

[excelblue]

The main reason why I have a mobile is so that people can contact me while I'm on the go.

Anything else is extra and I probably don't need it. However, it does contribute to making the phone harder to use, easier to break (less reliable), and more expensive. Why would I want a device with everything in it as a cell phone when all I'm supposed to do is talk with it?

After all, if I want all the extra features, I'd probably go with a PDA anyways. A cell phone only does the job half decently, and the features are just things that I can accidently use and incur a higher phone bill. It's not easy to use all of them, and it just makes it harder to just simply dial a number and go.

Rather be carrying a compact digital camera, a real MP3 player, a real PDA if I really want all those features. After all, those do a way better job at it.

Re:Just A Phone

[HillBilly]

I have a mobile phone which its primary purpurse is to communicate via phone and sms. I also have fm tuner and mp3 player built-in not because I was feature hungry but because it saves pocket space - I don't want to carry another media player such as an ipod around.

Although my phone also has a camera, I rarely use it except for when I see something interesting but other then that it is useless.

Re:Just A Phone

[Threni]

> Although my phone also has a camera, I rarely use it except for when I see
> something interesting but other then that it is useless.

Ditto, except I'd not describe a 2megapixel camera as `useless` because clearly it isn't. I have a `proper` camera too, but I don't always carry that with me, in the same way that I don't always carry my mp3 player or radio. Also, I don't always carry a games console, so it's nice to be able to play games sometimes when I'm on a boring journey. Also, it's nice to be able to read books on it - not a lot, as the screen isn't perfect for that, but it's certainly usable.

I don't know which phones are popular in the States, but the issues raised don't seem to be an issue in the UK or Europe. I can't for the life of me work out why people are equating more features with a lack of ease of use - the interface on my current phone is far better than that on the first mobile phone I had - possibly because this one has a large, colour display and the first one had a 2 link lcd display.

Re:Just A Phone

[Znork]

"Ditto, except I'd not describe a 2megapixel camera as `useless` because clearly it isn't."

Once you've had it in your pocket for a month it is. Optics and pocket lint arent compatible.

Re:Just A Phone

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

The problem is, is that a Digital camera and a PDA are quite bulky and Unless I went with super slim, super tiny models, I couldn't hold a Celphone, an ipod nano, a pda and a camera in my pockets at once. And if I am going with the super tiny models, they're either crap or super expensive and I wouldn't trust them to survive in my pockets anyway. If my celphone let me run apps, keep notes, take low resolution photographs and generally be useful as something more than just a phone, then I'd be really happy.

Re:Just A Phone

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"It's not easy to use all of them, and it just makes it harder to just simply dial a number and go."

Really? I ask because every phone I've had (some really cheap, some really expensive) required that you type in the number and hit 'send'.

"Rather be carrying a compact digital camera, a real MP3 player, a real PDA if I really want all those features. After all, those do a way better job at it."

Um, yeah, at 4x the pocket space. In a previous part of your post, you asked why you'd want these things. I'll share with you my own experience from it. A few years ago, I dropped $200 on a Nokia 3650. It had a nice big color screen, bluetooth, PDA'esque features, speakerphone, audio recorder, and a camera. Sounds complex, doesn't it? Not really. It has its share of buttons, but the layout was actually pretty well thought out. As mentioned before, making calls was as simple as typing in the number and hitting the green phone button. Want to go through the contact list? No problem, arrow down and press the name. Etc.

Over the two years of having this phone, several interesting things occured. First off, my use of the PocketPC pretty much died. My phone could sync wirelessly with Outlook. At the time, I had a pretty specific need for that so I won't dwell too much on that. It was pretty cool, though, that I could set up an appointment and my phone would automatically grab it. Since I carry my phone with me at all times (unlike my PPC, Camera, etc...) that feature suddenly became very useful. I even used it as my power-failure-proof alarm clock. I took a ton of pictures with it. I don't know if you have or are around kids a lot, but I've got a number of impromptu photos of my gf's 2 year old nephew acting silly. (Maybe I should turn in my geek license, but I never take my camera with me when the fam goes out for dinner.) Sure, they were 640 by 480 and the lens wasn't great, but the photos are still quite memorable. I've even got a low res 10 second video of my dog teasing my cat. Yeah, I won't be sending that to AFV or anything like that, but it's nice to look back at it and reflect.

I ended up using the sound recorder a lot. I frequently take long walks. Many times on these walks, interesting inspirations hit me. I recorded a lot of ideas that way. Once I witnessed an accident and used the audio recorder to take down the license number when it looked like the driver was going to bolt. I used the internet connection quite a bit. I often looked up news events when I was on the can. (For the record, even though data is often expensive, I never managed to run up my phone bill with it.) I even used the bluetooth feature of the phone to send a net connection to my laptop. That came in handy while travelling, once. I went to a part of Florida that didn't believe in phone lines that could handle > 9600 baud. The speakerphone was awesome. At the time, I only had a cell phone, no landline. Boy that sure made calling tech support'esque calls a lot easier.

Honestly, that ended up being the most useful $200 I ever spent. It's easy to ask "why do I need this?", shake your head, and walk away. I think it's more useful to take one and say "Okay, how can I make the most effective use of this?" That's what I did, and it paid off.

Re:Just A Phone

[DrSkwid]

I have a feature full phone - Nokia 6600

The most useful non-phone call features I use are :

• Calendar - this is great, it has enriched my memory challenged life
  
  
• IMAP email - Very handy, I use https://www.fastmail.fm/ for webmail / imap. The only downside is that the phone can't use SSL for the connection. IMAP's header only approach keeps the data use down. I often email myself while I'm out & about if there's some useful snippet of info I will forget. It will be there in my inbox when I get home.
  
  
• Camera - quicker than using the keypad to note down any URIs, Emails, phone numbers, things in shops etc. etc. all sorts of stuff.
  
  
• Bluetooth - exchanging data with other phone users, though it is not surprising that when I say "Bluetooth me your number" plenty of people reply "I don't know how, you're the first person to ask me".
  
  

The other stuff like Opera and Kodak Photo Share are almost useless. I've tried to use Opera a few times but it's so tedious, esp. filling in forms.

Re:Just A Phone

[QuietLagoon]

The main reason why I have a mobile is so that people can contact me while I'm on the go.

I'd much rather have a simple cell phone with the ability to pick up the signal in poor reception areas and deliver clear sound, than an overly complex, difficult to use mobile digital device that operates marginally as a cell phone.

Re:Just A Phone

[adamjaskie]

Optics the size of an ant and quality aren't compatible, either.

Re:Just A Phone

[Threni]

> Once you've had it in your pocket for a month it is. Optics and pocket lint
> arent compatible.

The Nokia N70 has a sliding thingy that covers the camera when not in use. Also, all the camera phones I've used have an easily wiped glass cover to the lens.

Pocket fluff is something that all portable devices will have to deal with as electronics gets smaller and smaller.

Re:Just A Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I use my phone mainly to listen to MP3s, keep track of my appointments, wake me up, tell me the time, tell me when my pizza is done, take photos and record videos, and pay for the laundry machine.

Calling and messaging, maybe once or twice a month.

Re:Just A Phone

[zippthorne]

No one's saying that the cameras are useless. people are saying that the cameras aren't useful to them, and that the extra weight and volume occupied by the things the camera needs: more memory, more battery, strobe, the camera itself, etc. are detrimental to the functionality of a basic phone.

Without the camera, color display, etc. the phones could be even smaller or have five times the battery life, or somewhere in between.

For me, the best phone is small and slim, so that it easily fits in a pants pocket. I don't want to carry a phone around on a freakin' holster and look like some kind of nancy-boy wannabe cowboy. ooh I can "draw" and dial in under a second. fear me at high noon. I don't want anyone to even know I have a phone, unless I happen to be talking to them using it. Surely there's a market for people like me, too?

Re:Just A Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people are all different. I for example, don't own an iPod or PDA. I almost never hold my mobile phone or digicam (or my 1.1kg laptop) in my pockets, I don't want that cell radiation get into my nuts.

2c

Re:Just A Phone

[Threni]

> the extra weight and volume occupied by the things the camera needs: more
> memory, more battery, strobe, the camera itself, etc. are detrimental to the
> functionality of a basic phone.
> Without the camera, color display, etc. the phones could be even smaller or have
> five times the battery life, or somewhere in between.

Wrong. They had practically nothing to the weight, and, when not used, nothing to the battery life. Same goes for Java support, radio, mp3 playback etc.

> I don't want to carry a phone around on a freakin' holster and look like some
> kind of nancy-boy wannabe cowboy.

What are you on about? Have you even *seen* any of the phones that have been released in the last 5 years?

> Surely there's a market for people like me, too?

Well, I was going to say yes, but...

Re:Just A Phone

[zippthorne]

Practically nothing !nothing. And a camera that goes off in your pocket because there's a stupid blister-style button on the side will negate all your vaunted "camera is off" time.

This was my all-time favorite phone ever: http://www.phoneyworld.com/handsets/phone.aspx?pho ne=Sanyo_6200

It probably wasn't the all-time best phone, and it was actually the bulkier of the phones in its series owing to being dual-band, but dual-band enhances the utility of the phone part by allowing you to use it in more places. I haven't seen any phones with cameras that were slimmer or lighter than that one. I have seen smaller phones, but they start to get rediculous, especially when the microphone isn't actually anywhere near the mouth. and the keep putting color screens on them for some reason also.

a few grams, when something is measured in grams, (the 6200 is 75 grams according to the link) is not insignificant.

Re:Just A Phone

[Threni]

> Practically nothing !nothing.

No, but it *is* practically nothing.

> And a camera that goes off in your pocket because
> there's a stupid blister-style button on the side will negate all your vaunted
> "camera is off" time.

Mine's never gone off in my pocket for two reasons - 1) it's in a case, and 2) the N70 has a sliding plastic cover over the lens, exactly like a lot of cameras do. Handily, this'll activate the camera even if the phone is `locked`, and when you slide it closed the phone goes back into locked mode. Also, the camera functionality will turn off if you don't take a picture after a minute or so.

> it was actually the bulkier of the phones in its series owing to being dual-band

Most phones in the UK now are tri-band, and are no larger for it.

> I haven't seen any phones with cameras that were slimmer or lighter than that
> one.

Plenty of phones are. Here's one a friend has:
http://www.phoneyworld.com/handsets/specs.aspx?pho ne=nokia_6230i

> I have seen smaller phones, but they start to get rediculous, especially when
> the microphone isn't actually anywhere near the mouth.

So you don't approve of bluetooth earpieces then? Why would you want a phone where the microphone is near your mouth? Before you say either "so people can hear what you're saying" or "so you don't get ludicrous amounts of background noise" I'd suggest you check out a modern phone or bluetooth earpiece, as that isn't an issue any more. I've spoken to people who were using that stuff while they were by a busy street in New York and I thought they were calling from their hotel room.

> the keep putting color screens on them for some reason also.

Presumably so you can view the colour photograph/video you've just taken, or have a half-decent user interface, or play a decent game (I'm writing one for my phone right now).

Keep trying to prove that modern phones aren't any good though - it's amusing, and I've kept my first, old, shitty black and white brick with poor battery life and no radio/mp3 player/java/camera/triband etc just in case you manage to convince me...and the rest of the market.

Re:Just A Phone

[Avatar8]

Amen.

I bought my first "modern" mobile phone in January of 2004. At that time the new features were just being introduced: photo, web-surfing, instant-messaging.

I told the guy all I wanted was a phone. The lowest, simplest model still has instant messaging and web surfing, but it's a premium that costs extra, so I don't use it.

My phone is fine now, but I'm suspecting I'll have to replace it in another year or two. I'm dreading that experience because I know I'll be paying for features I neither want nor will use. I just want a freaking phone!

not surprising

[solistus]

I've heard many people (including my mother, who is what normal people would call a geek) complain that interfaces are getting too complicated on newer cell phone models. Users are often required to press several buttons and navigate poorly designed menus to perform basic functions like searching an address book. Also, all the silly gadgets they're building into phones these days have a tendency to drain batteries rather quickly. Phones seem to be getting worse and worse at performing the tasks of, well, a phone. My latest flipphone has 3 IM clients, a camera, a few Java apps and tons of other random crap on it, but my old Nokia candybar model was actually better at the main tasks of a cell phone: making and receiving phone calls. Part of the reason why these new features aren't leading to higher customer satisfaction is the plethora of other digital devices many people now have. As not only cell phones but also music players (iPods in particular), sub-notebook computers, hell, even graphing calculators demonstrate, it's pretty trivial to build a whole lot of features into any device; however, most people only need one calendar, one address book, one music player, one camera and so forth. When every digital device tries to do everything, it just gets annoying. I've never used most of the functions on my cell, and neither have a lot of others. I'd rather have a phone that could do nothing but calls and text messages, but performed these tasks well, than my current model, which seems like the bastard child of a phone, a PDA and a camera.

Re:not surprising

[ItsIllak]

On the other hand - one of the things that comes with the new features is often new UI innovation

Take for instance the Windows Mobile for Smartphones based phones... To get to an actual phone call I can do any of the following:

• Dial the number manually and press send
• Start to dial the number which will be matched from the contacts as I type - select from the decreasing list and press send
• Start to type in the contacts name in a T9 type way (single press, intelligent alphanumeric matching) - select from decreasing list and press send
• Click contacts button, find contact and press send, optionally narrowing list by typing all or part of the name

Featurefull phones are not in themselves a bad thing - badly designed UIs are a bad thing - always have been.

See the Fish

Re:not surprising

[dapyx]

That's not valid for all models: for example, on my Nokia 7260, I have to push exactly one button to get into the address book.

Re:not surprising

[Linker3000]

Amen to all that - I have an Orange (UK) SmartPhone running Micro$oft's OS and some of the most fundamental tasks require so many menu clicks it's unbelievable:

Set the alarm: Start, 4 (settings), 9 (more), 3 (Date and Time), 4 x Scroll, Enter.

Compare this to my previous phone: 'Settings' button, Date and Time, Enter.

My old phone was also sensible enough to allow opt-out days on alarms so you could have a recurrent wake up for work days that didn't operate at weekends - now I get hit with a 6.30 alarm on Saturday and Sunday unless I remember to turn it off - and then I have to remember to turn it on again on Sunday night or be late for work!

On one occasion I used my old phone to record someone threatening me in the street (I didn't need to use it as the incident calmed down) all I had to do was covertly hold down one button. This is impossible on the new phone as you have to look at and navigate the menus:

Start...9 (More)...5 (Voice notes)...Record

Mind you, my new phone could have also recorded video of the incident:

Click camera button...Menu...Capture mode....2 (Video)...Capture

Not exactly subtle and the act of me staring and operating my phone during such a tese moment would probably have got me clobbered! In any case, the last time I tried to record some video for fun, the phone refused ('Insufficient memory') and I had to reboot it to free some RAM for the OS. Picture the scene..

Click...click...click...click...[Error]...Oh, wait Mr Thug, I need to reboot my phone, can you hang on for about 2 minutes and bear with me as I may need to take out the battery if the reboot hangs.

There was some speculation that Nokia are (or were considering) relaunching one of their more basic models (the 6310i) due to popular demand.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The Associated Press has an article about new generation of US consumers

That new generation is called my mom...and my gramma...and all those older people from the "old" generations that are now getting into technology. They want the functionality of a cell phone, but simply to call people and receive calls. The other stuff (such as camera, web services, etc) are just too complicated for them, though now that all seems to be the standard on the newest cell phones.

Simply put, this "new generation" is a whole bunch of older people with a few moneyless college students thrown into the mix, and they should really take advantage of this group by developing the least-complex (yet still functional) cell phone model possible, selling it for a fraction of the cost of those more versatile models.

Re:not surprising

[magicchex]

Is your phone not customizable? My Razr allows alot of customizing internally (binding important programs (my alarms, Opera, Google Local, etc) to keypad buttons so only one click is needed to start them). If you're willing to connect it to your computer through the included USB cable and do some poking around, you can customize to the point of changing, adding, removing, and moving menu items to more convenient locations. Thanks to the USB cable, all my downloads have been free, while the $6/month unlimited data plan has allowed me to use my applications freely.

My mother on the other hand, while she shares my family plan along with my brother and myself, uses her phone almost exclusively to call us (unlimited mobile-to-mobile included!) or text message us (unlimited messaging on all 3 lines to and from anyone: $10/month) and doesn't need the features that I use. Her phone cost something like $20 or $30 and does what she needs (calls and messaging) well and easily. Sure, she could have gotten a more feature-intensive phone, in many cases for less than what she paid (either free or money-back) but she knew what she wanted and chose her phone based on that. She's very happy with her simple phone (which also has large characters which help her with her eyesight) although after seeing Google Local and Opera on my phone, she's started to get more interested in how her phone might be useful in special circumstances.

I did my best to avoid going off on a rant in this post, but my points are:

1. You don't HAVE to buy a feature-intensive phone. Instead of getting what's "cool" or "in", go for something that fits your needs, even if it's cheaper to get a phone with more features.

2. Your phone may very well be customizable. My experience with T-mobile and Motorola phones has been very positive and they have allowed a huge amount of customization, to the point where my phone does what I want, and not the reverse.

Re:not surprising

[ivan256]

That's not surprising. You picked the moble OS with the worst interface on the planet. Instead of being designed to be useable, it was designed to look like Windows.

In Palm OS the same operation is 4 or 5 button clicks including time entry (depending on if your alarm falls on the hour)... It has the option of being more, because there are three ways to do it (hotkeys, stylus, directional navigator) but 3 is all you need. Calendar Button, New, , Enter. I do it all the time with one hand without even looking at the screen.

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have any eye-candy and looks the same as it did in 1997. So what. It *works*.

Re:not surprising

[AaronLawrence]

You were forced to buy the model with the 3 IM clients and a camera?
There were no models on the market without these?

Re:not surprising

[esper]

Is your phone not customizable?

You forgot the related question: How persistent is the customization?

My phone is a Motorola V600 and the one non-basic feature I use on it is Bluetooth. Unfortunately, it has a habit of occasionally deciding that the reason it can no longer see a Bluetooth device is not because the device has been turned off or gone out of range, but rather that the phone's own Bluetooth hardware has failed, so it shuts that part of itself off and any attempt to turn it back on is met with the error "BLUETOOTH MODULE NOT ATTACHED". The only way to get it working again is to do a "Master Reset", which also discards all customizations.

Considering that I end up having to do this, on average, every 2-3 weeks, my phone may as well not be very customizable, as I don't have the patience to go through and repeat customizations beyond noise and light settings to turn off some annoying bits that are on by default. (Do NOT beep every time a button is pressed! Do NOT make flashy lights all night that keep me awake to indicate that you're charging!)

1. You don't HAVE to buy a feature-intensive phone.

Actually, yes, I do. AFAICT, they don't make Bluetooth phones that I can use to get my laptop online anywhere there's a cell signal which don't also include cameras, MP3 players, IM clients, Java games, kitchen sinks, etc. (And before you say I don't HAVE to have Bluetooth... it makes my life a hell of a lot easier when a client calls with a problem and I can hop online and fix it from wherever I happen to be without having to run off in search of internet access first.)

Re:not surprising

[Jesus_666]

That's exactly why I'm going to use my 6210 until GSM will be completely displced by UMTS, at which point I will look for a phone that fulfills the most of the following requirements:
- is a candybar (moving parts = decreased durability = bad)
- has a lo-res black and white display
- has no camera
- has no support for any kind of additional programs. In fact it shouldn't have an operating system. A firmware is enough for basic phone support
- is cheap (I'm talking - MAYBE can be connected to my iBook for on-the-go internet. But I don't really need that

If I can't get that I'll use someone else's old mobile that I get for free. I don't see any sense in paying a ridiculous amount of money for a phone that includes tons of crap (like Java support or MMS) but sucks at what I want (battery life, reliability, simplicity).

Re:not surprising

[Quiet_Desperation]

I've heard many people (including my mother, who is what normal people would call a geek) complain that interfaces are getting too complicated on newer cell phone model The same thing happened to aftermarket car audio. I got a an MP3/CD unit for my truck a few years back. I went to program my stations, and I think it takes less button presses to arm and launch a cruise missile from a submarine that it did to program station slots. Then to select one of those station presets was another complicated series of clicks which basically eliminated the point of presets. It was easier to hold the tuning button until I got to the station I wanted.

Although it's expensive, I opt for the premium factory systems in my vehicles now. Stpre a station? Hold down one of the the big preset buttons for a second or so. Hear beep. Done.

Wireless reception

[misleb]

What always annoyed me about the advances in mobile phone technology is that they never really improved reception. They add feature after feature. You can take and send photos. You can browse the internet, but you always manage to lose signal in the worst possible places. I used to live in a large metropolitan area and would regularly lose signal. I lived *inside* Chicago and I could barely get a signal in my own damn apartment. Is it because of the buildings? Maybe it'll never work right.

I say screw all the stupid features. Just give me a phone that just works everywhere. I couldn't care less if it can take pictures, browse the web, or download movie trailers.

-matthew

Re:Wireless reception

[EnglishTim]

I suspect the reason you don't get very good reception is because the manufacturers are unwilling to make large phones with big aerials any more. If size doesn't bother you, some phones still have a sockets for an external aerial...

Re:Wireless reception

[r.brown-bayliss]

I live in a suburb of a large (1.5 million pop) city... Less than 500 meters, (a bit more than a quter mile) from the local telephone exchange and the cell tower for my phone company...

In my living room I get reception, in my bedroom, I can send and recieev text messages, but not actuall phone calls.

Yes, get the basics sorted out and then give me crapy web browsersr and vidio cameras that I wont use...

Re:Wireless reception

[ItsIllak]

To be fair - for the most part that's a function of the transmitters, not the receivers as much! BUT - that said, I remember when I first had a mobile phone having to go out on the street to make calls - Inside most buildings in built up areas is fine now - probably simply a function of more masts and more power though... See the Fish

Re:Wireless reception

[Fire Dragon]

Just give me a phone that just works everywhere.

Most of the modern phones work everywhere. All they need to have is decent operator. For past 10 years I have been few times on such places on my travels where there werent any coverage. Otherwise most of my phones have worked without problems. At least in Europe and Asia.

Most of the messages here tend to complain about their mobile operator being crappy, others blame operators shortcomings on phones. When browsing mobilephone catalogs, there seems to be model for every need and price range, all you have to do is know what you want and what you are willing to pay for it. And make sure that you aren't tied to some crappy operator.

Re:Wireless reception

[BrokenHalo]

the manufacturers are unwilling to make large phones with big aerials any more. If size doesn't bother you, some phones still have a sockets for an external aerial...

I would qualify that by suggesting an experiment. My LG U8120 works just as well (wrt both reception and battery-life) if I unscrew the aerial altogether. Which is why I replaced the standard fixture with a little stubby aerial, just to keep crap out of the hole.

Re:Wireless reception

[DigiShaman]

The main reason for poor reception is location (obviously), and the phones ability to transmit and receive signals. Due to the second, I did my research before I purchased a phone from Verizon Wireless and got the Samsung SCH-i600.

To this day, I've never had a dropped call when calling a number connected to a telco line. Hell, I've even driving 15 minutes hopping between cell towers and never been dropped.

Screw brain tumors. The aggravation and stress will give you one of those long before EMI does.

Re:Wireless reception

[DigiShaman]

Update:

You can find the list of phone and their radiation level here.

Re:Wireless reception

[Instine]

Bingo. I had a Sony watchman while at boarding school. I loved it. Even though the screen curvered badly in an odd plain and it was in black and white, dispite colour models being available already (though they were still very expencive), what made it so great, was the fact that it got better reception that the TV in the rec room. I still look back on it as one of my top five gadgets of all time.

Re:Wireless reception

[jsebrech]

It's not the phone, it's the operator. I live in Belgium and I only get dropped calls when the train I'm in is travelling through a tunnel or at really high speed (apparently GSM starts failing at 100+ mph). Even indoors I have excellent reception most of the time (unless you go really deep into a building). I recently took a ski trip to austria, and the whole time (including the travelling by bus part) I had good reception, even on the ski slopes themselves, and in the valleys between.

My phone is nothing special (qtek 8020), so I know it's the operators that make the difference. Still, it's a smartphone, so I get good reception and internet on my phone. Which came in handy when I hurt my knee and had to sit one out, cause I could spend my days browsing slashdot from a little bar down in the valley.

Re:Wireless reception

[brianjcain]

You're a victim of multipath. In short: yes, it is the buildings. A few years back, all the rage for cellular infrastructure were micro/nano/picocells, appropriate for dense urban environments like Chicago. I suppose we could cite your case as an example that they're insufficiently deployed.

Re:Wireless reception

[frdmfghtr]

Which came in handy when I hurt my knee and had to sit one out, cause I could spend my days browsing slashdot from a little bar down in the valley.

Perhaps you also hit your head at the same time?

Re:Wireless reception

[tepples]

It's not the phone, it's the operator. I live in Belgium

I live in the United States, where the operator of what is thought to be the most extensive network (Verizon) severely locks the features of phones on its network. How did you get to Belgium?

Re:Wireless reception

[misleb]

In the US is not uncommon to lose signal even in places where the is coverage.

-matthew

and what a timely article this is...

[bariswheel]

how timely is this article....

straight from my blog, enjoy:

I accidentally deleted a very important voicemail tonight. I was deleting one completely redundant voicemail (don't get me started on redundant unnecessary 'call me back' messages,) and pressed '7' one too many times, and deleted a message I never got to listen to. It was from an important recruiter.

I called Cingular and asked them whether they had a service for 'presshappy' people like myself to 'undelete' a voicemail in case of an emergency, and was brutally told that once a message is erased it's irretrievable. I kindly asked him to escalate my suggestion of having this capability so that Cingular would separate itself from the boys.

Needless to say, this incident was entirely my fault. But it brought up another issue I've been wrestling with for the last few months and I thought to share:

Today's cell phone technology seems to take away from the fundamental functions and add resource-hog features we don't use on a daily basis. These features drain the battery life dry and qualifies the 'cell phone' to an entity equivalent to a high maintenance girlfriend. How about making a cell phone that retains its battery life as long as possible, can store perhaps 50 phone numbers, has the best signal that that kind of a phone can provide, has a super-fast snappy interface, can easily slip in and out from my pocket jeans without me having to stand up, and still works despite all the abuse a device gets from being carried around with you all day? How about a cell phone you can tap on thrice with the tip of your finger while it's in your pocket to shut it up while sitting in a lecture? Maybe I haven't done my research, but if you find something that fits all that, let me know. I will buy you a beer. I will then buy you another beer. I'm talking Guinness.

My behemoth of a Motorola cell phone can pull these these cute numbers:

* play mp3s
* interface via bluetooth with other devices
* play movies
* download ringtones, like green days' latest song
* take 640*480 pictures, high quality vga pictures and send them to others
* provide me capability to play poker with other people on some proprietary network, along with being able to download other j2me games.

Why did I get such a phone? Amazon gave me $160 cash money (ok it was a rebate) and a free activation plan. Websites like phonescoop and cnet also gave it a rating of 8/10 or better. Maybe I didn't check the right websites. Maybe I didn't spend the extra 6 hours looking for a practical phone.

When are these Telcos going to get it? Or is some potential startup company sitting on a gold mine?

One day, here's hoping that I will have a cell phone that doesn't decide to change its ring style to silent while it sits in my pocket, here's hoping one day we don't have to listen to 40 second prevoicemail messages before leaving a voicemail. Here's hoping we will be able to buy a practical 'cell phone,' and this middle-of-the-road phase will indeed phase away like a bad fart.

baris

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Needless to say, this incident was entirely my fault.

As one of apparently very few programmers with an active interest in human interface design, I beg to differ. I believe that there is no such thing as "human error" when dealing with a computing device. You did not intend to permanently delete that voicemail message, but the system did it anyway.

To me, that indicates a failure in the design of the user interface, not a failure on your part. Ultimately, computers should be DWIM - do what I mean - but failing that, interfaces should not impose irrevocable consquences on the user unless there is just absolutely no other way to do it.

In the case of accidental deletions, we've already come up with a workable metaphor - the trash can, from which the deletion can be retrieved until the trash is either manually "emptied" or overflows and you get a FIFO behaviour on older deletions becoming permanent.

Ain't no reason a voice-mail system can't have a similar interface. Chances are, the UI designers could prevent most such accidental deletions up front at their level, but that they have not done a very good job with that either.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[lintux]

I bought my father a Nokia 1110 some time ago. It's a real "back-to-basic" telephone. Pretty nice screen (white-on-black, must be attractive to geeks :-D), great battery life (lasts for a week for him, and he does have phonecalls with it every day) and almost no useless features (if you can at least live with the polyphonic ringtones). No colour screen, no camera, no MP3 player, etc. It also lacks GPRS support, which I personally wouldn't like to miss.

Maybe you'll like it, if you can live with the fact that it's from Nokia. I personally don't understand why people all like Nokia so much (I bought one for myself this year, for the first time in ages, because of bad experiences with all other brands in the last few years (fragile things)).. You can say a lot about the software, but if this is user-friendly, please give me back my user-unfriendly Siemens/SonyEricsson, at least it works and it's a bit more consistent.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Russellkhan]

For next time: If you delete a message you didn't mean to and you realize it before hanging up, you can press "19" to review deleted messages. Sometimes I've even found that the deleted messages in the review seem to include messages I deleted in previous sessions.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[bariswheel]

thanks I'll definitely take a look at the phone. the message I missed by the way was from Google, but my recruiter was understanding of the fact, and things seem to be going well. I reached the final stage, the executive management group reviewed my packet on friday, and I got a thumbs up from my recruiter...I should know the results this tuesday, wish me luck!

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[ItsIllak]

My current phone network provider has an ability to undelete messages before you hang up on the answering machine service - very handy....

Quite a contrast from my previous system - it was completely voice activated, and generally pretty reliable. However - if someone who knew the system shouted "throw it away" at an inopportune moment - it would cheerfully do so with no further confirmation!

See the Fish

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[EvilIdler]

I'm also a programmer with interest in making interfaces helpful,
and I agree. Rather than just deleting at the press of ONE button, there
should be either confirmation with a different one, or a trashcan concept
where messages are actually removed when you hang up, giving you one
final chance to listen to them.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[NormalVisual]

I believe that there is no such thing as "human error" when dealing with a computing device.

I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that, but it seems reasonable that a voicemail system should ask for confirmation before deleting an as-yet-unheard message, because sometimes you'll find yourself needing to delete multiple messages and it's just too easy to do what the parent poster did.

It's rather like those poorly-designed vending machines that have numeric identifiers for the items inside - the item you want is number "77", but you end up getting item "45" because you were still subconsciously thinking about the $.45 you just put in to buy the item and punched the buttons before you were aware of what you were doing. Simply using an alphanumeric identifier fixes that for no extra cost.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[AuMatar]

Totally disagree. Human error exists. You can have 70 popups that ask if you're really sure you want to do something. Someone out there will still be stupid enough to click yes 70 times- thats human error.

Ultimately, unless we're dealing with a bug ALL errors are human errors. A human fucked up- it told the machine to do the wrong thing. We can mitigate common causes and cases, but in the end stupidity has no cure.

DWIM is an absolutely fucktarded idea. The problem with it is WIM is not WYM- what I mean is not what you mean. If the computer is busy trying to guess what I mean, its going to guess wrong. And there is NOTHING more annoying than that- especially if its irreversible or was time critical. Efforts to try and make computers read your mind are not only futile, they're counter-productive- they make the computer less useful by not having a common interface. With do what I say, I can at least know if I do X, Y will occur. With anything else you're begging for trouble.

As for your trash can metaphor- there's two issues with it. FIrst off, users don't understand it. You wouldn't believe how many people don't know how to clean their trashcan and end up taking it in for repairs when the hard drive fails. If the trashcan auto-deletes, they get confused when files they expected to be in there aren't. Its not a cureall.

Secondly- space costs. Especially on a remote server. Why should Cingular pay for someone else's mistakes? There's nothing in it for them, and it would make their server software more complex and error prone. It seems a lose/lose to them from here.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[bariswheel]

"Why should Cingular pay for someone else's mistakes? There's nothing in it for them," It would provide incentive to draw more customers, customers who want a backup of all their messages. If a phone company provided a feature where all my messages get sent to my email address in mp3 format, I would go for them. This way I would have an archive of all my messages, and wouldn't need my cell phone to check them. So they would make money, that's what's in it for them.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[AuMatar]

Then it becomes a simple equation- is # of new customers whom are decided by this feature*average customer bill>price of implementation+cost of maintenance+extra storage+cost of bandwidth and any possible extra frequency needed(for your mp3 idea)

Truthfully, I rather doubt it is. Maintenance and storage would be non-trivial, and its not a feature easily marketed and sold.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Nick9000]

I have the Nokia 1100, which is even more basic. I bought one for my Mother (not the most tech savvy person) and liked it so much I got one for myself, replacing my fancy colour screen/Polyphonic Panasonic. The torch (flashlight, to you Americans) is a great feature.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[talksinmaths]

I called Cingular and asked them whether they had a service for 'presshappy' people like myself to 'undelete' a voicemail in case of an emergency, and was brutally told that once a message is erased it's irretrievable.

Why couldn't Cingular have just arranged to have the NSA provide you one of their 'backups'?

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Bloke down the pub]

vending machines that have numeric identifiers for the items inside - the item you want is number "77", but you end up getting item "45" because you were still subconsciously thinking about the $.45 you just put in to buy the item and punched the buttons before you were aware of what you were doing. Simply using an alphanumeric identifier fixes that for no extra cost.

An alphanumeric pad could well cost more, since you'd presumably need all the numbers plus a few of the letters. Plus they maybe don't make them in such quantities.

But I get where you're coming from, I used to work in a place where the machine had numeric codes and a particularly sensitive autorepeat. Products with a code that was a multiple of 11 weren't necessarily more popular, but they were by far the best sellers.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[cyber-vandal]

the executive management group reviewed my packet on friday

Wow tough recruitment system.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[magicchex]

T-mobile allows you to undelete any deleted messages as long as you're still on the line and reminds you of this fact after every deletion.

And can I suggest going for a phone that might cost you $30 or $40 but is simple as opposed to going for the cool phone that you get money back from? Shop for what you need first and look at prices and finances after you've found the phone you actually want.

I'm happier with my phone and my service provider than any other consumer experience I've had in the last few years, but this seems to be the exception rather than the norm.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Anonymous Coward]

It would provide incentive to draw more customers, customers who want a backup of all their messages.

Are you aware that Cingular has 50+ million customers?

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck. You'll need it. I'm guessing the odds of Google hiring someone that doesn't know how to work a cell phone are pretty low.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

You know, there's something fundamentally wrong with your thinking here.

The 'trashcan' is one of the most annoying out of place metaphors in computers today. It does absolutely nothing but make me jump through hoops to get things done. Instead of deleting stuff once, now I have to delete it twice? My first response to this thing was 'what moron thought of this' and my opinion of it hasn't improved in the, what, around 20 years now since?

It's extremely annoying. The Mac made my one operation into two, then Windows made it into four. I remember the windows popup when you delete something that says 'are you sure you want to move these files to the trashcan?' NO, I DON'T want to move them to the trashcan, I want to delete them, you fsck! So, instead of simply deleting, I have to delete, confirm delete, empty trash, confirm empty trash. A simple operation is now four operations, just to get the same thing done. This is NOT an improvement. Quite the opposite.

When I push the delete button I want the damn thing deleted. I don't want to have to waste time dealing with a backtalking computer.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[BizidyDizidy]

Take a prozac and press Shift-Delete

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[RKBA]

"My behemoth of a Motorola cell phone can pull these these cute numbers..."

What, no builtin modem for dial up networking from your computer when your cable internet connection goes down? No ability to film short movie clips? No ability to function as an answering machine by blinking a LED when a message is waiting? No ability to play chess and other games with me when I'm bored? No Internet surfing capability? No gigajoule death ray particle blaster? You must have a really old cell phone. ;-)

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You can have 70 popups that ask if you're really sure you want to do something. Someone out there will still be stupid enough to click yes 70 times- thats human error.

No, that's bad design - exactly the kind of "programmer who doesn't understand the users" mentality that plagues software design today. If 1 popup doesn't correct the problem, what sane person would expect 69 more to improve the situation? All that does is train the user to click "OK" 70 times without reading the popups - the software equivalent of the "little boy who cried wolf."

Instead of "70 popups" a better design is to provide some sort of "undo" functionality.

DWIM is an absolutely fucktarded idea.

If your definition of DWIM is "guess what I mean" then of course it is a fucktard idea. But that is not what DWIM is. DWIM is about enabling the user to tell the system what he wants it to do in a fashion that is intuitive to the user - even if it is a real pain in the ass for the programmer to implement.

As for your trash can metaphor- there's two issues with it. FIrst off, users don't understand it. You wouldn't believe how many people don't know how to clean their trashcan and end up taking it in for repairs when the hard drive fails. If the trashcan auto-deletes, they get confused when files they expected to be in there aren't. Its not a cureall.

While there are undoubtedly a large number of people who don't understand the trashcan metaphor, there are orders of magnitude more who do. Variants are in MS Windows and in MacOS, that covers about 95% of the computer using public - probably close to a billion people. We don't have even 1% of them experiencing the problems you describe. Regardless, a trashcan that provides an indication as to how long each deleted file has before it becomes permanently deleted solves the problem in both cases.

Secondly- space costs. Especially on a remote server. Why should Cingular pay for someone else's mistakes? There's nothing in it for them, and it would make their server software more complex and error prone. It seems a lose/lose to them from here.

Disk space is cheap. People are not. The cost of each service call that tells a person no, they can not undelete a voicemail could easilt pay for the space for 1000 and probably closer to 10,000 people's deleted messages for a week.

Back when computers were expensive and people were cheap, arcane specialist interfaces made sense, it was cheaper to train people than to pay for the computing resources to make intuitive interfaces. That has not been the case for at least a decade now.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

An alphanumeric pad could well cost more, since you'd presumably need all the numbers plus a few of the letters. Plus they maybe don't make them in such quantities.

It is important to consider all the costs associated with user-interface design decisions. Focusing on materials costs and ignoring operating costs is not a good idea. While an alpha-num keybad may cost more than a numeric-only keypad, any such savings will probably be quickly overtaken by the cost of handling refund requests for miskeyed purchases.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You know, there's something fundamentally wrong with your thinking here. ...

When I push the delete button I want the damn thing deleted. I don't want to have to waste time dealing with a backtalking computer.

Forest and trees dude.

Different implementations of trashcans differ in their interfaces - but anyone who has used a computer in the last 10 years understands the basic metaphor - that recently deleted files can usually be undeleted by poking around in the desktop trashcan - you don't need specialist tools in order to undelete files like you once did.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Bastard of Subhumani]

Focusing on materials costs and ignoring operating costs is not a good idea.

It is a good idea if you can shave a few bucks off the cost of the machine. Especially if you don't operate it. Someone eles's problem.

any such savings will probably be quickly overtaken by the cost of handling refund requests for miskeyed purchases.

LOL. I doubt anybody would bother trying to get a refund, becuase it would be more trouble than it's worth. Even if there was a number to contact, chances are you'll get a recorded message saying "Life is hard, cry me a river" - if you get through at all.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[TheRaven64]

If there is one UI concept that every programmer should know, it's Raskin's First Law:

A computer shall not harm the users' data, or through inaction allow that data to come to harm.

The UI described violates this fundamental law, and so fails the simplest possible good-UI test. The Orange voicemail system in the UK gives users the option to review deleted messages before they hang up. This allows them to go back and undelete things that were deleted by mistake. If the user didn't delete anything accidentally, then they just hang up and none of their time is wasted. This is a good UI; it doesn't get in your way while you are doing things right, and it gives you an escape route if you did something wrong.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[TheRaven64]

The trashcan is a very good metaphor unless you are in the habit of needing to delete incriminating documents quickly (in which case a shredder metaphor would be a good addition), or you are very low on disk space. Most implementations seem to miss something important though - the cleaning staff.

When I throw something in the bin at work, I have until the end of the day to retrieve it. If it's still there by then, the cleaning staff empty the bin and it's completely gone. A good trashcan metaphor would automatically delete items once they had been in the bin for a certain time period (user-configurable, with one week being a sane default). If you delete something by mistake, then you can still undo it easily. If you delete something deliberately, then you have no need of further interactions to make sure it's really gone.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[NormalVisual]

The alpha pad only costs more if you have more keys. You could still give it 10 keys, but instead of "0-9", you do "0-4" and "A-E", or just keep it alphabetic (gains the same UI benefits) and do "A-J". Anything that breaks a cognitive association between the item price and the item identifier will work for this purpose.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I doubt anybody would bother trying to get a refund, becuase it would be more trouble than it's worth. Even if there was a number to contact, chances are you'll get a recorded message saying "Life is hard, cry me a river" - if you get through at all.

Its illegal in the usa not to provide a way to receive refunds for problems with unattended vending machines. Any vending machine that does not prominetly display contact information for such refunds is in violation of their vending license.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[bariswheel]

Sure, but they might have 40 million if anoher carrier drew that 10 million away from them. It's a constant ratrace.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[bariswheel]

What carrier and cell phone do you use?

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[magicchex]

T-mobile and a Razr but I don't claim my phone is barebones features.. although customization lets me see what I want.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

I understand the metaphor. Doh.

It's still out of place, and the underlying mechanics are still regressive.

The computer is there to do what the user tells it to do. Not to argue, backtalk, and second guess his or her every move.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I understand the metaphor. Doh.

I never said you didn't understand the metaphor of the trashcan.

But, it seems clear now that you do not understand the metaphor of not seeing the forest for the trees.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

I understand that metaphor too. Are you familiar with the wookie defense? I think that's your game here.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Ok, I will be pedantic.

I mention that the trashcan is a widespread, well-known interface for handling the recovery of deleted files.

You respond that it is a terrible interface because you personally find some of the more common implementations to be clumsy.

I respond that critques of specific implementations (the trees) do not invalidate the fact that the metaphor of the trashcan is now a widely-known and understood interface for the recovery of deleted files (the forest).

You respond that you understand the metaphor of the trashcan (something I never disputed) and then reiterate that some implementations suck.

I replied that your point was moot.

You continued to not get it.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

You continue to not get it.

I'm not criticising the implementation, I'm criticising the entire concept.

If the user tells the computer to delete the file, the computer should DELETE THE FILE. Not move it to a 'trashcan' instead.

Why is this so hard for you to understand?

Furthermore, the trashcan is a great example of an out of place metaphor. The computer 'trashcan' doesn't have enough in common with the real life trashcan to make the metaphor helpful or obvious. It's an ugly, annoying, kludge.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm not criticising the implementation, I'm criticising the entire concept.

Yeah, that's why your initial response contained a long paragraph bitching, in excruciating detail, about the number of windows and mouse clicks you had to deal with on a macintosh versus a ms-windows computer in order to delete a file. Clearly that was a criticism of concept and not implementation.

If the user tells the computer to delete the file, the computer should DELETE THE FILE. Not move it to a 'trashcan' instead.

Pardon me for attributing to you the modicum of intelligence to understand that a user interface with a default behaviour making the most common errors the most expensive to recover from is the absolute poorest possible design.

If I had known that you were yet another programmer who is pathalogically incapable of wrapping his head around the fact that the vast majority of users are not, and have no wish to become, expert users of arcane and unforgiving interfaces, I would have never bothered responding.

Furthermore, the trashcan is a great example of an out of place metaphor. The computer 'trashcan' doesn't have enough in common with the real life trashcan to make the metaphor helpful or obvious. It's an ugly, annoying, kludge.

Ah, for the first time, an actual criticism of the concept and not a specific implementation. Too bad for you that I've already debunked this specific criticism twice now. You know, back when I said that the vast majority of the computer using population already has plenty of exposure to the metaphor so it's connection to the physical world is no longer relevant. Intuitiveness is about relating to the user's personal experience, not about requiring real-world and digital interfaces to be identical.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

This distinction between implementation and concept is, at best, disingenuous. Some implementations are worse than others, yes (the Mac is only mildly annoying compared to the excruciating and insulting Windows version) but so what? They all suck.

Pardon me for attributing to you the modicum of intelligence to understand that a user interface with a default behaviour making the most common errors the most expensive to recover from is the absolute poorest possible design.

Ahem. Pardon me for attributing to you the modicum of intelligence required to understand that the computer is supposed to do what the user tells it to do, rather than second-guessing him at every turn, and that interfaces that deliberately make basic, simple tasks more complicated and time consuming are not examples of good interface design.

And I am not even for a moment going to give any credibility to your assertion that deleting a file you meant to move is a common error on any vaguely sane user interface. It might have been a problem in some very early GUIs, but there's no reason it should be, and adding a mandatory 'trashcan' is neither the only nor the best way to make sure it's not.

If I had known that you were yet another programmer who is pathalogically incapable...

And blah blah blah. I'm not a programmer. I'm just a lowly user who doesn't like programmers that assume this makes me an incredible idiot who pushes the delete key when he wants to move something. Just because I'm not a programmer doesn't mean I'm a moron. And I know a lot of people that are not programmers and also not morons.

IF a given interface is somehow constructed that deleting files you intended to move is a real problem, THAT problem needs to be looked at, rather than papered over with a bad metaphor.

Too bad for you that I've already debunked this specific criticism twice now.

Sadly for you, simply disagreeing does not constitute 'debunking.'

You know, back when I said that the vast majority of the computer using population already has plenty of exposure to the metaphor so it's connection to the physical world is no longer relevant.

And that's utterly besides the point. It doesn't make the interface any less confusing to new users having to learn the system, nor does it mean that the interface doesn't remain jarring and annoying to those that are quite familiar with how it works.

Intuitiveness is about relating to the user's personal experience, not about requiring real-world and digital interfaces to be identical.

Intuitiveness is a myth. Even the nipple is not fully intuitive, and certainly nothing afterwards is. This is the hubris of most modern interface designs - the delusion that the programmer can create an 'intuitive' interface. You can't. What you can do is make an interface that is functional and not unecessarily obtruse or difficult to master. Concentrate on making it easy for the user to control the computer and forget about this mirage of 'intuitiveness' and you'd design much more useful programs.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

This distinction between implementation and concept is, at best, disingenuous. Some implementations are worse than others, yes (the Mac is only mildly annoying compared to the excruciating and insulting Windows version) but so what? They all suck.

Sadly for you, simply disagreeing does not prove anything, and that's all you have done since your initial post. Fundamentally it boils down to what the other respondent to your initial post spelled out - you want expert level behaviour out of the interface by default and having failed to figure out how to get that expert level behaviour, you blame the interface instead of the nut behind the wheel. If you are intent on making the computer get out of the way and do what you want with no failsafes, then you need to make the effort to learn how to turn off the failsafes.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

Wookie defense again. Just change the subject when you don't like what you're hearing. You sound like Bill Clinton, or half of the guys on my high school debate team... so proud of your ability to twist words and change subjects, and then you wonder why no one wants to listen to you anymore. Here's a clue - the point to conversation is generally the *substance* of the conversation, not a penis-measuring display concerned with who's the best bullshitter.

I initially replied to your post that claimed that "there is no such thing as "human error"" and went on to expound how any time the computer user appears to have made an error, the error was actually on the part of the programmer that failed to make the computer do what the user actually wanted, rather than what they commanded. That is bullshit from beginning to end, I called you on it rather gently, and you've been trying to dance around and change the subject and impune me personally instead of actually facing up to it ever since.

Projecting personal failings of all sorts on me for daring to disagree with you leads me to suspect some personal failings of your own. Whatever your motivation, designing software with the assumption that your users are all imbeciles is not only insulting and arrogant, it results in interfaces only imbeciles would want to use. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I guess that makes you feel smarter or something, but don't kid yourself it's good design. If you really make software that implements that philosophy instead of just spouting it off where impressionable young programmers can get infected with it... well either way it's sad. Knock it off. Find something useful to do instead.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You sound like Bill Clinton, or half of the guys on my high school debate team... so proud of your ability to twist words and change subjects, and then you wonder why no one wants to listen to you anymore.

Pot kettle bang.

I initially replied to your post that claimed that "there is no such thing as "human error"" and went on to expound how any time the computer user appears to have made an error, the error was actually on the part of the programmer that failed to make the computer do what the user actually wanted, rather than what they commanded.

You truly can't see the forest, can you? No wonder you keep referencing the chewbacca defense - you don't get it, so you think there is nothing there. Like A. Square visiting Pointland, you can't be rescued from your all-knowing, self-satisfcation.

Projecting personal failings of all sorts on me for daring to disagree with you leads me to suspect some personal failings of your own. Whatever your motivation, designing software with the assumption that your users are all imbeciles is not only insulting and arrogant, it results in interfaces only imbeciles would want to use.

You are the one projecting personal failings. I have never once advocated designing software for imbeciles. You've translated your personal frustrations with trashcan implementations into a twisted belief that, "intuitiveness is a myth" and that accounting for human psychology - not imbecile psychology - is therefore worthless. Fortunately for my bank account, you're wrong - as my clients all heartily disagree with your viewpoint.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

I see the forest fine. Why don't you try opening your eyes up for a change, maybe you could see it too?

I've been using computers a long time, very possibly since you were in diapers. The sheer bit-pushing power has advanced greatly, but there have been serious regression too, and much of that is the result of the "the user is an imbecile" philosophy you're espousing here.

Oh, I know, you claim that's not what you're saying. But what other conclusion could any reasonable person come to when told that if they push delete to move a file, and then are shocked and horrified that the file was *deleted* instead of moved, it's not their fault - it's the fault of that nasty programmer that programmed the computer to do what they user told it to do, instead of somehow divining what they really wanted it to do instead?

Yes, you think 'mere users' like me are absolute imbeciles, unable to meaningfully inform you of our needs, and certainly unable to realise that pushing the key marked 'delete' might actually result in something being deleted. You can deny it all you want, but you can't reconcile that denial with your initial expression of design philosophy in any credible way.

You've translated your personal frustrations with trashcan implementations

Nope. Once again, you're just reading what is convenient to sustain your worldview into the situation, regardless of it not fitting the facts at all. I've adapted to many different interfaces, and when I'm working with them I concentrate on the job at hand. I almost never get frustrated, even by the most moronic mechanisms. But I certainly can note when they ARE moronic, and why. And an evolution of interface designs where the same task goes from one operation, to two, to four, is one that even a 'mere user' imbecile like myself can see is moronic. My aging father who's afraid of changing anything on his computer lest he break something can see it's moronic, and he does get frustrated with it. The computer is backtalking him! The first time he saw that message, he thought he must have inadvertantly tried to delete a critical system file or something. I've had secretaries that only use the computer for email and word processing ask 'why does this thing think I'm an idiot? I mean, I know I'm not the smartest and all with these computers and stuff, but I think I know what 'delete' means.'

Oops, there I go again, destroying your worldview. Just repeat to yourself, users are imbeciles a few times, and hum a bit, then rewrite what I just wrote so it sounds suitably imbecilic so you can disregard it.

Fortunately for my bank account...

...fools and there money soon are parted.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yes, you think 'mere users' like me are absolute imbeciles, unable to meaningfully inform you of our needs, and certainly unable to realise that pushing the key marked 'delete' might actually result in something being deleted. You can deny it all you want, but you can't reconcile that denial with your initial expression of design philosophy in any credible way.

What initial expression? That there is no such thing as human error? So, saying that a programmer's failure to fully anticipate how the user will interact with the system means the user is an imbecile? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

My aging father who's afraid of changing anything on his computer lest he break something can see it's moronic, and he does get frustrated with it. The computer is backtalking him! The first time he saw that message, he thought he must have inadvertantly tried to delete a critical system file or something. I've had secretaries that only use the computer for email and word processing ask 'why does this thing think I'm an idiot? I mean, I know I'm not the smartest and all with these computers and stuff, but I think I know what 'delete' means.'

You keep going on and on and on about specific implementations. There could hardly be better proof that you are just lost in the forest. But, why don't you give me another example of how a specific trashcan implementation has a usuability problem and maybe that will convince me. I mean, its worked so well the first 10 million times you did it! Lol!

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Arker]

What initial expression? That there is no such thing as human error?

Exactly.

That's a fundamental, and pernicious, false premise that any five-year old could see through.

Oh, it's a nice scam, I'm sure. Users make errors. We're human, you grok? We all make errors. The healthy thing to do is acknowledge them, learn from them, and not repeat them.

Oh, but then arrives the con man. The con man, as is the nature of that game, spins a flattering fantasy he knows his listeners will *want* to believe. "There's no such thing as user error. It's just bad design. The computer is supposed to do what you meant, not what you said." And for a fee, the con man will of course "fix" that nasty program that's actually responsible for all the "user error," right?

Only it's a lie. The computer can't possibly "do what you mean, not what you say." So, for example, the user deletes a file he didn't mean to delete. Woops! He might have learned from that experience, but not with the con man around. The user that made the error is piously assured he didn't do anything wrong, it was that blamed machine. The con man will make it better. So what does he do? Maybe he adds some code that says "Are you sure you want to delete foo (y/n)" the first time through this. Hey, this isn't so bad, it only adds one extra keystroke to the process, and it ensures that the bad computer will never again make the error of deleting a file you told it to delete, but didn't actually want to delete.

But that's not true. Pretty soon, the users just wind up building it into muscle memory that you always hit 'y' after giving the delete command, and we're back pretty much where we started. Sure enough, sooner or later someone makes an error and deletes a file that shouldn't have been deleted again. And here comes that con man, ready to make another profit on his snake oil.

So he adds a 'trashcan.' Now you can delete everything you want, and it's not final until the can is emptied. Great, except, well, of course, you still aren't where you promised to be. The computer still doesn't do what you mean, rather than what you tell it. I MEAN for it to delete, but it refuses to do so, insisting on moving to the trashcan instead. Now I dare say, the vast majority of the time a user presses the delete key they mean to delete the file - pressing the delete key when you intended to move it somewhere else has to be a pretty damn rare case. So, by your own standards, the new system is FURTHER from your goal than the very basic system you started with. And the users, again, just learn in many cases to append the 'emptying the trashcan' action to the 'delete' action, and so on top of burdening the vast majority of instances with additional, unecessary steps, you STILL haven't solved the original problem of users deleting files by mistake!

It's snake oil, nothing more. I suppose I can see how the snake oil salesman thinks it's great when he's counting his money afterwards, but the users haven't been served in this, they've only been encouraged to shirk responsibility for their own actions and discouraged from actually *learning* how to avoid making mistakes.

It's not implementation specific. It has to do simply with your initial, false premise. The computer has no way of knowing 'what you mean' and barring technological advances beyond any but the wildest flights of fiction fantasy isn't likely to ever have a way of knowing that. Adding layer after layer of 'failsafes' - no matter how well implemented - is never going to make the machine a mind-reader.

Although, of course, telling users they aren't to blame when they goof can make you money, I'm sure. Con man may well be the oldest profession, it's certainly in the running, and shows no sign of going out of demand any time soon.

You keep going on and on and on about specific implementations.

You're the one that keeps trying to dodge by making it about implementation. You're, in fac

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You're the one that keeps trying to dodge by making it about implementation. You're, in fact, the one that brought the whole trashcan thing into it as an example.

As an example of a concept, not of an implementation.

You are the one who thinks that your own personal experience is indicative of concept and not implementation. You go on and on and on, and still further on making up examples of bad interfaces -- your entire "con man" example is just you choosing a bad implementation and saying that it is representative of the concept. In doing so you unknowingly illustrate my point -- it is easy to make a piss-poor user interface - you just did it yourself. It is hard to make a good one - you certainly can't just whip one up on the spur of the moment.

By your standards, if I press delete because I want it to run make me two scrambled eggs with a side of bacon and a cup of coffee, then it's broken, and you need to be paid to fix it.

No - those "standards" are your bizzare attempt to twist my point into something you can yell and scream about. Its easy to knock down strawmen. But its just mental masturbation on your part, so keep it to yourself.

One principle of good UI design is that if a user wants to do a certain task, it must be easy for him to figure out how to do the task - and that in proceeding with each step of the task, the computer gives him just enough feedback so that he knows that each step has been undertaken succesfully. If the user makes an error and fails to get his task done, then the problem lies with the UI design for not making the process clear enough.

It does not mean interpreting undirected keystrokes for some sort of direction which is the kind of ridiculous premise you have filled your examples with.

And puh-leaze, before you even start, don't bother telling me how such and such trashcan does not follow that principle. I can point at any car with a flat tire and say "it doesn't work" - but that doesn't mean cars in general are useless.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its illegal in the usa

... to know that other countries exist, it would seem. Fucktard.

Re:and what a timely article this is...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Its illegal in the usa ... to know that other countries exist, it would seem. Fucktard.

Lol! Not many vending machines in Cameroon you know.

My uncool, simple phone

[sunwukong]

I picked a Motorola V180 for the following features:

- great battery life (easily a week with regular use)
- colour screen
- small screen on the outer shell
- cheap (a few generations behind)
- NO CAMERA (so there'd be fewer objections to its presence on client sites)

It seems to be as good a flip phone as you can get without having a camera.

Re:My uncool, simple phone

[Osty]

I picked a Motorola V180 for the following features: ... It seems to be as good a flip phone as you can get without having a camera.

Meh. I'm still happy with my 5 year old Motorola V60i. Monochrome screen, great battery life, small screen on the outside (shows me who's calling, or the current time), so cheap you'll probably not even be able to get it from your provider, no camera. It's also a tri-band GSM phone, which means you'll be able to use it just about anywhere in the world.

I could go even more basic, as the v60i does have some games and internet stuff (which I don't use, and you won't even know it's there if you don't scroll most of the way down the menu), but then you're into non-flip phone territory. My battery's going to give out soon (5 years on the same battery is pretty damned good), but I'm going to just replace the battery and not the phone. In fact, the only way I will ever upgrade to a different phone is if this one physically stops working and I can no longer get another v60i (unlikely, given ebay), or all wireless providers switch to some new technology that prevents a tri-band GSM phone from working.

Re:My uncool, simple phone

[DingerX]

My v.171, even cheaper than yours:

-cheap
-NO CAMERA, no ridiculous frilles.
-Crappy battery life (two and a half days if I don't use the phone). Incidentally, this model gets advertised as having an "extreme battery" and long life.
-If you enter PIN too fast on startup, fails to logon, reboots (must reenter pin).
-When battery is low, emits an annoying beep every minute. This beep bypasses the ringer settings, so if you're in a meeting and have the ringer set to vibrate or silent, it will beep at you anyway. After all, its needs are more important than anything else.
-color screen, which largely serves to force these animations of some kid skateboarding or spraying graffitti, implying that only prepubescent kids should have a phone this cheap

-Even with clamshell design, it could be a little bigger. I don't need no handsfree kid, but it would be nice to cradle the thing against my shoulder without pulling my neck out.

So there you have it. You want a cheap, functional phone, they sell you one with a couple of lethal bugs. Then, because you don't want all those fancy toys, they specify a tiny battery, tethering you to frequent recharges, just as if you had been downloading 3G pr0n all the time. Finally, they keep it smaller than it needs to be.

Re:My uncool, simple phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Try the C390 if you want a phone without camera but with bluetooth. I've been using this for 6months.. so far so good. (Except Motorola has a useless voice dial limitation)

Re:My uncool, simple phone

[Anonymous Coward]

My uncool simple phone is an Ericsson T39m. Flip phone, small mono text screen, bluetooth, GPRS, triband, useful shortcuts (e.g. press C for silent, press any letter to get into phonebook), and a favourites facility. Oh and 20 quid from eBay.

I've gone through a list of more fancy phones, such as the P800 and the K500, but I keep going back to this phone with just the right amount of features. And the ring tone is more piercing than the MP3 rings on more recent phones.

Re:My uncool, simple phone

[johnny6vasquez]

Nice, I bought two v180s for the same reasons.

Two so that one always has a charged battery and I have an abundance of parts to cannibalize. When I have guests (this is a dangerous place to live and a cellphone is needed) I buy a cheap card and give them the phone for the duration of the visit.

A nice thing about the v180 is that it is still current enough to be found in some stores. There is also a USB port on the phone that doesn't require an over-priced proprietary cable. Any standard mini-USB will work, although at the phone shop they try and sell you a "special" motorola cable for $50.

The only complaint I have is the horrid PC software for uploading and backing up to your phone via USB. Proprietary motorola garbage. Check this out, installing it on a machine without an internet connect will hose your windows install. It only works on PCs connected to the internet so it can get updates from moto.

Anyone know of and OSS (linux?) software to connect to these v180s?

Useful VS flashy

[phorm]

Well, I for one welcome 'useful' features on my phone, so long as they don't compromise the usability or quality of the primary function (to be a phone).

The last thing I need it to be is an mp3-player and/or TV and further drain my battery. Ringtones I'm somewhat in-between with... the nice thing about polyphonics is at least you can tell your phone apart from others of the same make (it was quite annoying back in the day when you'd have 3 people with the same ringer).

Other features do come in useful for me as well... but aren't 100% necessary. The ability to stick calendar items and/or up to 3 alarm ringers is great. My phone travels with me almost everywhere, so on the go it's my alarm clock, and my reminder when I might otherwise miss an important event. Not a necessary phone, but a convenient one, and ones that make more sense than video games, television, or other such things (the mp3 player I could see being semi-convenient for those times when I decide to run off for a random bit of exercise, etc, but it's just also a battery drain).

Marketing gone mad

[WoodstockJeff]

Yep, it's just a case of marketing getting what it wants to sell, rather than customers getting what they want to buy.

Personally, I don't want text messaging, so I don't pay for it... but, then again, I do, because Sprint won't turn it off, so people send me text messages at a cost of $0.10 each, because I don't have a "text messaging plan". And they charge that even when it's a spam message. Then only control I have over TM is whether or not I send one - there's no control over whether or not I get them.

I don't want to browse internet via the phone, but they decided I needed to have IP services enabled, so they can send me software updates... to improve the browsing and text messaging capabilities I don't want, and potentially allow a virus in. Sunday at 0000 CDT, my phone started bleeping at me. When it starts making noise at that time of night, it damn well better be because someone needs immediate assistance.... but, no, it was telling me about the latest TM update, which I wasn't asked if I wanted until after it installed it.

When I eventually need to replace my old phone, I'll be hard-pressed to find a phone. They don't sell those anymore, for the most part. Lots of things with phone features, but no phones...

Re:Marketing gone mad

[miro f]

look for the nokia 3320... I'm sure you can find it somewhere...

Re:Marketing gone mad

[trickonion]

Sprint will in fact turn off text messaging if you ask (just call). And you can enable net guard to disable vision, the updates however I have no solution for.

Re:Marketing gone mad

[Alain Williams]

so people send me text messages at a cost of $0.10 each

What ? You pay to received text messages !!!

I had heard that the phone companies in the USA were bad, but did not realise that they were that bad. Europe seems better - but stay away from vodafone who's customer service is crap.

Re:Marketing gone mad

[Browncoat]

Sprint's just taking your money, isn't it? I'm in a similar predicament...sort of. I'm paying a for internet access on my phone, and for some reason or another the service doesn't work at college. I guess the towers just don't allow for it. But it works fine at home, near Washington D.C. So my problem is, is it even worth it to have a service like this if I can't even use it where I am 8 months out of the year? I think it's a pretty crappy thing, and I'm considering cancelling the service, but the only thing pulling me back is that I use the service when I am at home, and it's a heck of a lot easier to check movie times online than it is to call the theater and go through button pushing and automated messaging telling me how to get to their theater and the great popcorn that costs an arm and a leg.

Nokia 1600

[hotzeyboy]

I have a (gsm) nokia 1600 .

It is probably the best mobile phone I have ever owned, for the following reasons:
-It was cheap AU$99 outright,probably cheaper now, I don't worry too much about dropping or breaking it.
-It has a nice colourful display that is easy to read.
-It has a reasonable form factor, not tiny and not huge, not heavy and not too light.
-It can send sms.
-It can make phone calls.
-It has a digital clock.
-It can remember important dates and meetings.
-The battery lasts *for ever* with the right settings. I find myself recharging it less than once a week.
-Even my mother can use the interface.

It does have a few negatives
-The keys feel a bit cheap
-Ocasionally when I go on a train(subway), it loses its connection with vodafone, and I have to turn it off and on. (Probably a firmware bug)
-Cannot add ringtones/skins/java games (who cares?)
-The default settings use more battery than is neccesary
I have owned phones before that were crammed with features (NGAGE anyone?) and I was never as happy with them as I am with this phone. The complete lack of advanced features is it's greatest strength.

Re:Nokia 1600

[Anonymous Coward]

>Ocasionally when I go on a train(subway), it loses its connection with vodafone, and I have to turn it off and on. (Probably a firmware bug)

As somebody who works for Nokia Networks, I can tell you that 99 / 100 times this kind of behaviour happens due to lack of network coverage, not due to any bugs in the mobile.

Re:Nokia 1600

[hotzeyboy]

Well to explain further, its not that I lose the connection when I am underground, because I expect that.
But sometimes even after the trainride, the connection does not come back up, unless I restart the phone.

Generation?

[Council]

Yes, it's a whole new generation of customers since ages ago, in 2003.

Seriously, I want a phone that dials numbers and lets me talk to people. It should ring, vibrate, and tell me when I missed some calls. I can actually see the utility in having a camera in it as well, but that's just because I feel the need to carry some kind of camera with me and it's either that or as a separate keychain device.

For the other stuff, I will use an ultraportable laptop/PDA.

That's because they do it badly.

[FlynnMP3]

Poeple wouldn't mind so much if it did all those things well. As it is now, the extra functions are merely toys and hardly funtional. In a lot of cases, businesses are putting the cabash on these picture phones. Theatures don't want picture phones either. Though I believe that's just paranoia since the so called quality of the pictures from a phone are dubious at best in such low lighting conditions.

If any cell phone makers are reading, here is my request: Make a phone that has an excellent PIM with multiple (at least 4) numbers and emails for contacts, with multiple addresses (at least 3) that is accessable from any mode of operation on the phone. Also let us manage rings in such a way that we can program it based on a calendar. Either repeating daily, weekly, monthly, you get the idea. Give the ability to have complete control over the ring. In addition, every cell phone maker should put in the ability to lock the outside buttons to not respond when desired. You know, for those times you have the phone in your pocket or in a less than ideal location (not on the hip clip like most think we need to have).

Thanks.
Yours Truly,

A frustrated cell phone owner.

Re:That's because they do it badly.

[ItsIllak]

Seriously - have you looked for such a phone? The Windows Mobile based devices have contact databases that are very much like Windows Outlook. Many addresses - many phone numbers, dates of birth, etc.etc.etc... Of course, for a few generations of phones they've been improving in this regard - just don't try to save names to your SIM (and make sure you can sync it with your favourite desktop PIM!)

See the Fish

Re:That's because they do it badly.

[DingerX]

actually, most phones have a keyboard lock feature. They usually involve pressing a sequence of keys. Although, the last candybar phone I had (cough siemens) decided that a sequence of keys was too complicated, and made it one key, the # key sitting in the corner. Pure genius. I'd walk into work, and find my boss had been on the phone with me for five minutes.

Thinking more about this topic, the fundamental problem is clear from the article itself. The debate is between Cell phone manufacturers and service providers, not between those two and the consumer. The question that's being asked is "How can the manufacturers make these services more appealing so our consumers will use them more?" What's ignored is that a good deal (but alas, not all) of the interface problems caused by these "next-gen" wonders are due to requirements of service providers.

A phone with bluetooth? Okay, but better put in a way that we can prevent users from downloading pictures directly to their computer. They need to pay by the kilobyte to send it through the mobile phone network.

Internet Access at 1 cent/kilobyte? Great! But let's make sure they use it -- wire that spare button on the keyboard to automatically load the browser; and set the homepage to our 50kb site!

Oh, and ringtones! Yes! Ringtones! Can we get that with double-dawg DRM?

Re:That's because they do it badly.

[FlynnMP3]

I know phones exist that nearly duplicate outlook-like PIM functionality. I own one, hello blackberry. I also know there are at least a couple phones that have the ability to schedule ringer changes (loud and vibrate for example) on a daily basis.

The problem is not one phone exists that has both and not all that extra crap: photo, music, internet, etc. All I want, and I suspect I am not the only one, is a phone with plenty of storage to store contact information in these you-can-reach-me-at-these-5-different-numbers age and ringtone scheduling. I don't need a freaking convergence device that marketing folk screw up and repeatedly dole out mis-functional features like they are dog biscuits.

Capitalism at it's finest. /sarcasm

Re:That's because they do it badly.

[magicchex]

I agree with the keyboard lock feature.. as a matter of fact, I don't remember any phone in the last 5 years that I've seen without that feature.

Moreso, I definitely agree with your comment on manufacturers versus providers. As I mention in an earlier post in this discussion, the differences between Verizon and T-mobile service on a Motorola Razr are extreme. They range from an approximate x10 difference in menu loading time to differences in customizability to certain features being available but completely disabled. Your best bet is to look to your provider before complaining to your manufacturer.

It's nice to see people noticing

[Jason1729]

I'm still using my 5 year old Nokia 5100. I do like the look of the tiny clam shell phones, but they're too bloated with crappy features to be usable. There's no phone on the market now I've seen that I'd trade my old nokia for.

Re:It's nice to see people noticing

[masdog]

Man, those things could stand up to punishment. The 5100 series bricks could be dropped, dunked, sunk, and even smashed off of a concrete wall without problems. What I wouldn't give for a phone like that again.

Re:It's nice to see people noticing

[Jason1729]

Definately. Mine's been dropped from ear-level to concrete several times and it's still working perfectly. I also tend do just throw it in my backpack with no case. The new phones look so fragile, and there's always talk of models with micro hard drives. Cell phones should durable enough to have with you all the time.

feature creep

[alfs boner]

Didn't Motorola CEO get kicked out because he said, in essence: "concentrate on quality that's obviously suffering right now, and not race for features"?

I think in the current market there is always race for features. More, more more and more. Until some complaint gets too loud and bites the company in the ass. Then fixing it becomes a future as well ("Our dialer is now better than ever").

I found it interesting how Microsoft acted back in the day. They bloated their software with features, many many features, to beat the feature list of the competitor. Well, so what that it crashed constantly, so what that it didn't do the job that well. (sarcasm). For some reason, it's still around...

That's what my computer's for.

[vethia]

The worst part is that even the older-model, simpler cellphones are no longer an option because they can't be used with new types of service. I had an older Motorola flip phone that sent and received calls and the occasional text message through a simple, green-screen menu interface. No games, no Internet, certainly no camera. It was great, but when my contract was up for renewal, AT&T told me I had to get a new phone in order to continue using their service; one with GSM(?) capability. Naturally, all of the phones capable of performing with the new system were full of gadgets and applications that were no more than unnecessary clutter. They didn't even come with a simple telephone-style ring. I hated every one of them, and when my contract expired again, I didn't bother renewing.

Sure, I live in America, and the consumer model here seems to be "more is more"--but if the companies gave it a shot, I think they'd find a lot of people who are happier with simpler devices, and not just the technologically challenged. I'm a geek, but I don't need a cellphone to browse the internet and play music. That's what my computer's for.

Cingular has an undelete command for this case

[linuxrocks123]

I am familiar with the Cingular voice mail service you are describing. If you press '7' one too many times, immediately press '*' (I think; the friendly computer voice tells you if you stay on the line) to undelete the message you just deleted. Don't hang up or press any other buttons, because you only have that one shot at undeletion.

I'm sorry you weren't familiar with this at the time, and I hope this helps in the future.

By the way, I'd be suspicious if a phone company implemented a "feature" that involves routinely keeping backup copies of all its customers' deleted voice mails indefinitely. Is that really what you want?

Re:Cingular has an undelete command for this case

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be suspicious if a phone company implemented a "feature" that involves routinely keeping backup copies of all its customers' deleted voice mails indefinitely. Is that really what you want?

no, no, I just want the ones that I delete by accident.

I'm the Opposite

[DavidD_CA]

Why can't I buy a device that has freakin' everything? I'm serious, too.

I want it to be a phone first, PDA second, and all the extras right after that. I want MP3s, FM radio, a decent camera (not a 5MP Nikon, but certainly not the crappy one I have now), bluetooth, WiFi, VoIP, and Windows Mobile 5.

Is that too much to ask?

Re:I'm the Opposite

[DingerX]

Yes, yes it is too much to ask. Convergence is a myth, get over it.

What you want is a tablet PC with a GSM card and a bluetooth headset.

Re:I'm the Opposite

[Justin205]

You can get most of that, if you're willing to sacrifice battery life. One of the HP smartphones or perhaps the Treo 700w do most of those things you mentioned, minus (as far as I know) the FM radio, and perhaps the decent camera (depending on how good you want it to be).

Personally I'd be happy if I could get a phone with a monochrome screen (don't need colour), Bluetooth (for connecting to my Palm T|X where I keep most important data), and very long battery life. Skip the camera, the web browsing, the downloading of extra things I don't need, the games, and even skip the text messaging. Just give me a phone, Bluetooth, and a damn good battery.

Re:I'm the Opposite

[foniksonik]

Just move to Japan... as long as you don't mind living in a 10 x 6 'apartment' you should be in heaven! ;-p

Re:I'm the Opposite

[xiangpeng]

Nope, you're not asking for too much :) I am currently using a Nokia N91, which has a 4gb hdd, FM radio, decent 2mp camera, bluetooth, Wifi running on Symbian s60 3rd Ed. Prior to the N91, I use to carry around a RAZR and a 4gb Nano.

The main reason I switched over to the N91 is convergence. I wanna free my pockets of multi devices when I am travelling to work, without the hassle of finding all the devices to bring out everyday and having to dedicate more than 2 wall sockets to charging all my devices everyday(USB chargers don't count :).

Re:I'm the Opposite

[Troed]

and Windows Mobile 5
...
Is that too much to ask?

Yes. I thought you wanted something that's a phone FIRST? If so - have a look at the offerings from Sony Ericsson or Nokia.

Re:I'm the Opposite

[PrivateDonut]

I don't think we have batteries that can do all that for a day yet...

Re:I'm the Opposite

[Vlastyn]

my tmobile mda offers all of this except for the fm radio & voip(uncertain)
check it out

Re:I'm the Opposite

[OlivierB]

Sounds like you're in the market for a Nokia 6310i
These babies were first introduced about 4 years ago. They have all the features that you've asked for. As illustration for this article you will see that on ebay (at least here in the UK) they command a respectable preium over much newer feature laden phones.

Re:I'm the Opposite

[nuckin futs]

What you want is a tablet PC with a GSM card and a bluetooth headset.

a tablet PC? how big do you think his pocket is?
seriously, we have the technology, it's just a matter of some company (maybe Apple) doing it right to make it all work.

Re:I'm the Opposite

[dunkelfalke]

except of fm radio here you are

Re:I'm the Opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehe. I thought so too.

So one day I was walking down the street listening to mp3:s in my shiny Qtek 9100 and suddenly it goes dead. Well, turns out battery time while playing mp3:s aren't that good (don't know exactly how long, an hour?).

Ok, no more music for me... I can live with that. But then I realized that suddenly _because I had listened to music_ I had no working phone no longer. And that is just not acceptable.

When I came home I also found that I only had my USB-cable with me for recharging... and guess what... that doesn't work when the battery is completely drained.

The last bit was a bit off topic. But the rest made me think that perhaps I really want to categories gadgets and features into "nice to have" and "necessary to have" and make sure that these two are always powered by different devices.

Re:I'm the Opposite

[The Cydonian]

Can't help with Windows Mobile, but Nokia N90 comes close to your needs. Just replace the default Mini-MMC card with a 1 gig version like I did. Battery life is decent; I usually re-charge every three days or so with some 2-3 hours of mp3's and a couple of calls daily. Noticed, though, that the battery life is much worse if I put it in my pocket; apparently, the screen still lights up even if I lock the numeric keypad.

just the basics

[alphafoo]

About a year ago I was talking with an engineer from Kyocera's cell phone group and I told him, hey, I would love to have just the simplest of simple phones. It's shaped like a little pencil and has no keypad-- you just twist it to dial one of your presets. Little LED status display running up the side. Syncs with the address book. No browser, no IM, no SMS, no Java games, no calendar, no address book, no MP3 player, no photo/movie viewer. And for the love of all that is good in this world, no crappy camera that takes grainy photos that make it look like it's 1867. This device would just receive calls and allow me to easily contact a handful of people. Small, light, fits in any pocket. Does what I want most of the time. 80/20 rule.

"We could build that, but I'm telling you, nobody wants that," he said. Well, I want it.

Would you want it?

Re:just the basics

[NormalVisual]

Awesome idea. Hey Kyocera - I'd sign on too. A phone with that kind of form factor would be a lot easier to carry around than having something stuck to my belt or being an uncomfortable brick in my pocket. Stick a USB port on the end so you can plug it directly into your PC to sync it, and it's pretty much a perfect product.

Re:just the basics

[Dr. Ion]

You almost understood him correctly. The full answer is
"I'm telling you, no CARRIER (network provider) wants that".

And that, alphafoo, is who Kyocera sells phones to. Did you buy your phone from Kyocera? No, you did not. You bought it from Sprint, or Cingular, or Verizon..

Of course you want it, but.. Do they want you to have a simple phone that does nothing but make calls and talk on the phone? Of course not. There's no "value add" or "ARPU" upsell there..

Think about it.

Re:just the basics

[alienmole]

I would buy one of those on one condition: that there was some reasonably convenient way to dial numbers other than the presets. Either support using the twister to enter numbers, or have it use voice recognition, which is probably good enough for dialing phone numbers.

Re:just the basics

[Jack Schitt]

I only have one additional feature to your phone if I were to have it. Yes it does detract slightly from the absolute definition of minimalist (which, btw, would be to go WITHOUT a phone), but I still want to keep it within the realm of 'phone':

Don't eliminate the dial pad.

Why?

Say you get a voicemail: 'Dude, the server's down and it took the pbx with it. Call me at $some_other_number asap.'

A phone should always have all of the following features:
Microphone (other party can hear you)
Speaker (you can hear other party)
Dial pad (you can call other party)
Some means of answering the phone (duh)
Some means of disconnecting (duh, possibly same button as above)
Some indicator of an incoming call (audible/visual/tactile)

Additionally recommended features:
Display (see who you're calling, what numbers you've entered, etc)
Contact list (attach names to numbers)
Clock (see what time/date it is [most commonly used non-network specific feature])

This is the phone I want to see listed as the $29.99 phone that comes free with either a prepaid account or most service plans.

You need sms? Call the service provided 800 number for that.
You need a camera? Buy a camera.
You need bluetooth? Why?
Headset? Speaker has headphone jack.
MP3? iPod.
You need the most possible features to one-up your neighbor? Buy a Treo
The trendiest phone? Buy a Razr.
You need additional features later? You got it. The software is stored in a removable chip (similar in style to a SIM card).

Form factor similar to a pencil.

This phone features:
Intuitive ring-o-buttons for your dialing pleasure (three rows of four buttons wrapped around the device, a small space at the end of each row for dialing without looking. Must be able to orient the device without looking [place the buttons near one end of the device]).
B&W Micro lcd display along half the length for assistance with contact list, clock, numbers entered, etc.
Single button for answer, hang up, power.
Double click (press twice) the power button to lock/unlock all buttons (prevent accidental dialing.
Speaker at top, mic at bottom. Headset jack on end near speaker, ballpoint insert at other end.
4-pin usb port for software update, backup number, programming, etc.
Runs on 4 AAA batteries.
Powers on/off in 3 seconds.
Non-programmable ringer (generic, while still somewhat unique, single sine wave beeps).
Ringer volume: On, Off (Vibrate can be separately turned on/off)

Re:just the basics

[Fire Dragon]

Syncs with the address book. No browser, no IM, no SMS, no Java games, no calendar, no address book, no MP3 player, no photo/movie viewer.

No wonder mobile companies cannot come with phones that meet the needs of their customers.

Re:just the basics

[magicchex]

First off, I'm a 21 year old college student, for what that's worth, but...

Text messaging is a NECESSITY! For all the talk I hear about text messaging not being big in the US, I don't know a single person who doesn't text message and in many cases, we text message much more than we call. I used to go over my 1000 messages per month plan quite often. If I had to choose one feature outside of calling for my phone to have, it would, without a doubt, be text messaging. I think many people would agree with me.

Battery life

[staticdaze]

The issue to me is energy usage. Songs, animations, fancy ringtones, and increasingly more involved games are simply a waste of battery for a phone. I want a phone to make calls and have basic features like directory for my contacts and a reasonable text messaging interface. Which is why I still have and like my Nokia 3360. I turn my phone off while I sleep, and only have to charge the battery about once a week. Contrast this to my wife's phone, which, while visually appealing, needs to be in the charging cradle once every night or two, despite similar talktime to mine.

Different people have different usage patterns. For me, I just like knowing that I have enough battery to make a call when I need to, combined with low maintenance. But then I'm the lazy type.

Actually...

[X86Daddy]

The new generation of US consumers? More like the old generation. In my office, it's always the 50+ crowd making the lame old joke "I'd just like a phone that can dial numbers and make voice calls real good," and "I don't need any of this new-fangled crap." Then they spend time complaining about cell-towers or another unrelated topic. A few years ago, the same people complained about show quality when the topic of HDTV used to come up. There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding that totally different companies are making handsets/tvs from the people doing things like network rollouts/show scripts. Either that or they just have a natural tendency at being crotchety. I expect to see this trend in behavior forever, until I'm the one exhibiting it. :-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I've been griping about this for years...

[SmoothTom]

...but instead of seeing ever more reliable, rugged, and functional portable phones, my carrier insists on delivering ever more complex devices that still don't do their primary function (being a phone) any better than cellphones five or more years old.

I even wrote in my blog about this last year.

Re:I've been griping about this for years...

[Tim Browse]

I even wrote in my blog about this last year.

And your carrier still hasn't done anything about it?!

What did the police say?

Where does complexity lead?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

What happens when you put a device full of complex, half-debugged network-facing code onto the Internet?

Unless the OS does a brilliant job of sandboxing the apps, you have a security nightmare.

More features = okay.

[J-1000]

I have no problem with more features, and regardless of satisfaction surveys, going with less features is probably not the answer. Take, for instance, the fact that there are plenty of outdated basic phones available that people skip on because they want something the new phones have. People don't want less, they just want to be able to use what they have. Forget metaphors, forget operating systems, just identify what the user wants most and prioritize.

There are a few things that I'd like to see that might already exist:
- The phone should always be ready for you to start dialing (unless you are editing a field).
- The most commonly used features should have clearly labeled dedicated buttons with one and only one function.
- The call log should always be available at the touch of a single button.
- The address book should always be available at the touch of a single button. None of this hold-down-the-button shortcut nonsense though.
- A camera phone should take a picture instantly with the press of one button. The LCD preview isn't always necessary, so using it should require a total of two button presses.
- Sending pictures should take priority. In addition to a nice transfer interface, internet phones should allow you to email yourself any photo you take immediately after you take it, with only one or two button presses.

So if you haven't figured it out yet, my ideal phone (a phone for someone like my dad) needs at least four dedicated buttons for the most common features (besides the talk/hangup buttons and numbers): Call log, address book, camera shutter, camera LCD preview. I realize many phones have these buttons but they add confusion by being dual use and poorly labeled (if at all). It's time to start adding morebuttons if you ask me. Layout matters too. With the exception of the shutter button, aligning these buttons side by side (like the 2nd generation iPod) would be ideal, but probably wouldn't make the most fashion sense.

Re:More features = okay.

[magicchex]

I have a Razr with T-mobile service and although your request may not have been default, the combination of the phone with the open service allows me to customize my phone to meet all your specifications. I can edit my keypad buttons (for instance, the T-zones button now opens Opera, which works even though I only pay $6/month for "t-zones" service). All other features are basically bindable to any non-numeric key. The unlimited messaging I have ($10 for unlimited messaging on 3 seperate lines) allows me to send as many text and picture messages as I want, including emails.

Re:More features = okay.

[masdog]

More features isn't the answer. The answer is cell companies providing a breadth of phones so everyone can get something close to what they want.

For example, I prefer a phone with IR so I can offload all my numbers into my PDA. But I don't need a camera, wireless web, the ability to check my email, or play MP3s.

I know, its slash-blasphemy. But I also invested a ton in digital cameras, a PDA, a laptop, and an iPod. I don't need one more gadget to replace them all.

T-mobile has an "Undelete" feature

[All Your Name Are Be]

T-mobile has a handy "Undelete" feature for people like you.

Biased group?

[wile_e_wonka]

I don't know if the group that posts on /. is biased or if this is a good representation of our population as a whole. But I am noticing that--by far--Slashdot posters want a simple phone. Myself included. What's up with these companies then? It's like the employees don't use phones.

I didn't RTFA, but I read a similar article on Wired this morning. That one mentioned that the reason cell phone companies started making it so you have no choice but to buy a phone with all of this crap is because the companies are hoping that you'll use it. The problem with a simple phone is that you can't possibly use these extra services that cost extra money. So they don't make that simple phone available to you. Instead they sell you a phone that has all these stupid features. So maybe you won't use the features--but you have them, so you might. If you don't have the features then you won't. It's no loss to them if they sell you a fancier phone than you need. But it would be bad for them to allow you to buy a phone that boxes you into a position where you can't use the extra features.

However--I think they've got it all wrong. And these Slashdot comments show that. There really is a market out there for simple basic phones! WILL SOMEONE PLEASE FILL THAT HOLE?!?!

Re:Biased group?

[Anonymous Coward]

These companies, against all empirical evidence, hope that by placing "Mobile Web" buttons, "download ringtone" buttons, music playing and downloading, buy "Brickout" buttons, and "send picture|movie|text message|email" buttons all over the phone, such that they intrude in every basic phone operation, eventually you'll give up and finally download that low-bitrate song for $3, or rack up $30 worth of internet browsing charges trying to figure out how to lookup movie times on some affiliate's "mobile web" site, or spend another $3 on a ringtone that sounds like someone playing Yankee Doodle on a kazoo. If nothing else, they hope that you'll accidentally activate one of these "features" so they can charge you for it. Plus, there's no incentive for them not to do this.

Or by making it so complicated, or even impossible, to transfer data off your phone that you'll finally just throw up your arms in disgust and pay $0.75 to send that tiny, grainy, blurry picture to yourself in an email.

This has almost nothing to do with what the customer wants. It has a great deal to do with what cell phone companies wish you would do.

So...

Cameras are built in to cell phones so that you'll pay the cell phone company some outrageous fee to transmit that picture to yourself or someone else, not because most people like taking pictures with their phones.

Video downloads are available so you'll pay ridiculous video service, data, and/or airtime charges, not because most people like watching animated postage stamps.

Mobile web interfaces intrude everywhere so that you'll accidentally turn on the browser and pay stratospheric per-byte transfer charges, not because any sane person likes squinting at a bad caricature of a web page trying to figure out how the hell to find anything useful.

And so on.

I hope that helps clarify your question: "what's up with these companies?"

In my opinion, a big part of the problem stems from the fact that in the United States, the cellular carriers can (and do) dictate which models of phone you can buy, which features will be on those phones, and that you can only buy those phones directly from them. So, for example, a Motokia 1234 will only work with Springular if you buy it from Springular, and Veri-Mobile won't then let you use that Springular phone on the Veri-Mobile network -- the names are phony, but you get the idea. Then the providers all but force you to sign multi-year lock-in contracts, so you can't effectively tell the provider to shove it when they try to screw you.

For those in the know there are sometimes ways around this, but most people don't have the time, or even realize it's possible, to figure out ways around these issues. Then the cellular companies have little or no real competition, but do have guaranteed revenue and no real reason to do the right thing with added "feature" services, phones, rate plans, or anything else.

So, in my opinion, the best way to start solving the crappy phone problem is to take control of the phones away from phone companies -- does anyone else around here remember when you could only use ATT POTS telephones, and what happened when you could use any phone? -- and break the mandatory contractual lock-in provisions of cell phone agreements.

Of course this would, literally, take an act of Congress and this isn't a Congress that seems to care much about the problems that affect real people. My only cynical hope is that some endangered congressman up for re-election will see it as an opportunity for some hometown political grandstanding...but I'm not counting on it.

Re:Biased group?

[coffeechica]

It's representative. Or at least, it matches the central European cell phone users. I was part of a marketing research project for T-Mobile at the beginning of the year, and I'm working on a similiar project with Telekom Austria right now. The users don't care about the "features". We're looking at user groups, and essentially almost 50% only use the phone for calls (including services like phone books, caller lists and other directly call-related services). Another 15% only use SMS in addition. If you include those who use some of the smaller functions like alarm clocks or calculators, you get up to over 80% of users. The services the providers want to sell are usually used by less than 5% of private users and less than 10% of business users.

We did a field experiment where we made users show us how to use features like the camera or the internet services. It was painful to watch.

Re:Biased group?

[Anonymous Coward]

you can buy a simple phone from most carriers. oh the horror it has a color screen... and..and.. ringtones!! god, get a grip.

Re:Biased group?

[wile_e_wonka]

Oh? I never use SMS, and one thing that really bothers me is when I get a spam SMS message and have to pay for it because someone sent it to me.

Show me a phone that a major carrier is selling that doesn't have SMS capabilities.

Here's sprint PCS's cheapest available phone (I'm not sure that link will work). It has SMS. That's my current carrier. I bought the cheapest phone available from them three years ago, and even it does text messaging. (No, color screens don't bother me. The stupid ring tones do though. Why can't phones have normal ringers anymore?)

Good cellphone UI's

[jesterzog]

with some of the largest drops linked to user interface for Internet and e-mail services.

While we're on the topic, which phones would people recommend for having good user interfaces?

I'm on my second phone in about the past six years, and in both cases I've gone for the cheapest one on the shelf -- which in both cases has been a bottom-of-the-line Alcatel. Both have gotten the job done (I'm on a prepay plan and mostly just carry a phone so people can contact me, and sometimes for SMS), but I've found the UI of both phones to be horrendous for anything beyond talking on them. I'm not too surprised by this given what I paid, but I've been reluctant to spend more on anything better because from what I've seen of other people's feature-packed phones, a lot of companies simply don't put a lot of thought into designing helpful user interfaces.

The worst examples I've found have been with SMS, but only because I don't bother even trying to use my phone for anything more advanced. Sending an SMS message from my cheap Alcatel requires 13 actions! This doesn't include keying in the message, and it doesn't include scrolling through the directory to find the recipient. It does involve indicating that I want to send a message, followed by a string of confirming and re-confirming the person I want to send it to, before finally confirming that I still want to send it. To top it off, a couple of these actions have waits of several seconds while the phone goes to do some searching through various databases that shouldn't really be necessary.

The phone also has a limit of 20 SMS messages (which I think is standard for the SIM card it's storing it on). This would be understandable, but it's next to impossible to delete them efficiently to make space for more. It's only possible to delete one message at a time, and doing so takes 9 actions and a lot of waiting in between several of them.

So far I've been a cheapskate and I doubt I'm an ideal customer for the phone companies, but I'll quite happily pay for something if I'm convinced it'll be more useful than what I have. If anyone can suggest phones they've encountered that have good and well thought through UI's, rather than just packing the phones with impossible to use features, I'd love to hear about them.

Re:Good cellphone UI's

[stunt_penguin]

Three simple words : Sony Erriccson P910

Link

I've been using the P910 for nearly two years and there is no other phone or device that I wold swap it for, apart from it's successors. Forget the teeny keyboard on the inside of the flip (though they market that one really hard), the ease of use factor comes from the touch-screen interface that you get when you open the display. There's a set of icons across the top for the main fucntions and a list of all the installed applcications. For messaging and email you can have the screen display a (stylus recommended) touchscreen QWERTY keyboard on for the fast composition of texts and notes. Actually I think the phone companies might love that one as it becomes easy to type a long, 3-part text instead of scrawling off 'OK C U L8R'. It also does handwriting recognition really well, though that's hard to do on trains and busses so I tend to ignore it

I used to keep my web design portfolio on the phone in the images folder until I got a PSP (damn I'm such a sony bitch). For business the phone will read Word files, PDFs and Excel spreadsheets, as well as browse normal web pages via GPRS (you might wanna turn off the images though, given GPRS prices.

There are a few quirks to the interface, but really I can't complain too much. Touchscreen is the way that all 'smartphones' need to go if they;re going to pack in that many features. Using an interface designed for communication and media stuff with a teeny joystick and 2 buttons is a pain in the ass and will always be crap (at least until apple release a phone with their iPod scrollwheel and everyone goes 'ooh wish I though of that').

The interface works really well as a straightforward phone when you have the phone closed, and you can customise the menu that appears when you use the phone in closed mode (for example, I put the sound recorder on the main menu for making quick dictaphone-style notes)

Re:Good cellphone UI's

[magicchex]

I have a Razr and I love the UI as well as everything else. Unlike other providers, T-mobile, who I have, leaves their phones completely open and I have been able to customize the menus and keypad on my phone to do exactly what I want. This level of customization is something I definitely seek out when phone-shopping (my last phone was a Motorola A630) and they tend to be Motorolas. Verizon, even though they're a service provider, requires their phones to be so crippled that the Verizon Razr is horrendous compared to the T-mobile unit. Keep that in mind.

Re:Good cellphone UI's

[BenjyD]

The P910 has been a big success. I was at the Smartphone Conference in London last year and virtually everyone there had a P910.

Re:Good cellphone UI's

[stunt_penguin]

Oh? Heh cool, good to know my perception is shared (which is why we all come to /. no? ;) ). I have only seen a few people (all businessmen) using P-series phones and they all love them. Most people who see my phone go 'huh, what a brick' then go oooOOOOoooh when I open it and start tapping out messages on the verty (my incredibly annoying made-up-just-now term for the virtual qwerty keyboard).

The few things that annoy me about the P910 are things like the fact that the 'save and return to inbox without sending' and the 'send' buttons are right beside each other, so you can sometimes send a draft message, or tap to send and end up back in the inbox. Also, the music player is a bit pants, though i don't use the phone for serious music playing. Those aren't fundamental flaws though, my only worry now is affording whatever comes along and is actually *better* than my P910 :o|

I'd really like to see what Apple could do with a touchscreen phone interface though, I think it could be amazing.

anecdotal exception

[kie]

not in my case, I have finally found a phone that I am happy with,

the Motorola A732 which has my two most desired features:

-1- hand-written chinese traditional character recognition using your finger
that actually works well. Writing Chinese SMS text messages is really useful in HK.
-2- it's very compact

although I would agree with simplicity being a good thing since I don't use most
of the other numerous features of the phone (i probably only use the
address book, alarm clock and chinese/english dictionary.)

I like my sidekick

[All Your Name Are Be]

I guess i'm not the average joe, but i have gotten a good amount of enjoyment out of my sidekick. I've always thought things like calendars and even cameras were unessicary features, but i do like the idea of a 'portable modem' or 'network hole' as i like to call it. To me it makes perfect sense to have email and internet access on something thats already connecting to 'the network'. In my ideal portable world i'd have 2 devices, a network device (cellphone) and a storage device (ipod). An organizational device (pda) and capture device (camera/microphone) would be 2 other possible devices, but those unfortunately are pretty easy to integrate into the first 2, and while it might be nice (if insecure) to have these 4 devices in a PAN, now that i think about it carying 4 little boxes around does seem a bit strange when they could all be in one.

Theres a simple reason

[EEPROMS]

The reason mobile phone makers (hardware makers in general are the same), dont like selling products with less features at a lower per unit price are two fold.

1. harder for sales people to sell a product with the moto "hai its got less features"

2. Companies don't like reducing the per unit average cost of phones, because this also means you reduce your gross income.

Say I sell 200 full feature telephones @ $150 per unit, to get the same return on a cheap phone at $25 per unit means I have to sell 7X more phones to get the same gross(no not a math error read on).

Ok you say but you going to sell more phones, true but not 7X more and the cost of selling phones, doesnt vary that much per unit, so my costs are the same but I have a lower per unit price so my margins are even lower.

So unless you can think of a way of fixing the above problem were all stuck with this mess.

Re:Theres a simple reason

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

1. harder for sales people to sell a product with the moto "hai its got less features"

* It'll be lighter and smaller -- you didn't think those megapixels are weightless, did you?
* It'll have a longer battery life (or an even smaller battery)

2. Companies don't like reducing the per unit average cost of phones, because this also means you reduce your gross income.

Those are real features I described, features I'm ready to pay for.

Utilitarian Cellphones?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Mill is rolling over in his grave from this use of the term.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Arker]

It is a rip off here in the US, yes. Unbelievable.

In Europe, you can get decent deals, however. Your prepaid service has a good shelf life, unlike here where you simply MUST buy more minutes every month or they cut you off. You don't get charged for receiving calls (caller pays) and in fact with the service I had you actually got a (very) small kickback when someone called you. The prices were reasonable, and I would prepay roughly $60 and not need to worry about it again for 6 months.

When I came back to the US, I went to try and get service and it was an absolute nightmare. They don't want to just sell you bloody phone service, they want to give you a 'free' (read paid for by you, in the fine print, of course) phone that was loaded with all this crap I don't care about, making it far more complex than it needs to be, they want you to pay at least $60-75 every month, and they're very pushy about it. Even after politing refusing this over and over again and finally getting the simple phone service that I wanted, it's $20 a pop, there are connection fees and charges for receiving calls and every sneaky hidden gotcha in the book. That $20 lasts me barely a week, so when all the crap is added up it turns out to be TWELVE times as expensive as the service I was used to. And on top of that, of course, coverage SUCKS. And when I'm in an area with no coverage at all for a few weeks, I come back, and find that my prepaid phone, with a positive balance, has been turned off - apparently because one is required to add money every month whether you're using it or not, or else you lose it.

This was with T-Mobile, who were reputed to have by far the best coverage in the area I was in, by the way. If the others are worse, I don't understand how they stay in business at all.

So I've just packed my phone away. The cellular companies in this company, apparently, aren't interested in offering simple telephone service at a reasonable price. Until they are, I am not interested in them.

Problem is...

[JanneM]

Problem is, manufacturers and providers are offering simple, stripped down, easy-to-use phones. And very few buy them. Just like simple, functional, easy DVD players; simple internet terminals and so on.

One problem is, simple phones aren't appreciably cheaper to produce since most of the differences lie in software, so the simple phones don't get a lot cheaper (and especially so when the phone is offered as part of a package deal).

A second problem is the lure of features. We like long lists of features, _especially_ for technology we aren't too familiar with. After all, since we aren't familiar with it, we don't know what functions will turn out to be important, so better get as much ass possible.

Third, even among us that want a simple phone, there creeps in a "that can also ...". Just look at the other comments to this story. I want a simple phone - that can also do good email, since I in practice use email more than speech. Oh, and having a radio on it is essential, so I don't have to lug around a second device. For other people, real email is pointless and radio is a waste - but they really want that integrated camera since it's such a convenient way to communicate (was it this part you wanted me to buy or was that one?). For a third person, having a Java VM for a steady supply of small games to play during their commute is critical, though they have no interest in any other function.

So, you could not make a simple telephone with mass market appeal. You would have to make a whole series of phones, all with different combinations of features. Which of course in practice means making one or two hardware designs, and selectively disable stuff in software. But then, of course, the users can simply refrain from using the features they don't want; they'r enot going to pay as much for the identical hardware but with less functionality, after all. Which brings us right back to where we are now.

On my phone, I have a web browser, music shop service, IR remote controller, OCR translation from English to Japanese, and probably a dozen other features I don't even remember. I simply don't use them, which suits me fine. It doesn't bother me that I have a set of icons I don't use, since the functions I do use - radio, email and sound player - are implemented well, and since I have them assigned on hotkeys, bypassing the need to ever delve into the interface itself.

Re:Problem is...

[japhering]

One problem is, simple phones aren't appreciably cheaper to produce since most of the differences lie in software, so the simple phones don't get a lot cheaper (and especially so when the phone is offered as part of a package deal).

[ big chunk removed ]

So, you could not make a simple telephone with mass market appeal. You would have to make a whole series of phones, all with different combinations of features. Which of course in practice means making one or two hardware designs, and selectively disable stuff in software. But then, of course, the users can simply refrain from using the features they don't want; they'r enot going to pay as much for the identical hardware but with less functionality, after all. Which brings us right back to where we are now.

Off all the things mentioned the camera is the only piece that takes additional hardware, for everything
else the existing hardware could perform the desired tasks with the addition of the appropriate software module.

So basically, you need 2 shells one with camera and one without, then everything else become a piece of software that would be choosen and loaded at time of purchase. Obvious things, like phone books and call logs would be standard.. things like sms, internet, camera, fm radio, mp3 would be additional add ons.

Not that hard to do, but would be fought against bye the Cellphone companies, because you would be able to accidently spend more by sending/recieving sms, browsing the web. And oh my, if they have to tell one of their other customers that they can't deliver and sms or email to you...

Do able, yes. Will it ever be done, not if the Cellphone companies have any say

A coincidence?

[PatTheGreat]

I gotta say...

I got Google all customized with various RSS feeds. Right on top are Wired magazine and Slashdot. And with a regularity I could set my watch by, almost every time a Wired article pops up that isn't Sex Drive or their Auto column, just a few hours later the same article pops up on Slashdot. Is there no originality in aggregators any more?

Divergence

[cryptoluddite]

I want a cell phone that:

* makes calls
* has a list of numbers
* has caller id
* has voicemail of some kind

That's it. Well there is one other thing... I want it to be a wireless USB drive. That would be so useful to be able to go to any computer and type \\myphone\ and access whatever I had put on there. Without having to plug anything in, mess with cables, go through some service, etc.

I couldn't give a rat's ass about learning how to edit word/excel documents using a tiny numeric keypad. Or watch movies on a 1" screen. Or whatever else these newfangled phones are doing these days.

Re:Divergence

[coffeechica]

Add SMS and an alarm function to that and it would be my ideal phone. I haven't used any of the other features mine has.

The providers wouldn't like this idea, of course. They want you to pay for your data transfers. If you are willing to hand over 10 euros a month, you can have all the data transfer you want. Once you pay for the flash storage and the convenience of it, of course. But they'll include that in your monthly fee so you don't have to worry about it. They're very nice that way.

Nokia 1100

[univgeek]

I don't actually use this phone. But right now, this is probably the most popular phone in India - it's dirt cheap, has a very simple UI, does nothing more than you ask (except for a LED flash-light), has good battery life, is nearly indestructible and is quite slim and small. It's also reasonably water-proof.

I think the problem in the US is the plethora of standards. If you're going with Verizon or Nextel for instance, you're severely limited in your choice of handsets. Whereas in the rest of the world, with GSM, you have a very very large number of choices.

Panasonic makes the GD55, which is one of the tiniest phones I've ever seen. For a look at what's available go to any European cellphone website, or univercell.in which is an Indian reseller of mobile phones.

Another advantage is the very large second-hand market, which means that you can get previous generation phones with a lower feature-set, dirt-cheap.

Re:Nokia 1100

[bariswheel]

the 1100 looks very good. I do have GSM/GPRS at this time. I believe I can take my sim card out and install it on any other phone. Will pursue the 1100, thanks for the tip.

Re:Nokia 1100

[Anonymous Coward]

1100 was one of the crappiest phones Nokia ever made,
if you want to go cheap, take its successor, 1101.

i work for a Nokia Service Point, we got tons of 1100 back for repair, till the point we decided not to sell it anymore.

they aren't looking for simpler devices

[penguin-collective]

If their dissatisfaction is linked to the E-mail and messaging user interfaces of their cell phones, that tells you that they are actually using those functions; if they didn't want those functions, they'd just not be using them and they wouldn't complain about their user interfaces. So, they don't want "simpler" cell phones (in the sense of cell phones with fewer functions), they want "easier to use" cell phones.

Re:they aren't looking for simpler devices

[nagora]

that tells you that they are actually using those functions

Not necessarily. They could be unhappy knowing that they ave paid for those functions. Many phone shops carry very little stock these days of basic models because there's no margin in them. Consequently, people end up buying functionality they never use and that can be annoying.

TWW

Its not the quantity of features, it's the quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not the quantity of features, it's the quality. I've just picked up a Nokia 6280. It has a 2MP camera, inlcuding a flash, low light setting and a few filters which work surprisingly well. Because of this, I no longer take my digital camera anywhere. The difference between 3.2 and 2 Megapixles in insignificant for my usage (ok I don't have optical zoom, but eh, I'm taking close ups mostly.

It also has a SDmini card socket, in which I have a 1GB card, holding a bunch of MP3's and m4a's and a reasonable music player program - Bingo! - no need for an ipod.

It's reception is as good as any other phone I have had. And it's speaker phone is the best I've experienced, loud and clear.

Drawbacks, I get at best 3days of battery life, my previous phone had 5-6.

Balanced against saving $$$ on an ipod and not having to carry around a digicam, well worth it.

Now about complications

[Strixy]

I'm crazy about anything that works as it is meant to. Be it a cell phone or a word processor. If we're going to talk about cell phones, I want a cell phone. Period. I already have a digital camera, I already have an MP3 player, I already have a laptop. I don't need nor do I want a cell phone that does any of those things half assed. I want a cell phone that sends and receives phone calls. If I want to take a picture I'll use my camera. If I want to listen to music I'll use my MP3 player. Trying to sell me an all-in-one Is like trying to sell me a half assed camera, a half assed MP3 player and a half assed phone. I don't want a half assed anything!

Give me a bomb proof cell phone that gets reception in my basement and I'll buy it. Until then, leave a message and I'll call you back.

Re:Now about complications

[shungi]

How about the complication of taking all of those things out with you to a night club? oh, wait, this is /.

Re:Now about complications

[magicchex]

Oh god do I wish I had mod points... +10000 :)

UI and ergonomics leave much to be desired

[Wansu]

I'm a big guy with big hands and big fingers. The buttons on most cell phones are too small. I often press 2 buttons instead of one. I can't read the display on some phones without my glasses.

I was recently looking for a cell phone for my 82 year old dad. I asked whether any of them came with larger keys. His hands are as big as mine and his vision is worse. Unfortunately, there aren't any cell phones made like that. He tried the LG they were giving away with the service but he couldn't deal with it.

It doesn't make any difference to him whether it has a camera or can play mp3s. He just wants a phone. For me, the csmera might be handy but not the mp3. Small size is great up to a point but when the buttons are too small, it's no longer an advantage.

Streamlined phone manufactures or models?

[abonstu]

for a long time now ive been wanting a streamlined phone that has fewer 'features' (ie. no camera, no music, no colour screen even) but has decent connectivity (ie. infrared, bluetooth, 3G data modem - for use with lappa, not using to browse directly) and *kick* *arse* battery life.

screw charging my phone every day, screw infinite flashy menus - give me something really straight forward, like the simple text menus on an ipod. a robust reliable business phone that can take a beating.

im no technophobe, but i really appreciate good tools - and i havent seen a phone in a long time that i actually *want* to buy! can anyone suggest any manufacturers who make this kind of stuff? are there any models out there that really fit this description?

Re:Streamlined phone manufactures or models?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia 5120. I've thrown mine across the room once or twice a week for the last 7 years, and it still works beautifully. And I've gotten really, really, really good at Spider.

Because that's what they're there for!

[Opportunist]

Imagine you bought a TV that can also record shows, make phone calls, plays your music CDs and all that jazz. Now imagine to get the TV to actually show a TV program, you'd have to click on your remote 'til the batteries are dead (or the show is over). Would you like that TV?

Imagine you bought a car that has built-in TV and wireless internet, an automatic navigation system with voice input and 15 different sets of lights for different conditions, but to start it, you'd first have to spend about 10 minutes to turn all the knobs into the right angle for it to start.

That's the situation with cellphones today. To actually make a phone call, on some you have to go through 3 or 4 layers of menues. Could it be that people first and foremost buy phones to actually CALL someone? Gadgets are nice and sweet, but if they get into the way of the main operation, they turn from a feature into a bug.

A recent survey here showed that about 3 of 4 people use their cells almost exclusively for calls and text messages. That's it. 75% of the people don't care about cameras, MP3s, videophone or what other oh-so-important gadgets are built into it. They want to make a phone call!

And when your cell gets into the way of making that call, it's time to throw it out the window and try to get one that's at the very least 4 years old.

I admit, I still have a Nokia 7110. Remember them? The older ones amongst you might remember them from stories told by their elders, from the times when life was still good and phone calls were what cells were about...

Re:Because that's what they're there for!

[magicchex]

What phone do you have that takes 4 layers of menus to make a call? This is an absurd claim.

Every phone out there allows you to simply start entering a number and press call (send/enter/ok/whatever) after entering the 10 digits to start the call.

Name a phone that requires 4 menus to make a call.

Re:Because that's what they're there for!

[Opportunist]

Currently I'm unable to answer this, being a few 1000 miles from the phone in question. I think I dimly remember the brand but I don't want to make a company unnecessarily look bad whose CPUs I enjoyed tremenduously while I still owned an Amiga, just in case it's a Sony-Ericson.

You might notice, I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to cells.

Actually, you're right. Punching in the numbers would actually have been an option. But something I DO consider a worthwhile addon and a true feature of a cell is the phone book ability. And this was what I was refering to. The phone at least allowed to put the phonebook on an instant (so you don't have to go through a few layers of menues), but what kinda made me wonder is why it's not that way by default but requires the user to actually set it.

Age old problem - bloat

[Orlando]

This is the same problem that so much technology suffers from, ie bloat. After the initial problems have been solved the manufacturers reach a point where the product is as useful as it's going to get before the next major leap in technology. In the mean time in order to get the same consumers to spend more money with them they pile on glitter that looks cool but actually isn't useful to most people, and in a lot of cases gets in the way of the basic functions. Instead of concentrating on what actually matters, ie reliability, ease of use, we get more problems, and obfuscation.

I'm convinced that there is a gap in the market for a manufacturer that can combine good design, reliable and cheap into products most people actually want. Implement a feedback loop of listening to customers needs and problems and implementing fixes and features they actually want and you end up with products that are refined over time rather than bloated.

Of course this wouldn't serve the average Slashdot reader, but most people aren't your average Slashdot reader.

One reason

[Hao Wu]

It's that old mistake that inventors keep making-- adding a digital clock to something does not necessarily improve it.

Re:One reason

[Anonymous Coward]

i never saw the point in having a clock on my cellphones. what's the point? I wear a wristwatch 18 hours a day.

Software is free...

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem is, simple phones aren't appreciably cheaper to produce since most of the differences lie in software

Sorry, bullshit.

The code has to be written, tested, debugged, usability tested, fought over on an include/exclude basis, documented, patent-checked, marketed, and supported. And as has been pointed out in comments: more features (or functions) means greater complexity and more chances for things to go wrong.

Testing software is a PITA. Testing GUI software is worse. And testing GUIs on devices worse yet as you likely have none of: a spec, working code, stable interface, or the device it's all going to run on, until far too soon to your final ship date.

Phone (and mobile service) vendors sell complexity for any number of reasons, the bottom line likely being that they think they can 1). charge a premium for it and 2). shanghai their victims^Wcustomers into incurring charges they didn't want and/or expect.

I want a phone I can make calls with. I want a service that works. I want a bill that's predictable and reasonable. And I want as few strings as possible, to exercise my customer and citizen rights to walk if I'm not satisfied.

I'm reasonably, but not fully, satisfied by my plain-jane phone and baseline service. Word up to Verizon: nail the basics and you've got it. Quit fucking around with the shit I don't need, stop turning my private life over to the NSA or highest bidder, and stop screwing with Internet neutrality.

Re:Software is free...

[JanneM]

The code has to be written, tested, debugged, usability tested, fought over on an include/exclude basis, documented, patent-checked, marketed, and supported. And as has been pointed out in comments: more features (or functions) means greater complexity and more chances for things to go wrong.

You're doing all of it anyway for the full-featured, very expensive, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink phones that are, don't forget, selling very well. Adding the software to lower-end phones is very cheap, since the margin cost is zero. Your argument that software is expensive only applies if a manufacturer decides to offer no models other than the basic ones (which would probably be market suicide even if there was interest in doing so).

I want a phone I can make calls with.

Great. Buy a phone you can make calls with and nothing else. All providers here in Japan, and in Sweden, at least, offer such models. If that is what you want, why haven't you bought such a one already? But as I argued in my parent post, chances are you're like everybody else and want a phone to make calls with - and one or two other simple fiunctions that differ from buyer to buyer.

The phone you argue for does exist. Multiple models, in fact, for every phone system out there. They don't sell very well, though.

I want a service that works. I want a bill that's predictable and reasonable. And I want as few strings as possible, to exercise my customer and citizen rights to walk if I'm not satisfied.

*shrug* get such a service. I've haven't had coverage problems either in Sweden nor here in Japan. I don't need to prepay minutes, I can change provider whenever I want while keeping my number, and I have never had any problems understanding my bill. You aren't happy with your service, walk away. Vote with your feet.

Re:Software is free...

[Secrity]

You are indeed fortunate to live in a society that has these options.

i want my cellphone to be a...

[FudRucker]

cellphone, i dont need a camera or mp3 player or any other multimedia device included, i only want phone service and voice mail so callers can leave a message if i am not available, nothing more...

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[giafly]

Parent is right about Europe. I bought a basic prepay phone in the UK last week and spent 15 mins pestering the assistants about minimal payments. Bottom line: none of the major networks require monthly payments - you just make one call every 6 months to prove the phone is being used.

Where we lose out is rip-off roaming charges when visiting other European countries.

Re the main topic. My new 'phone is smaller and prettier, but slightly harder to use because its predictive text input is very slow for numbers and punctuation, but there are so many option settings that I can't find how to turn it off.

No surprise

[FridayBob]

This doesn't seem strange to me. It's like everything besides voice that you can think of to use your mobile phone for costs way too much. The telcos just love to milk those extra features. Well, not me! Until they decide to give me a fixed IP address for my mobile phone and flat-rates for both voice and Internet access, I refuse to use my mobile phone for anything other than local phone calls. Once they give in, I can image a real revolution taking place, with an explosion of new functionality and smart phones quickly becoming more popular than PCs. I'll be the first in line for a deal like that, but at the moment this idea is hamstrung due to high cost of use.

I know why

[OrangeTide]

The pile o' features they put on these cell phones are usually pretty poorly done and are often just kind of useless in everyday life. (I never use my camera on my camera phone). The novelty has worn off.

The biggest reason is that many companies are charging us a monthly fee to use these additional services. Like being able to email pictures costs me an extra $8 a month. Give me a break. $8 isn't a ton of money, but I have a dozen companies wanting to nickle and dime me to death. cable tv, long distance, xbox 360 live (silver membership is free and it's totally worthless), local telephone, world of warcraft ($15/mo to play maybe 10 hours total a month?), cellphone, even my loan company wants me to pay them a fee when I pay online.

Re:I know why

[magicchex]

Sending and receiving unlimited text and picture messages to anyone, from or to 3 lines (myself, my brother, and my mother), costs me only $10 for all of us per month.

Re:I know why

[OrangeTide]

Well I to harass T-mobile to get escalation on a problem. So no thanks.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Anonymous Coward]

T-Mobile US does indeed have a lousy prepaid plan that does all the things you mention, particularly shutting off the phone after so many days if you don't add minutes to it. "Screw the prepaid users" is a fairly common attitude among US wireless companies which is odd since it's almost pure profit: there's no bill for them to track and print and mail (that costs more than you'd think), there are no deadbeat customers who run up huge bills and refuse to pay, and the prepaids even suffer with the cheaper older phones -which the prepaid user PAYS for generally instead of getting one for free.

You'd think they'd be appreciative of their prepaid customers.

Nextel's prepaid plan actually charges you a dollar per day whether you use the phone or not plus fees for any airtime you do use. It's designed to make sure you have to spend more than $30 a month.

My first phone was a prepaid GSM with Powertel (for those who remember it) who gave postpaid and prepaid first incoming minutes free. I got very good at making 45-second calls and it worked well. Powertel sold out to Voicestream GSM and then months later T-Mobile swooped in and bought Voicestream and all hell broke loose.

T-Mobile didn't have a prepaid plan of their own but the great GSM consolidation had suddenly brought them a whole pile of prepaid users that they didn't know how to service. Nobody could get airtime cards for weeks. They fixed that but changed the terms, no more free minute, no more easy refill over the internet (you had to go to a store but there were no stores selling the new cards because the new cards didn't exist yet), no more frequent customer reward plans and you couldn't even take your number with you because you didn't actually exist without a billing account.

Customer Service denied that they had prepaid customers at all. For the longest time, T-Mobile's attitude was that they had simply acquired these prepaid people and would be getting rid of them right quick.

ALL of this recent push to sell T-Mobile prepaid is an afterthought. I guess somebody in Berlin finally saw the profit margins.

Me, I bailed and went to Sprint where I pay more, suffer with horrible customer service, and got stuck under contract with a gadget cameraphone that I didn't want and can't use at work because no cameras are allowed. Email doesn't work. SMS doesn't work. Web browsing doesn't work. Ergonomics suck. Getting to you voicemail involves hitting Menu then going to the Messaging Menu, and scrolling down down down to Voicemail. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea? Voicemail should be a hotkey. My old GSM Nokia 5160 did THAT right. guh Sprint.

On the plus side, the Sprint call quality has been great. Better than I had with T-Mobile which itself was pretty good. We have a Cingular phone in the house and it's got horrible reception problems, and we use Verizon Blackberries at work and it's just awful. The whole point of carrying a Blackberry is to have that instant email stuff but that's the precise part that doesn't work right unless you power-cycle the thing. THEN you suddenly get 70 emails that Verizon had been sitting on for hours/days. This is shit.

I am tempted to try MetroPCS prepaid -perhaps the only decent prepaid left- but they don't have many towers and don't exactly cover the territory I need.

It has nothing to do with what you want.

[raehl]

Why would I want a device with everything in it as a cell phone when all I'm supposed to do is talk with it?

Cell phone companies can't charge you for sending text messages if all your mobile phone does is make phone calls. They can't charge you for downloading ring tones and wallpapers if your phone doesn't have those features. They can't charge you for uploading photos if your phone doesn't have a camera, and they can't charge you for downloading songs or email if your phone isn't also a music player and email reader.

Cell phone companies want your phones to be feature rich so they can charge you for using those features. They'd much rather give you a phone that costs $50 more than forfeit all the money they won't get from you not using the 'premium' services if they gave you a $50 cheaper phone with limited features instead.

Re:It has nothing to do with what you want.

[Znork]

"They'd much rather give you a phone that costs $50 more than forfeit all the money they won't get from you not using the 'premium' services"

Indeed. Unfortunately, by neglecting the connectivity area, they're setting themselves up for a huge fall as the nearly-net of similar WLAN capable devices become ubiquitous. Why pay dearly for those services when you can get the same service for free?

Re:It has nothing to do with what you want.

[TheRaven64]

Cell phone companies can't charge you for sending text messages if all your mobile phone does is make phone calls.

They can't anyway. They priced themselves out of the market by choosing to sell SMS at over £500/MB (yes, that's really what 10p/160bytes works out to). Even with the overhead of an XML-based protocol, running an XMPP client costs a few orders of magnitude less.

They can't charge you for downloading ring tones and wallpapers if your phone doesn't have those features.

Can they anyway? Ringtones are MIDI or MP3/4 files. I can sent them to my 'phone using bluetooth or the (included) cable.

They can't charge you for uploading photos if your phone doesn't have a camera,

Can they anyway? I get photos off my 'phone using bluetooth or by popping the RS-MMC in my memory card reader.

and they can't charge you for downloading songs or email if your phone isn't also a music player and email reader.

They can't charge me for downloading songs, since iTMS music isn't compatible with my 'phone. Maybe if someone sold unprotected AAC files that would work on both my 'phone and iPod, then I would buy them. As it is, I just stick to music I've ripped from CD. Ad for email, the mail client on my 'phone is unusable, but that doesn't stop me checking my email on my laptop using my 'phone connection.

A 'phone with a well designed UI doesn't suffer from feature bloat; the features you don't want just don't get in the way. Sadly, I haven't seen a 'phone with a well designed UI for some time. The Ericsson T68 was the closest I've seen (with wonderful UI concepts such as proper noun-verb interaction; type in a number, and then you have options to save or dial it, rather than having to create a new contact before entering the number).

Re:It has nothing to do with what you want.

[esper]

Can they anyway? Ringtones are MIDI or MP3/4 files. I can sent them to my 'phone using bluetooth or the (included) cable.

In the US, yes, they can. Or at least they could. When I finally picked up a cellphone (not quite two years ago), I got one from Verizon, specifically chosen for its Bluetooth capabilites. When I got it home and started messing with it, I discovered that Verizon had disabled all Bluetooth functions with exception of connecting to a wireless headset. They claimed it was a security decision to prevent people from shoving things onto your phone as you walk past, but it looked to me like a transparent scheme to force you to pay them $0.25/photo to email yourself any pictures you take instead of just Bluetoothing them off the phone for free.

Since then, the courts have awarded a class-action settlement to Verizon customers with crippled Bluetooth phones, but I didn't pay much attention, as I had returned the phone to Verizon as soon as I discovered the disabled features, which was soon enough that I was able to get a full refund on both phone and service. I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of thing still goes on here, but I expect it's at least become less blatant since the settlement.

Reliability vs. Features..

[true_hacker]

Consumer appliances manufacturers, and cell phone makers in particular, are increasingly sacrificing reliability and durability for features. I, for one- find this trend disturbing. IMO ( note that i have lefe out the humble part) a cell phone is a communication device meant to help keep us in touch with others.period. Anything else is a waste of the consumers' money and cell phone battery life.. Why cant manufacturers focus on the essential qualities of good products- reliability, durability, long-life..etc instead of good for nothing flashy features? To illustrate my point- i have two phones..one with all the flashy trash, and the other is a simple phone which can make calls with no extra features. The 'simpleton' survived for 5 hours under water, has been dropped on the floor atleast 100 times over a 5 year period..while the 'flashy' could not handle a few drops of water! And yes, the simpler phone is 1/3rd the price of the one loaded with features which are really good-for-nothing.

Plugins and attachments

[foniksonik]

A computer has peripheral ports and software plugins.... like a printer or a scanner and of course application software.

Why can't our phones have the same options?

Obviously integrated hardware is going to be more compact, etc. as seen in the difference between laptop components and desktop... but with some thought put into modularized hardware the impact could be minimized for a line of phones.

For instance: Nokia could create a standard phone that is just a phone but has a front plane that can be upgraded with a larger screen, optional keypad, etc. and a backplane that includes a standardized port... this port would allow for plugging in a camera module, which could be upgraded to a premium camera module or later on in the product cycle a higher quality standard camera module... additionally, an MP3 player could be added in which also included a form of storage... additionally a large lcd screen could be added, maybe even a slide out keyboard as well...

Each new hardware component would come with software updates... and software could be added to allow for additionaly functionality... ie: with the LCD and Keyboard component you could get a PDA app.

Sure there are some limitations over an integrated and form/function designed single device... but of course they could offer units of this type as well for those who wanted to spend the money and weren't worried about their device becoming outdated withing a single product cycle.

For the rest of us, we could just get a new camera module instead of being stuck with the same 640 x 480 crappy camera quality that wowed us when we bought it but no longer gets used, cause it's just 640 x 480 and really what can you do with that except take bad photos?

Consumer is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh it would be so tempting for the cell phone manufacturer to make and sell simple, reliable high quality cell phones that just get the job done. But the customer, when offered the choice between feature-packed phone and a simple, robust cell phone, for some odd reason selects the one with most features.

Simple cell phones need to be really cheap for people to buy them. Cheap meas low profit margins and compromises in manufacturing process.

Re:Consumer is the problem

[argent]

But the customer, when offered the choice between feature-packed phone and a simple, robust cell phone, for some odd reason selects the one with most features.

Decent standby time and reliability are features.

It's just a matter of advertising them as features. If people are pissed off enough at the gadget phones, then maybe this is the time to try.

Happy with the features

[Digital Pizza]

I have a Motorola e815, which includes a camera, datebook, games, Web, and movies/music. I don't use it for music or movies, but I've found the other features invaluable. I never really carried a seperate camera around, but now it's so handy having one there for moments with the kids; the games are great during "down time" like when I was recently in a jury pool; the web is great for impromptu weather/news/movie times, and the datebook syncs with iCal and Outlook and is my primary calendar now. I hacked the bluetooth to allow file transfers (had been crippled by Verizon), so it costs me nothing to transfer the photos/movies to my Mac, the only extra I have to pay is $5/mo for Mobile Web.

I used to deride all these features too until I got a great deal on phone that has them. I find the user interface not perfect, but pretty decent. I have heard complaints about other phones' UI (such as the Razor) though, so I guess it comes down to the user interface.

Tell me about it. . .

[Platupous]

I'm sure many share this comment, but cell phones have gotten way too complicated.

I'm not sure a breakthrough UI would solve it for me as of this point, mostly because I see no innovation or inspiration in any of the current designs.

I'm currently using a RAZOR, and my excuse for putting up with the *nasty* UI, has been that it is small. But it recently went through the washer, so I am now thinking of replacing it with my old beloved standby, the Nokia 8260. THAT was the best cell phone I EVER used. Simple, small, good battery life, durable. All 4 PRIMARY things I need in a cell phone.

On that topic, does anyone know of a cell phone of this type that would work on the Cingular Networks?

Re:Tell me about it. . .

[magicchex]

I have a Razr, with T-mobile service, and I've been able to modify it to quite an extent. My menus and keypad keys are different from what they default to and I love the usefulness of the phone since I've customized it.

Re:Tell me about it. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola V60 series. V60g if you go overseas - Cingular roaming is $79/min worldwide. v60i if you olny need tdma.
A V60G is a small flip phone, GSM, uses simcard, has a *stamped steel* case, b/w display, battery life exceeding 1 week. No power wasted on tracking you by GPS. It's a tri-mode (GSM 900 1800 1900mhz) so won't work with some old ATT cells so your reception in the midwest US might be spotty. The only features are SMS, data and a rudimentary web browser.

its about cell phones ppl not the service....

[greatguns_17]

most people are here complaning about the cell service rather than the cell phone. i do agree the cell service is crappy, but the cell phones are doing a decent job in my opinion..... some of the cell phones available now do a decent job at being a mp3 player, a camera etc... i know they arent as good as the standalone ipod or the cannon camera but they do provide the basic functionality, if you don't want those functions quit complaining and stop buying the phones....

LOL, IMHO

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.aquateencentral.com/epguide/edork.php

simple people want a simple phone

[Anonymous Coward]

now let me get back to watching American Idol repeats

Feeping Creaturism

[Nekomusume]

Most of the features are things that, past the novelty stage, you will never use. The interface is often so bad you can barely use the features you actually end up liking. They do everything... they just do it all badly. Often even the actual phone functionality. Insane price gouging for an inferior product. They keep sticking more useless crap into the phones so they can get people to buy more overpriced useless crap to replace their old overpriced useless crap, because it happens to have more and/or differant useless crap. And, at least in north america, they gouge you to do it.

I blame design, not functionality.

[S3D]

I would love to have real personal communicator, phone/PDA/camera/mail etc. And my opinion is that people don't like that kind of product not because the concept is bad, but because implemination is atrocious.
1. Hardware design is bad. Trying to stand out designeds inventing bizzare button layout, imparctical form factor, falling apart plastic shells. Nokia is a champion of bizzare design.
2. Service/support. You have to jump throug the hoop to get update on buggy firmware, operators disable features at will, locking out 3rd party software, prices for applications often blown out of proportion by operators.
3. User intrface. Most useful features buried under the layers of menus, no comprehensible keyboard shortcuts, to get something done you have to make a lot of scrolls and button presses.
4. Bugs. Firmware, software - everythere. Memory leaks. Random reboots.
5. Did I tell already about locking out 3rd party applications ?
I'd like feature rich smartphone, but until hardware and OS manufacturer wouldn't put some effort into design and a lot more into testing and usability testing most people will be dissatisfied. The whole concept of the smartphone could be compromised.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess somebody in Berlin finally saw the profit margins.

Nitpick: Bonn. Deutsche Telekom is headquatered in Bonn. Actually, only very few big German companies are headquartered in Berlin (only Schering and Deutsche Bahn, AFAIK), since it was, you know, either communist or an island for 40 years.

Why is this surprising?

[mnmn]

I've personally always sought simpler phones, and I know damn well I'm not alone. I just want a basic phone that is tough, has awesome battery life (even at the expense of size, at least 5 hrs talk time) does voicemail and sms and has a contact list. Thats all. OK I can make do without sms if the quality is good enough and I get 5 hrs out of it. Reception has to be good too. Lastly it doesnt hurt if the high quality product is cheap enough too.

I've tried using the web interface on my phones, tried adding special java apps. I hate it. I dont want it even. I've been considering getting a blackberry to use the features that I actually have on my cell, but the data transfer fees of the blackberry are too high for me.

But phonemakers are not listening yet, and I have to charge my phone every night.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[Browncoat]

The best phone I've ever used was the Motorola T720. Amazing battery life, easy to use UI and it was pretty customizable. It was a very good clamshell design that was fairly small and it had big buttons that were spaced a good distance, so you couldn't accidentally hit a different button. Simple on and off, and central button for menu access. It was a good phone. I accidentally dropped it, and by then it wasn't sold anymore through Cingular.

Three button phone

[PietjeJantje]

This problem has been recognized for a while, but mainly from the point of view people who are challenged by technology to begin with, not your savvy person you just want the thing to phone. However, it's interesting to note these simple phones are not only required so you don't accidently delete your voice mail message, but much more importantly, to save lives. For many people, a mobile phone is an emergency device. The result is, if you shop, you can find a simple phone. And just imagine how cool you look as a nerd with a phone designed for your granny..uhm..well.

This is a Dutch phone with just three buttons aimed at the ederly and disabled people:
http://www.mybell.nl/

Other "senior" phones:
http://www.mijntoestel.nl/
http://www.revah.nl/Revah%20Telecom/ITT/Easy5afb.h tm
http://www.utnws.utwente.nl/utnieuws/data/38/11/mo biel.html
http://www.secufone.com/

Utilitarian?

[foolip]

Last I checked utilitarian referred to something that was in line with the ethic system utilitarianism. What's with the title?

Re:Utilitarian?

[Clover_Kicker]

http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=* &Query=utilitarian

    utilitarian
              adj 1: having a useful function; "utilitarian steel tables" [syn: useful]
              2: having utility often to the exclusion of values; "plain
                    utilitarian kitchenware"
              n : someone who believes that the value of a thing depends on
                      its utility

Re:Utilitarian?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.htm (Bottom 1st paragraph, CH2)

J.S Mill regarding usage of the term "utilitarian." He's probably one of the 1st to use this term...

"Nor is the term thus ignorantly misapplied solely in disparagement, but occasionally in compliment; as though it implied superiority to frivolity and the mere pleasures of the moment. And this perverted use is the only one in which the word is popularly known, and the one from which the new generation are acquiring their sole notion of its meaning."

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[PietjeJantje]

Here in the Netherlands, your prepaid amount is valid for either a year after the last call, or infinite, depending on the provider you pick. They all used to be infiite, but the providers hate it of course. I'm not a phone person, even less on the road, and when I phone I use skype, demoting my mobile to just a "receiver" for skypeless people. My last device is still on the EUR 20,- prepaid card I bought over a year ago.

Phones merging with other devices

[Shmuffle]

(Appologies for the rant that probably points out the obvious, but hey, this is slashdot!) A big problem with this feature cramming is that so many of them require a larger UI while there is also pressure to keep making the device smaller and lighter. Lets face it, attempting to view more than a tiny amount of information (say a slashdot post) is bloody clumsy on a mobile phone sized screen. God help you if you want to INPUT that amount of data. Mobiles are innapropriate for certain tasks and it becomes the latest gimmic to have your phone do XYZ. Also, how many consumers really need PDA functions in a phone? I mean come on. I can see an exec or recruiter or anyone else who's job revolves around meeting people and connecting them with other people using it, but anyone else is going to spend a day entering 'dinner with wife', 'pick up kids from babysitter's', 'watch ballgame' and then get bored. On the other hand, maybe this guy loves to document his life and also lugs around a camera. A phone with a silly-high megapixel camera would be great for him. If a task can be squeezed onto the phone, not everyone is going to want it and having it there is going to be another menu item to skip over when getting to what you want. Finally, as we should all know when it comes to UIs, it may not matter that one is more intuitive to a naive user, if that user wants (needs? would use longer than a week?) feature XYZ on their phone, chances are they've used it somewhere else and expect it to work the same way on their new device. What would happen if Apple joined up with Nokia and made a small phone with an iPod like interface (because 'everyone' knows how to work that) that otherwise could only make/receive calls and SMSes?

Re:Phones merging with other devices

[Shmuffle]

Argh, damnit, I know how to do paragraphs.

See? :-S

Back to the Nokia 3210

[Quietti]

I've tried every handset model that Nokia ever released and guess what? I keep on going back to my good old 3210. Why? Because it does the simple job it was designed to do extremely well: It's a great, simple, usable phone. It also offers T9 in a dozen of languages.

Meanwhile, newer models restrict the selection of T9 to the national languages of the target country and they come with all sorts of virus-prone Java crap that I won't ever need.

There is a tremendous market for simple, durable handsets with no Java, no embeded Konqueror or WAP crap; just splendid SMS facilities with user-installable T9 wordlists and polyphonic ring tones. Who will grab it?

What about ordinary PCs or laptops?

[BlackShirt]

Has the consumer satisfaction with their computing& multimedia devices declined over the years?

Here is another usability study

[SmallFurryCreature]

Go to public transport and find a spot where you can observe a door. Doesn't really matter what kind just a door people have to do a minimum of interaction with.

My favorite is an out of order one on the subway. Always makes a boring commute a lot more fun when you get some standup comedy.

To show they are out of order they got a big red sticker at eye height. Now guess how many people see it? We get up out of their chair as the train nears the station and then stand ready in front of the door? Then press the button, and again, and again and again only to then finally realize something is wrong and then run for another door?

Ah but they are the smart ones. You then got the people that stand behind them and then still go towards the broken door and press the button because obviously the person in front of them didn't press it right.

Yet these people still are intellectual giants compared to the last group. You now got a group of people rapidly trying to reach the other exit. One person will get up, knuckles dragging across the floor, make their way against the traffic to the out of order door.

People are idiots. If you make an idiots proof interface then all you done is challenge the world to come up with a bigger idiot and the world always wins.

The simple fact is that you can still get those phones with zero extras. They are called old phones and all you have to do to get them is not throw your old phone away. If yours is broken buy a second hand one.

But no people are lured by the gadgets and then attempt to use them without reading the manual with an IQ that is baffled by the concept of a closed door.

Phones ain't too complex. People are too stupid. By all means make an idiot proof phone. That means only idiots will buy it. A massive market to be sure. Just one small problem. Idiots are idiots who don't buy idiot proof stuff. If they only bought phones they could operate they wouldn't be idiots.

An idiot proof phone will never be bought by idiots.

Re:Here is another usability study

[fish waffle]

People are idiots.

Well, aren't you feeling smug. Most people are just optimizing in different ways, and devoting their optimization effort/budget to things you may not value equally or are unaware of.

To show they are out of order they got a big red sticker at eye height. Now guess how many people see it?

Not surprising. I expect that most subway/tube/metro users follow the same path over and over; why expend effort looking for out-of-order doors when they are relatively rare? Anomalies have to be fairly large/extreme to be noticeable enough to shock someone out of their well-followed routine. Many program optimizations are based on a similar principle--optimize the common case at the expense of the uncommon.

You then got the people that stand behind them and then still go towards the broken door and press the button because obviously the person in front of them didn't press it right.

Or, perhaps, they were not clearly paying attention (being on auto-pilot) to the activities of the person in front of them, and thus on an effort/reward basis felt the small extra cost to verify the flaw was more worthwhile than just assuming the door was broken and moving on---an extra button press is a small effort compared with changing doors. Bad judgement in some cases, but it's not that unusual for people in front of you to change their minds, and sometimes they may fail to operate something correctly or have a lower threshold for effectively doing so, and some buttons are also finicky. People are also sometimes curious as to what the flaw might be---maybe it's even something they can correct, but the person in front of them judged it not worth the effort or out of their skill-set.

One person will get up, knuckles dragging across the floor, make their way against the traffic to the out of order door.

Resource 2 is overloaded, while resource 1 is apparently not being utilized. Sometimes the situations arise because most people opt for maximum convenience, rather than because resource 1 is unavailable. It's a small chance, but maybe worth an investigation if the queue for resource 2 is excessive, and/or one has a strong dislike for fighting over a limited resource.

Re:Here is another usability study

[Prof.Phreak]

oligatory: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

Re:Here is another usability study

[Anonymous Coward]

The average IQ hovers around 100. Most people here are probably well above that. Your perspective is exceedingly overestimated. People really are not that smart. Look at who gets elected to goverments across the world.

Alltel and Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Screwed up the rollout of EVDO. They sold all these fancy internet phones by telling their customers that in June 2006 all the urban towers would have EVDO, and you can use you phone as a high speed modem for your laptop anywhere and everywhere.

They lied. Here in Wisconsin, Alltel is putting up towers, but they're receive only overflow towers. No new tech. And Verizon is no better. And who the fuck puts up with GSM anyway, even if Cingular could train its salesbabes properly.

The phone features just aren't worth using without EVDO. Verizon turns off bluetooth. That's why I will keep my Tracfone CDMA V60, tough metal case, great reception, affordable, and dead reliable.

And besides, the fancy interfaces are WINDOWS. A cellphone that crashes, arghhhhhhh!

Who needs cellphones, anyway?

[TimFenn]

I still don't understand cellular devices, period. The only time I wish I had one (I've never owned one) is when I have no access to any other form of long distance communication, such as when my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. Otherwise, I use a pay phone (which I carry around a phone card for), email, IM, whatever in order to stay in touch. If I'm not in reach of any such mechanism of communication, then there are plenty of ways of leaving a message and/or note. I've realized cellphones just add more extraneous, unnecessary junk to a lifestyle thats already too network-connected, too self-ignorant, too concerned with always "being in touch."

Thoreau was right:

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.

Replace post-office with cellphone, and its the same argument. Life should not be "frittered away by detail," but be more focused on the self and its development. That is the path to enlightenment.

Re:Who needs cellphones, anyway?

[Browncoat]

I have my internet at home. I have my internet at the office. When I'm out, I don't have phone booths. I don't have pay phones hanging around everywhere. Maybe pay phones are convenient where you are, but they're not abundant here where I live (very populated suburbian/metro area) simply because cell phones have been so much more common, and the use of pay phones is less, especially with the advent of "pay as you go" programs.

The fact is, you've found other ways more convenient for you to communicate with others -- others, like me, have found that a cell phone makes our communication easier.

I have had a cell phone for years, because it is convenient to use one, rather than hunt for a pay phone. It's also a fact that if I happen to be out at night, and for whatever reason my car breaks down, I'd rather not stray from the safety of my vehicle (especially being a woman) to go find a pay phone, regardless of where I am. Heck, my car might break down in a white picket fence suburb, but I'm not going to see a pay phone, and at this day and age, a stranger asking to enter your home at night always seems suspicious.

Re:Who needs cellphones, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thoreau was best known as a hermit. I choose not to dissuade family and friends from talking to me (often to make plans to see me) by demanding they first guess where I am at any given moment. Planning over store-and-forward messaging is slower and more complex, so less likely to actually happen.

Life should be enjoyed. Countless generations lived their whole lives in the manner of Thoreau's experiment out of sheer necessity, plenty of people have deliberately expended their irreplacable time seeking mysticism and enlightenment, and none of them passed anything conclusive down to future generations. If anything were there to be found, it would have been tested and confirmed and then made part of the high school curriculum by now (replacing social studies and psychology).

Americans pay way too much for cell phone service

[wenchmagnet]

I live in Pakistan and celular access is really cheap here. All carriers offer free incoming calls and free incoming SMS. A couple also offer small kickbacks on recieved calls.

What really rocks though is that you can buy a cheap Nokia phone for less than US$100 up-front, stick a pre-paid card into it (about US$ 2) which has about 60 minutes of airtime in it and when that runs out, your incoming calls/sms keep coming in for another FIVE years (Telenor Pakistan). The most ripoff carrier (Mobilink) here still gives you about six months of free incoming before you need to recharge your phone.

On my pre-paid connection, for about US $4.00 I get about 40 mins outgoing calls to other networks, twice that for my own network. The call rates are also flat across the country so it doesnt matter where I am, the same rates apply. I know the US is a heck of a lot larger, geographically, but in this day and age with the level of connectivity the US has, it should not be such a big issue - the internet does it already! Oh and this US$4.00 lasts about 25 mins if I call the US from my cell phone in Pakistan.

My parents recently went to India for a family visit and told me that its even cheaper there.

BTW, the world's largest WiMax deployment has been signed off on between Motorola and Wateen telecom in Pakistan - we should be getting WiMax across the country soon too!

All thanks to competition, deregulation and some solid support from the Musharraf government.

Voicemail on Phones

[Tsian]

Only slightly related, but I'm originally from Canada. Like their US counterparts, Canadian cell phone companies store voicemail locally and generally charge for it.

However, in Japan the situation is quite different. The vast majority of phones I have seen (and it may well be all of them, but I wont swear to that) record messages directly onto themselves, much like an answering machine.

It just leads me to wonder whether this is due to cultural differences, the relatively ever-present network connection, or just odd chance.

No it's not! Why are we always stuck with v1.0?

[mattbee]

Sorry, as a gadget lover I've seen tons of phones come close to being fantastically useful as the grandparent poster describes. However the problem is *always* in the frigging software. There is always some stupid bug (or six) which stops a phone fulfilling its advertised potential, but the manufacturer doesn't give a toss about fixing any of them because they're busy redesigning the next model (or six) with completely different interfaces, e.g. my Nokia 9500, bought March 2005. Hooray! A phone, web browser, email client and remote SSH terminal with 80x24 screen! Wi-fi support at home! Amazing! Except that:

• the IMAP email client is hopelessly broken, crashing at the slightest provocation (changing folders mostly!)
• the web browser, for all its other limitations, doesn't do gradual page rendering (well it tries, but effectively it doesn't), and freezes the phone up while rendering a long page. Not good when you have a 14Kb GPRS connection;
• the terminal works well (cough, third party software) but is hamstrung by the phone's refusal to change connection types if the first one you pick doesn't work. You have a 10 minute timeout or something so that if a wi-fi connection doesn't work, you can't immediately switch to GPRS without going for a cup of tea first.
• (unforgivably, for Nokia, at least) if you missed a call and want to see who it was, you press "last call log" from the front panel and it takes 10-20 seconds of "Reading log..." on the screen before it shows you. A list of numbers! That's all I'm asking for! Totally maddening.
• No reset mechanism except taking the battery out. Because it will never crash, oh no. Especially not in the middle of a busy street when you're trying to make a call and then have to find a quiet place to take the f--king thing to pieces...

Now under normal circumstances, well, yeah you get bugs in software, we'll get them fixed! Except that you don't with phones. I had three firmware upgrades to that phone and none of those issues were solved. So I never really used it for email or web browsing unless I had a lot of time & patience, and it was very important to try to get a particular piece of info (still it was quicker calling the train times information line than trying to use the web site).

But really there was nothing wrong with the hardware -- I could see that the phone could do everything that it advertised, but Nokia were on to greener pastures now that this phone was out of the door. All it would need (in any other software market) would be a programmer or two, 2-3 months and some willing "power user" beta testers to hammer out these stupid bugs. I mean god forbid they actually try to make a device with a market lifespan of more than about 12 months, with, you know, a user community and long term support plans. But just a bit more love on the software after release would make a huge difference.

After a couple of terrible months with an HTC Universal (lots of problems but the biggest one is that it's impossible to answer an incoming call more than about 20% of the time! Great testing guys!), like an idiot I'll have a Nokia E61 on order soon. Maybe that'll work better :-)

So no I don't believe phone "convergence" is a myth when the phone manufacturers get so darned close. It's their unwillingness to go the extra mile after the phone has been released and tested on a large scale which causes people to damn their gadget-phones as white elephants.

Well...

[zeruch]

...I have been feature averse on mobiles since I first started using them however many years ago. Basically I get the cheapest model that is not as big as a Mini Cooper and that takes calls and makes them.

I have never had much use for a phone doing anything other than what its original intent was.

But I have a general allergic reaction to phones, period, so I understand I am in the minority and would not expect my outlook to be a trend of any kind. I simply like the Unix-ish idea of a clean, simple utility (or in this case device) doing a certain thing very well and reliably.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Arker]

Yes, the roaming charges are a rip off for sure.

But, I just bought a new simm for each country. So, get off the airport in Italy, for instance, pop in the Italian simm, and good to go with a local number. A bit of a pain, but still cheaper and much more reliable than trying to use a cell in the US.

Re:Dissatisfied cell phone users...

[magicchex]

I have T-mobile with a Motorola Razr, and have been much happier than you. I would suggest a different phone?

Re:Americans pay way too much for cell phone servi

[Arker]

It's amazing, we have so much technology here in the US, but it's all tied up in the hands of the most shortsighted, stupid, and greedy SOBs that ever walked the earth.

Read the article for a little insight into their minds. It's unthinkable that they could simply provide a service and take a steady profit. Their revenues HAVE to climb every quarter, and they're in a tizzy because the customers aren't cooperating by happily coughing up more money every month for more crap that no one wants.

Very Few Options.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems that even the basic phones are starting to get all the fancy features now. Basic, meaning the low end phones that are usually "free" when you sign up for a 2 year contract with your wireless provider. Fancy, meaning a camera and/or color display and/or multimedia messaging.

So far, I've only seen three recent/upcoming cell phones that are essentially phones..

• Motorola W220. It has a similar form factor as the Motorola V3 RAZR, but it lacks the multi-functionality and hip styling of the V3. The only bells and whistles you get on the W220 is an FM radio. It's supposed to be released at the end of the year.
  
  
• FireFly. This is as simple as you get. But it's way too simple, and it's marketed towards kids. Only 20 numbers can be stored in the phonebook, a few built-in ringtones, and some parental control features. That's it. Even if you want a phone that is stripped down like this, I don't think you would want this particular phone, since it looks like a toy.
  
  
• Emporia EmporiaLife. This phone is marketed towards senior citizens. It has a large LCD display, large buttons, a simple phonebook, speakerphone, and it runs on AAA batteries too. This could be a good choice for people, other than seniors, who are looking for a simple phone. Not sure if this phone will hit markets outside of Europe. But the tech specs show quad-band operating frequencies, so it's possible.

I certainly hope mobile phone companies will continue to offer simple phones. Other than being overwhelmed by features, some people need a phone without a camera or data storage capabilities. Particularly those people who work at companies that forbid such devices for security reasons.

Software updates a big issue

[jivo]

..at least for me!

A couple of years ago, I bought a brand new Sony Ericsson P900 super phone. After some time, I discovered some software bugs, and I had the first software update installed. One of the very good aspects of this phone was, that I could update the software myself, over the internet. Some of the bugs were fixed, and new ones were discovered. Sony Ericsson however, stopped releasing new software revisions for the phone, and after some correspondance, they more or less told me to buy their next model instead, since there would be no more bug new releases for the P900!

Since the phone was still under warranty, I got the money back from the shop, and bought a Motorola A1000 instead. Another super phone, and in many ways even more clever than the P900. But same story: I now have a "smart" phone with a bunch of errors and bugs, and a producer that doesn't give a damn. Despite memory leaks, random crashes, numerous GUI stupidities, Bluetooth problems etc. there will be no more updates. This despite the fact that the phone is less than two years old!

I use my phone A LOT every day, and this particular phone is also used for GPS navigation. But I'm not so sure about my next phone. If the producer isn't going to keep the product alive for longer than 10 months, I'm really not that inclined to buy a $1000 phone - or any other product for that matter! If however, they start to maintain their phones for years to come, perhaps add new features (eg. A2DP Bluetooth), I would actually be willing to pay for it. I like to have one device with GPS, calendar, notebook etc. but treating customers who bought a $1000 phone the same way as customers wo bought a $50 phone simply does not make sense.

My Mom's happy!

[RokcetScientist]

She (77) finally has a cellphone she actually uses (http://www.vodafone.nl/Vodafone/gfx/flash/flash1/ main_global.swf). So she's happy. And consequently I am too. In fact, I am considering one of those for myself too. Don't use the umpteen bells & whistles anyway, so why pay for 'em or schlepp 'm around? They only complicate stuff. Prob is the current "Vodaphone Simply" models may fit a lady's purse, but not my pocket. The next model harvest will probably solve that.

Mildly off-topic, but...

[Guppy06]

"One would think that as cell phones evolve into cameras, e-mail readers, Web browser and music players, mobile users would be happy with the device that fulfills their digital needs,"

You're planning on buying a PlayStation 3, aren't you?

Slashdot afraid of new technology?

[bbn]

This seems to be a recuring slashdot agenda - for how many years have we now been reading slashdot articles about how people do not like their phones to be anything but a phone?

The reality is that the phones will continue to become more powerful. Your phone WILL be able to play mp3 files and read emails. It probably already is able to do these things.

If you, like me, want it to be primary a phone, then buy one that is small and to your liking. And use it as a phone. Stop bitching that it also can be used as a email client, in an emergency.

Re:Slashdot afraid of new technology?

[asuffield]

The reality is that the phones will continue to become more powerful. Your phone WILL be able to play mp3 files and read emails. It probably already is able to do these things.

My phone was new last year and cannot do these things (Nokia 1100). This is a very good thing. Why? Because the battery life of my phone is over five times what you get from the more expensive 'do everything' phones. All those extra features require more powerful processors, which in turn suck power and make your phone need to be recharged every day. I charge my phone once a week, or less often, and it never runs flat.

It's the voice quality, stupid.

[nobodyman]

Why oh why can't they just upgrade the voice quality!? Weve had basically the same voice quality since the 70's.

In fact, when compared to a standard land-line telephone, the voice quality is worse! I think it's hilarious that we have phones that can transfer data at 1mbps yet the bitrate for voice calls is still around 1.5kps-4kps!

Re:It's the voice quality, stupid.

[Prof.Phreak]

Cell phones should have -better- voice quality than a land-line... (don't they dedicate a wider bandwidth than land-lines?)

Re:It's the voice quality, stupid.

[petermgreen]

voice bitrate for GSM is iirc 14.4kbps (traditional GSM data has extra error checking giving 9.6kbps)

the codecs are probablly getting quite long in the tooth now though (for comparison standard landline is 64kbps, uncompressed 16khz 8 bit).

Simpler? No, how about more real world Functional?

[flobberchops]

I just bought a Mio A701 for the killer REAL WORLD functionality of GPS location services. I travel and its a life saver to be able to find my way about or even get close to a specific area. I can even send them my location with an SMS from it! Simpler phone? No thanks, a more USEFUL device I want. I dont want to wear a bat utility belt for media player, mobile phone AND gps. Why not change the form factor to be wrist mounted or something.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[magicchex]

I have T-mobile, and I spent 30 minutes earlier raving about how great they are.

I pay $60 base price for a 2 line family plan with 1000 anytime minutes, unlimited nights, weekends, and mobile-to-mobile. $8 adds one more line to the plan. $10 adds unlimited text and picture messaging for every line on the plan. We also pay $1.23 per line in taxes/fees and $7.64 per account in taxes/fees (this all counting as one account). $6 more buys me UNLIMITED data on my phone, which allows me to use Opera and Google Local along with anything else I'd be interested in.

They have great phone service as well as customer service and have been a pleasure to work with compared to any other cell company I've dealt with. If you travel, T-mobile unlocks your phone without a problem to allow you to use any other Sim card with your phone.

Samsung T809

[Anonymous Coward]

After using a plain-vanilla Nokia brick phone for several years and being perfectly satisfied with it, it's finally starting to die. While looking at new phones (and new providers), it became clear that the plain phone choices were very limited and fairly costly compared to the other options.

As I started looking into the mid-range phones, they started adding things like cameras. I don't have a camera at all, and don't particularly need one. However, there have been a few instances in past years where it would have been nice to get a snapshot of something (usually for reference, not nec. as a keepsake). However, a lot of providers don't make data cables available, charge a ton for them if they do, or charge you way too much to transfer the picture to yourself via their data service.

Anyhow, while I was at a TMobile reseller, someone next to me was looking through a box for the Samsung T809. Nice slim little phone. Really nice screen. Data cable included. Hell, the thing even uses MicroSD, so you can upgrade the memory. I asked the price, and they said $300 with a $50 rebate. No thanks.

After getting home, I started checking around online and looking at TMobile's service plans in detail. No roaming charges. Good coverage where I travel (added bonus-cell tower a few blocks from my parent's house, which is in a somewhat remote location). I ended up going to amazon to check out their phones. Whatya know, they had the T809 for $150 with $200 in rebates. They were gonna pay me $50 bucks to take the thing off their hands! Not to mention, they were offering free 2-day shipping plus a free moto bluetooth headset. Sold!

While the phone does tons of things that I'll most likely never use, it does work really well. The TMobile coverage is good (which is great, since I live in a basement-it's rented and it's not my parent's : p). I'll never use the mp3 player. Watching mp4 videos is a neat little gimick that i'll grow tired of in another week or so. But the important thing is that it works well as a phone, which is what I really want from a phone service...

In england

[sjwest]

sms (texting) and phone make up the bulk of traffic on the new 3g networks (it can handle video etc), while reception is good the web browsing thing has not really taken off and these people have the kit.

That says to me either the software is rubbish,or the interface is too small, sat nav traffic systems are cool at present, a colleague has one, he uses a proper computer to update it, not a mobile phone it struck me as funny.

bells & whistles

[thelost]

the only people who have ever suggested convergence was a good idea were the Industry pundit and the Industry itself.

Of course there will always be a market for bells & whistles, but as we become technologically mature - generationally - we realize the usefulness of compartmentalizing objects into discreet uses. It saves us money, patience & having to listen to snake oil about how the razringrockrblockr (TM) will change our lives. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't want my life dictated to me by a 1inch thick slab of plastic and microchips.

I wonder, on the other hand how many people these days would see fit to drop their mobiles altogether. It's something I consider now and then, as I don't have much use for it that can't be fulfilled through other methods such as the Internet and a normal land-line telephone. There is also an obvious pleasure to being non-contactable at times; This simply can't be achieved by switching off your rockr or blueberry because you then have this itch in the back of your mind as to who's calls you could be missing.

If we look at examples of attempted convergence there haven't been many successful ones. Ovens are still ovens, we don't have coffee machines that read us the news and our TVs (god help us) are still just the dumb boxes sitting in the corner of the living room. It seems the place for natural convergence is communication, which leads to the diversity of computer software both on our PCs and phones. As communication is such a complex multifaceted problem we organize it using calendars, texting, todo lists, instant messenging, pictures, videos etc. The list of comm methods is endless because in the way that seems to be the main target for convergence, better more meaningful talk. Hell in japan you can buy pillows that are connected to your partners over the internet, when you hug it they feel it. Talk about alienation.

My problem with modern phones

[Jugalator]

It's not just that they're feature packed and I don't want to pay for stuff I won't use, but it's that these features I don't use cause such complexity in the software that the phone can hang during the most trivial tasks. A phone should never ever lock up, and they can take away any feature besides actual phoning to remedy that IMHO.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[codegen]

So you are paying almost $100 per month for something
the Europeans get for about $20 per month?

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[magicchex]

The Europeans get all the features I have across 3 different lines for $20? I'd love to see the information on the plan they have, because that's honestly surprising.

Cell Phone Complexity & Consumers

[SuperFunFunFun]

Over the years, I've owned about a dozen handsets. The best (modern ones):

• Blackberry 7100t - easy to use, great phone, just worked. You could easily use the phone features one handed while driving.
• Kyocera SmartPhone - firt generation Palm/phone. Was slow, would crash, but easy to dial and the huge 8mb speed dial was useful.
• Motorola V70 - The simplest to use flip phone ever, and built like a tank. Was as easy to use as my old Moto StarTAC, but had modern features.
• The wost:
  • T-Mobile MDA (Windows Mobile PDA/Phone)- Every feature known to man - MP3, Video, camera, pda, full keyboard, touchscreen, swiss army can opener etc... but the human interface is terrible. You can't dial and drive (unless you set voice tags for everyone... and then you run out of memory). The phone is 1/2 the quality it needs to be. Typical Microsoft killer spreadsheet, but everything else is me-too at best. You can see legacy 1998 windows CE legacy shining through.
  • Treo 2* series - So bad (chintzy, broke four of them) I'll never buy anything that says Treo on it again. Also, was a step back from the first genereration Kyocera in usability and features.
  The issue with most cell phones isn't that they are too complicated it's that vendors lock up features - or mod them. So you go browse the web and find a really cool jme app - and try to download... it doesn't work because the carrier wants to extort a dime out of the site distributing the

over-simplistic argument

[Anonymous Coward]

As there are more people and therefore more potential revenue. Doh!

Look at the population density of the two countries, and that will tell you the density of revenue.

From the ubiquitous wikipedia article let's have a look at population density (Yes, I know the maps are for GSM, but the coverage for anything else isn't much different/any better)

United Kingdom 243
United States 30

So, you could say that as the cells cover a fixed size area, the revenue from each cell is therefore less (on average) in the US. By this rationale, any country less dense than the US shouldn't have better phone coverage than the US...

Finland 15

Hmm, this doesn't seem to support the argument either. Maybe it's 'cos we're using values for the average density? No point putting cells were no one is. Is the US more sparsely populated than Finland in these areas of low coverage?
finland
United States

Probably not. Finland seems to have more unpopulated areas, even taking into account the differences in size and density units. Even though the distances are smaller in Finland (and therefore require less cells in the wilderness), I still think it's fairly marginal to use population density as a supporting argument.

So in summary, I don't think that population size or density are particularly compelling arguments as to why the US is so far behind in phones.

Re:over-simplistic argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you crazy? A more densely populated area should cause fixed costs to decline per customer, while variable costs per customer should stay pretty close to the same.

Re:over-simplistic argument

[CodeBuster]

I don't think that population size or density are particularly compelling arguments as to why the US is so far behind in phones.

What about the regulation angle? The archaic FCC rules and other state and local taxes on phone service surely must contribute, at least somewhat, to slower and less efficient outcomes in the cell service markets. The regulations and infrastructures in some of the better connected countries are less developed or non existant. It is easy to build a new system from stratch when you can start with a clean slate and unfettered by existing networks, technologies, and excess legal obligations. On the other hand, this can also lead to a wild west scenario where frequency interference and corruption rule the day. It is an interesting problem.

Bundled with which network operator's service?

[tepples]

Nokia 1100, Motorola C139, Samsung SGH-N625

But does a carrier with coverage in both major and minor U.S. cities offer these phones?

I am one

[electronerdz]

I am one of those consumers. When I buy a phone, I want it to make phone calls. Not take pictures. I have a camera for that. I've already spent $400 on a camera that does a much better job (and is on my belt at all times). I don't need a PDA. I've already got a PDA that I spent $600 on that does a much better job. I don't need an email reader, I've already got a $1500 laptop that does that much better. And I don't need a music player... well, I don't really have time for much music other than while driving, which is why I have XM Radio. I know it seems like a lot to lug around, but I don't want a half-assed phone that does things part way for me, and then pay an extra monthly fee just to use all those services. And STILL pay for those services on a regular computer (Internet access).

St00pid user interface

[squarooticus]

How can I trust cellphone manufacturers to get the hard stuff right, when they can't even get the easy stuff right?

Case in point: the side buttons on almost every clamshell/flip phone. Why isn't there an option to completely disable them when the phone is closed? How many times have I pulled the Motorola V330 out of my pocket only to find it's been silenced because the keys in the same pocket have helpfully managed to set the ringer to "Silent"?

This isn't rocket science.

What I want off my phone

[Eudial]

What I want off my phone:
  * The ability to make phonecalls
  * The ability to receive phonecalls
  * A clock
  * Long battery time
  * A large clear display
  * Large buttons. My fingertips are larger than four buttons on my current phone.

What I don't want off my phone:
  * A phonebook. I don't want people to be able to steal my contacts if and when they steal my phone.
  * Text messaging.
  * Polyphonic signals. I'm comfortable with a reoccuring beep.
  * A camera
  * Sharks with frickin' lasers attached to their heads
  * Colors, animations, whatnot. It's a bleeding phone, not an acid trip.
  * The Internet. My 17" screen is small enough.
  * Games.

Make me that phone, someone, please!

Re:What I want off my phone

[Browncoat]

You get sharks with frickin' lasers on your cell phone?! Heck I'd pay to get that feature. Might help with the whiners who glare at me for talking on my cell phone quietly on a public street, because I happen to be disrupting them talking loudly on their cell phone, right next to me.

Coffee Flavored F'ing Coffee

[HangingChad]

One of Dennis Leary's great comedy routines is about coffee being adulterated with other flavors, particularly maple, as an example of what's wrong with the world. Those of us in the I Want My Cellphone To Make F'ing Phone Calls crowd feel the same way about cell service. I'd rather have a phone that will find and hold a signal almost anywhere than one that plays music or otherwise tries to do many things badly instead of one thing well.

Although it is kind of handy having a camera sometimes, I'd still trade that for clearer phone calls.

Finally be able to carry into Work

[sielwolf]

I hope that the companies realize that there are many companies that won't allow cameras with phones into their buildings because of security and espionage concerns. Truthfully I have no need for a camera on my phone. I have a camera. I can use that. I don't need keepsakes of my friends or whatever. I think a lot of these features (webbrowsing, gaming) are just gadget-candy that are of interest for only the 13-15 year old teenage girl demo. I need a reliable phone with good battery. Texting, alarms and calendars are all plusses but not necessary.

Re:Finally be able to carry into Work

[Browncoat]

Dude, I want a camera with a phone on it. "What kind of phone are you using?" "Nikon."

I understand the practices behind not allowing phones with cameras -- though I would rather companies just understand the possibility that their employees just can't switch phones on a whim because of their service and plan. For instance, I got my phone in November. If I was hired for a job right now, and the employer needed me to change to a phone without a camera, I'd have to say "are you going to pay my fees?" because I can't walk into my carrier and just change phones. It doesn't work that way. So I'd rather companies at least be willing to cough up the dough to pay for their employees' cell phone changes.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Twenty dollars for (almost) unlimited calls, unlimited SMS and unlimited data? ... Please provide links, codegen.

I want a phone, I have the rest.

[Oz0ne]

I want a small device that has great signal strength and audio quality. Currently I haven't found anything like this. I have many computers for email, web browsing. I can't think of any reason to do this on the go. I have a digital SLR camera for photography, I can't imagine needing a webcam quality snapshot taker in my pocket. I don't need games on a phone, ever.

I usually end up buying the lowest model nokia's as they come close to fullfilling these needs and seem to have the best reception of any phone available in the US, but they're still typically packed with featues I don't want.

Adding features increases complexity, which requires a more complicated or in depth UI. It can potentially eat into your battery time, and with some models the actual phone features and processing abilities are sacrificed so that they can pack more novelty crap on.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[moonbender]

We don't. Here in Germany you can now get unlimited calls and messages within the provider's network and to land lines for 25 Euros, ie a bit over 30 bucks. Another 25 buys you unlimited data. This is a moderately new offer by one provider, prices are going down currently. It's of no use to me because what good are free internal calls if no one is using the same provider. Still, I hope I'll have an affordable unlimited data plan later this year. Anyway, 20 USD doesn't buy you anything "special" here, yet.

That said, Europe is a fairly diverse market. Prices in the UK are bound to be really different, and don't get me started on Scandinavia. Of course it's all the same three or four companies everywhere, go figure. Which makes the roaming charges all the more annoying. Fortunately our "socialist" EU government has shown some signs of doing something about that, unless it gets lobbied by the telcos. And what chance is there of that...? Haha.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Registered Coward v2]

It is a rip off here in the US, yes. Unbelievable.

Our market is very different than Europe's - in some ways it is better and in others it is worse. The US model is to lock in customers via long term contracts, hence the "free" phones locked to a carrier.Given the high fixed costs or renting tower space and the nearly zero variable costs for minutes used, US operators want a steady stream of income that covers the fixed costs (read lots of users) and pricing plans that have huge margins on the variable (i.e. the cost of giving you 2000 minutes is no more than 200 but they've convinced users that you really need to buy minutes); that's why overages are high - they want you to bump up to the next level since the marginal cost to them is nearly zero so it's almost all marginal revenue.

The US started out with regional providers (much like Europe) and buy the phone - pay as you go plans but evolved into the current nationwide calling system. Part of that may be the more mobile nature of Americans.

I'm not sure why their is no one EU wide mobile carrier with a fixed rate anywhere in the EU (at least I couldn't find one). I'd guess that each country wants to protect its local carriers and the tax revenue; combined with the old PTT monopoly mentality over phone calls.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.

In Europe, you can get decent deals, however. Your prepaid service has a good shelf life, unlike here where you simply MUST buy more minutes every month or they cut you off. You don't get charged for receiving calls (caller pays) and in fact with the service I had you actually got a (very) small kickback when someone called you. The prices were reasonable, and I would prepay roughly $60 and not need to worry about it again for 6 months.

In the US, prepaid is viewed as a way to get customers who don't have the credit to buy a phone a phone - since there is no long term tie (you can always buy a new phone from another provider) companies will simply milk them for whatever they can. They don't want the hassle of serving them or keeping a liability (unused minutes) on the books; they want as much cash up front as possible. It's cheaper for me to simply get a $10 family plan phone and let relatives use it than to find a GSM card from their unlocked phone.

When I came back to the US, I went to try and get service and it was an absolute nightmare. They don't want to just sell you bloody phone service, they want to give you a 'free' (read paid for by you, in the fine print, of course) phone that was loaded with all this crap I don't care about, making it far more complex than it needs to be, they want you to pay at least $60-75 every month, and they're very pushy about it.

That's where they make their money. There are providers such as MetroPCS that offer unlimited one fee calls, but they have limited service areas. OTOH, the US has a huge calling area compared to Europe - I can roam countrywide without paying any roaming charges - and not worry if someone calls me when I am outside of my home service area. I don't have to get a different SIM card and change numbers when I roam to avoid higher cost calls. Same for SMS - we can get unlimited use for a flat fee.

Roaming overseas is problematic for many US customers - a CDMA phone is useless in Europe, and multi-band CDMA GSM phones are hard to find and expensive. GSM phones are carrier locked so you can't switch providers (unless you unlock the phone) If I did enough international travel (fortunately I manage to avoid most of it) I'd probably get a phone that can run Skype and forward calls to a US based Skype number so clients could reach me at a reasonable cost to me. Another alternative is a VIOP phone with reasonable international calling rates and forward that to a mobile number.

Is our system better - that depends on what you want - but the two are different.

They just don't get it

[uspsguy]

I have contact with a number of "blue-collar" cell phone users. Almost every one of them hate the available phones. They rely on their phones out in the real world. Most of them would pay a few hundred dollars for a rugged phone. One where the flip doesn't break off the first time you are in a hurry, where the ringer can be set loud enough for the jobsite environment, where the whole thing is waterproof and doesn't die because it fell in a puddle or you used it in the rain. They want a ruggedized unit that will survive a couple of years. Some of them tell me they replace phones every couple of months because they fail on them. These are commercial users who have the money but not the choices.

Re:They just don't get it

[shawngarringer]

Try Nextel. Their iDEN phones are pretty much rugged as hell. Not the new, featureful ones, but the old ones, like the i85, the i90. I used to climb phone poles for a living and dropped my i85 about 25 feet to pavement (and into a dumpster, into a snowbank, into a street intersection) and it still worked flawlessly. After about 10 drops the case fell apart, I snapped it back together and rebooted and we were back in business.

Of course Nextel is moving away from iDEN to CDMA, I can only imagine that will ruin their phone selection.

Re:They just don't get it

[BenjyD]

There is the Nokia 5100 series, which are advertised as 'sports' phones. They are splash proof, with a rubberised casing to protect against knocks.

Working key guards anyone?

[486Hawk]

How about manufactures start giving us a proper key guard, one that does not disable itself when put in a pocket or purse. Older phones had ones where you pressed buttons in a certain pattern to disable it. Now days you only need to pres and hold one button to disable key guard. WTF do you think happens when this phone is placed in a pocket or purse, key guard is turned off and you start dialing random numbers.

Re:Working key guards anyone?

[aXis100]

get a Nokia.

Re:Working key guards anyone?

[The Cisco Kid]

My Nextel i265 requires a two key sequence, which seems to work just fine, My only gripe is that it wont light up the keypad until its unlocked, which makes it a bit harder to see the keys to press the sequence.

boot times

[Clover_Kicker]

I'd give up a lot of features for quicker boot times.

My old old Motorola brick was instant-on, everything since has had more features and slower boot times.

Poor reception not phone related

[Anonymous Coward]

I just replaced a multi-funciton camera/phone with a basic phone/text model. The voice quality is much better when I'm talking (i.e. it doesn't fade in and out) but I drop calls due to signal fade in exactly the same places when I'm driving around town. The biggest problem with reception is topography: in more rural areas, line of sight is frequently interrupted as you go up and down hills causing signals to fade then in cities, large metal and concrete buildings block signals just as effectively. I can no longer count the number to times I'm walking do a street and drop from full strength to no reception as quickly as I turn the corner.

Smalll, no camera or web

[JustNiz]

About 5 years ago I had a Nokia pay-as-you-go phone that was tiny, had a long battery life and no features other than a phone number list.

Now it's almost imposible to find a phone without a camera, web, MP3 player, etc etc, all crap I don't want and that just gets in the way.

I wish I could get that old phone back.

AMEN BROTHER!

[orionware]

I thought I might have been alone when it comes to requirements of a cell phone.

Recently I had to purchase a new phone and was bombarded by features that I could really care less about. The salesperson was incredulous that all I wanted was a frikkin phone that simply just made calls and didn't drop them.

What's that? I can run iTunes and listen to mp3's at sub standard audio quality?! I can use my phone to surf the web and buy things at ebay? I can read news on the tiny screen? I can download tetris? I can set my ringer to a song sang by our latest American Idol wannabes!? Wow!

UN-IMPRESSED.. Want to impress me? Give me a phone that will not drop my calls when I walk into my basement. The only feature I think is useful is bluetooth, and that's only because the wireless headsets are all bluetooth.

1990s Motorola Flip Phone

[BoRegardless]

It is pretty obvious that the best cell phone I ever had was the old original large Motorola flip phone from the early 90s. The were durable, dependable, DISPLAY was bright & readable anytime (one line red LEDs), Didn't have to take the phone apart to change the battery, Didn't freeze up, & were great.

Now Cingular and the others want to "sell" you a new phone-contract deal virtually every time that you enter the store, meaning they are looking at the whizzy phones as a major profit center (remember the circular dial push button pad, Nokia, was it?).

They WANT you to throw away the "old" phone each year.

I wonder who is going to get smart first. Cell phone hardware companies will see their yearly sales plummet if they actually start turning out solid, reliable, basic long lived products.

Re:1990s Motorola Flip Phone

[onid]

Ahh yes the Motorola Star Tac!! I nearly cried the day they said I could no longer use it on the Sprint network. Not 911 compliant they said. Bulllshite I said... but I still had to give it up.
Best damn phone I've ever owned. Easy to use interface, extremely rugged and solid reception. wipes tear

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[hab136]

Roaming overseas is problematic for many US customers - a CDMA phone is useless in Europe, and multi-band CDMA GSM phones are hard to find and expensive. GSM phones are carrier locked so you can't switch providers (unless you unlock the phone)

This is why last year, as a American, I bought my RAZR phone in Europe. No carrier-specific garbage in the phone, no missing features (hello Verizon), and it works everywhere (quad-band GSM).

It was also considerably cheaper at the time (250 euros vs. $400-500). Now they give them away with 2-year contracts, heh.

When I got home, I ordered new service with Cingular (as the only nationwide GSM carrier left in the US), and had them send me the free phone (why not?). I then took the SIM they sent, plopped it in my RAZR, and have been happy ever since. Even got to keep my number from Sprint.

Address book; feature lockout; camera bans

[tepples]

every phone I've had (some really cheap, some really expensive) required that you type in the number and hit 'send'.

Most mobile phone users are neurotypical, can't remember 100 different phone numbers, and use a phone's personal directory ("address book", "contacts", etc) as a crutch. Has the use of a personal directory been standardized in the way that direct dialing has been?

A few years ago, I dropped $200 on a Nokia 3650. It had a nice big color screen

"color" meaning you live in the United States, not Europe or NZ/AU. Carriers in the United States tend to have worse policies than carriers in even Finland.

bluetooth, PDA'esque features, speakerphone, audio recorder

How did you convince your network operator not to lock out features *cough*Verizon and Bluetooth*cough*?

and a camera.

How are you allowed to carry a camera phone, even one that remains turned off and in your pocket, into places that ban cameras, such as many workplaces and movie theaters that show MPAA members' works?

It has its share of buttons, but the layout was actually pretty well thought out.

Does the phone have a decent directional pad for game playing?

Re:Address book; feature lockout; camera bans

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Has the use of a personal directory been standardized in the way that direct dialing has been?"

Nearly. Most phones I've had meant you just push up or down to go through the list, then click the green send button to make the call. I have one phone that is an exception, you have to enter the menu then click on 'Contacts' to get to the list. This doesn't help my point much and supports the earlier one, but hey, I gotta be honest. :) Out of six phones I've had, this is the only one. It's a cheap-ass Motorola and I don't think highly of it.

"color" meaning you live in the United States, not Europe or NZ/AU. Carriers in the United States tend to have worse policies than carriers in even Finland."

Not sure I understand that... color phones aren't common elsewhere? Anyway, yes, I am in the United States. As for the 'worse policies' bit, you're probably right. I'm not very familiar with plans in other countries. I couldn't move that phone I liked to another carrier. (Hence the reason I have a phone I don't like much.) Oh... are you referring to how I spelled color? Hehe.

"How did you convince your network operator not to lock out features *cough*Verizon and Bluetooth*cough*?"

I haven't bumped into this. With the exception of not being able to move my earlier phone to the new provider, I haven't dealt with lock-out. (yet... *sigh*)

"How are you allowed to carry a camera phone, even one that remains turned off and in your pocket, into places that ban cameras, such as many workplaces and movie theaters that show MPAA members' works?"

I've only been challenged on this once. I went to a gov't installation once and they didn't allow communications devices at all whatsoever. Not even a simple pager. I'd like to stress that this was the ONLY time, and we're talking about a place that the general public cannot enter. As for the MPAA comment, I actually work at a movie studio. There has been absolutely no concern over phones there even though secrecy is VERY important. Nearly all my coworkers have camera phones.

"Does the phone have a decent directional pad for game playing?"

Yep. I played a few games on it. Great for killing a few minutes before waiting for dinner to arrive.

Re:Address book; feature lockout; camera bans

[tepples]

Not sure I understand that... color phones aren't common elsewhere?

As you eventually guessed, I was talking about the spelling.

I played a few games on it. Great for killing a few minutes before waiting for dinner to arrive.

Is your Nokia 3650 phone restricted to playing only the games that your network operator sells you, or does it let you install MIDP or Symbian games produced by hobbyists? And would you want to play, say, a game similar to Super Mario with your phone's controls?

Re:Address book; feature lockout; camera bans

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Is your Nokia 3650 phone restricted to playing only the games that your network operator sells you, or does it let you install MIDP or Symbian games produced by hobbyists?"

The latter. You could install stuff over the net, etc.

"And would you want to play, say, a game similar to Super Mario with your phone's controls?"

No. Games like Snake worked just fine, but Mario would be too much for it.

The "features" usually have strings attached!

[King_TJ]

I think many consumers would be more accepting/willing to tackle a learning curve to use advanced features of their phones if providers quit trying to use them all cash "cash cows".

I've been using PDA phones for years, and after my Treo 650 just got run over by a car after it fell off my belt-clip in a parking lot at work, I finally decided "Screw it!" and went with a regular phone instead. I got the new Motorola Razr V3c, thinking the thin shape would be a nice break from carrying around "brick-like" boxes as phones.

The biggest shock I got was when I first went through the Razr's menus and realized practically *everything* was a "subscription-based" download. Want your phone to be able to play a game? Navigate through the "e-store" applet and pick one out that can be played 1 day at a time for 99 cents, or played for "flat rate" of $4.99 per month! Uh... wow.... I'm used to just grabbing some freeware or shareware Palm app and hotsyncing into my phone and being done with it.

Then you get to things like emailing photos to other cellphone users. Ok, sounds like it might be cool, once in a while.... but WAIT! Did I sign up for that "unlimited photo-email" package on my plan? If not, I'm gonna get billed some ridiculous price for each little picture that gets sent out! Maybe I'll just ignore that feature after all.....

Oh yeah... they said the Razr was compatible with AOL instant messenger! Ok, where's that in the menus? Oh... darn. Not there! You have to download it and once again, PAY for it. Well, ok... I can live with spending another $7 or $8 to have that on my phone. But NO, it's yet another thing you pay by the month to keep using on the phone! Grr.... forget it! I'll just use it as a *phone* then and forget all the other stuff. I'll go broke trying to play with all of it!

Confiscation of phones?

[tepples]

Camera

Which increasingly is confiscated in workplaces and movie theatres, even when the phone remains turned off.

Bluetooth - exchanging data with other phone users

Which doesn't help people who are stuck in Verizon territory, where it is company policy to disable Bluetooth and cable data transfer on all phones in order to charge users for more airtime.

Re:Confiscation of phones?

[DrSkwid]

I've never heard of anyone having phones confiscated in the cinema. I'm sure it just wouldn't happen here.

I can't fathom a provider having the functions of the phone turned off to prevent you from connecting to your PC. That's just crazy. Surely worth a class action in the land of the sue.

Those guys really stick the knife into you USians.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Cerebus]

Virgin rides the Sprint network in the US, has better customer service, and the least hassle of any prepaid plan I've ever dealt with.

Re: Reality check, don't be a whiny consumer

[colinnwn]

Hold on now, I've been using cellphones for 15 years. Until wireless phones are cheaper and more reliable than landlines, and handsets don't require an owners manual, there is room for improvement. And several companies need a lot more customer service training and customer friendly policies.

But your characterization is unfair. Hardware has become cheaper, smaller and more reliable, dropped calls have drastically reduced, calling areas have expanded dramatically, sound quality has increased, data services now actually exist, nationwide roaming is an anachronism since its free and indistinguishable from the home network, service plans have added tons of minutes and free calling under many conditions while substantially reducing price. And aside from the decline in customer service I got when Houston Cellular became Cingular, and then AT&T was bought by Cingular, I am much happier with the service I get from T*Mobile now than all 3 of my previous companies.

Its ok to cite specific problems, but to make your sweeping allegations is off the mark.

OMG, why is the UK so expensive...?

[Gadzinka]

I keep hearing that PL is the most expensive telecommunication-wise country in EU, and now I read this. Dedicated data unlimited plan for GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/WiFi[1] is 60-120pln/m in Poland, depending on GSM operator. That's roughly 15-30eur for 1-2GB/m with full speed of available connection. The speed drops considerably after you cross the limit, but it's still free, enough for email, IM etc.

Robert

[1] All Polish GSMs operate WiFi AP in large malls, hotels etc, and those unlimited data plans allow you to access them with no extra charge.

and by "tube"....

[SonicSpike]

...you really mean "subway". Silly Brit, speak English! ;-)

Re:and by "tube"....

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? No, a subway is where you go to buy sandwiches. He's talking about the underground railroad.

Verizon: It's the network, NOT the phone features.

[tepples]

If you're willing to connect it to your computer through the included USB cable and do some poking around

Unless it's locked out *cough*Verizon*cough*.

My experience with T-mobile and Motorola phones has been very positive

Not everybody is lucky enough to live in an area where T-Mobile has coverage.

Can't get a European operator's signal in the USA

[tepples]

Otherwise most of my phones have worked without problems. At least in Europe and Asia. ... Most of the messages here tend to complain about their mobile operator being crappy

As I read it, a lot of the complaints are that the majority of North American operators are crappy.

It depends on who pays for it!

[Dcnjoe60]

So here's the deal. Why can't you have your simple phone AND I have my complex phone?

If the cost of providing all of those features and bandwith for your complex phone needs to be subsidized by all the simple phone users, then how is that just? Maybe there would be enough bandwidth and fewer dropped calls if people weren't sending photos and playing music and surfing the web and phones were simply being used as phones.

The real reason, which the article and other posts haven't hit on for the dissatisfaction is this. Early adopters of cell phones, were business users who had a business need. Then came the technology users followed by the gadget people. Now, the remaining 60% of the market is everyday people, like your parents and grandparents who aren't into text messaging, surfing the web, downloading whatever and all of the "new" features being crammed into today's cell phones (or if they do these things, they don't do them on cell phones). What does this segment of the market want? Reliable, inexpensive no-frills cell phone service -- just like they had with their land-lines.

So, sure, we can have it both ways. Provide the no-frills options to those who want it with phones at $29.99 and 1000 minutes of calls for $29.99/month but if you want high speed internet, that's another $59.99/month. Want to watch cable on your phone, sure $39.99/month (HBO would be an extra $10/month) camera-phones, well the cost of your phone just went up another $30, etc, etc.

The problem is, the current pricing model spreads the infrastructure cost over everyone the same, simple user to complex user, so in effect, the simple user subsidizes the complex user.

Re:It depends on who pays for it!

[Doppler00]

The cost of all those features isn't being subsidized by anyone. In case you didn't notice, you have to pay EXTRA, and disproportionately extra for data features such as text messaging, sending pictures, and data accesses. In fact, you should be thankful that people use text messages because they use thousands of times less bandwidth than a voice call.

The two problems with cellphones are still that they haven't built out enough towers enough. The other problem I don't understand is why we don't have 22Khz quality voice calls yet. The bandwidth should be there but it isn't used to increase quality, it's still used to jam as many users onto a channel as possible.

The reason that voice costs more is the same reason long distance used to cost more on a phone. It's something people highly demanded, thus they can charge more for the service. Unlike data which right now isn't necessarily something people need, so you have to charge less to offer that service. No one is losing in this equation.

Re:It depends on who pays for it!

[Dcnjoe60]

The reason that voice costs more is the same reason long distance used to cost more on a phone. It's something people highly demanded, thus they can charge more for the service. Unlike data which right now isn't necessarily something people need, so you have to charge less to offer that service. No one is losing in this equation.

But voice doesn't cost more. There are many regional cell phone companies offering 500-1000 minutes per month with free evenings and free phone to phone for $29-$49 per month depending on the carrier. If they can do it, why can't the big companies?

What the regional companies don't offer is free long distance, or internet or all of the other bells and whistles to attract the youth market.

One of the major carriers is offering high speed internet through their cell network cheaper than their land network. Assuming the ISP cost is the same, how can they actually do that?

Everyone says voice is a high bandwith application, however, voice compresses quite well. There are a lot of gaps and spaces in it (unlike music and video).

The subsidy is built into the base cost. Look at the lowest plan cost of your carrier. Then as the minutes increase, notice how the cost does not increase proportionately. If a 500 minute plan costs $39/month, a non-subsidized 1000 minute plan should cost $78/month however it doesn't. That is because there is built in overhead (subsidy) in the basic per minute charge (even in the higher minute plans) to cover all the other things (besides operational overhead) the company is charging for.

The text messaging you reference is a low bandwidth application, and the companies make a killing off of it. However, the live video feeds and tv programs that they are touting are not low bandwidth applications and will take significantly more towers.

Who is going to pay for all of those towers? Everyone with a cell phone, whether they use the new features or not. Therefore, your high-end features will be further subsidized by the low end users who will be paying for the increased infrastructure disproportionate to their needs.

Re:It depends on who pays for it!

[Total_Wimp]

I was in a position to get a cell phone for my ex-girlfriend's dad and this is exactly what he got:

Cell phone: free with the plan.
The plan: attached to mine for $10 a month.
Most of his calls were to his daughter who was also on the plan and those callse were free. The rest of his calls mostly happened on nights and weekends so they didn't cost anything.

I pay for every text and about $30 a month for unlimited data. I call heavily during the day as part of my work so my voice plan is expensive too.

Who's subsidizing who? Really, you simple phone and voice-only people with your free calls, free long distance and no need for internet or texting need to get a grip. Yes, the service could be better, but it's not because of my fancy phone. They make way more than enough off of my services to build out infrastructure. Far more than they're making off of you.

Sorry bud, but if you think you're paying for my gadgets then you might as well pony up with some numbers. From where I'm sitting it looks like you're on easy street and complaining that it could be even easier if all us people paying your way would pay even more.

Here's a hint: When they give you a phone and let you have a fixed-rate plan with rollover, free nights and weekends, free calls with others on the same carrier and free long distance and your bill comes out to less than $50 a month, then you're not the subsidizer. You never were and you never will be. They guy paying phone bills over $100 a month, and especially the one paying more than $200, they're doing the subsidizing. That's the way these things work.

Just sit back and thank goodness that all you need is the loss leader services. I hate to be rude, but it does bother me that I'm paying your way, and you're the one complaining about it.

TW

Re:It depends on who pays for it!

[Dcnjoe60]

I know you may feel like you are the one subsidizing others by what you are paying, but if you look at the financial reports of the cell phone companies, you will see that it is the other way around.

Those add a phone for $10 share somebody else's minutes, right? They don't get extra minutes. So effectively what has happened is the phone company just made an extra $10 for not having to increase the amount of minutes in use.

If you are paying as much as you are and you aren't getting fixed rates with free nights and free long distance, it's not because you are subsidizing anybody, it's because you are getting ripped off. Every major carrier offers these and obviously if you aren't getting them, your carrier is offering something that makes it worth paying that amount even without them.

Again, get the real data from the phone companies and you will see who is subsidizing who. It's the small low volume account that helps provide the service for you, not the otherway around. The numbers don't lie.

It's the 8 bit days all over again...

[poesiemeister]

In the 8bit computing days, manufacturers would provide computers with software with wonderful features advertised, which hardly ever never worked. The maunfacturers were interested in sales, not service. Plus ca change...

What happened in those days, of course, is IBM jackboots, 16-bit, and this upstart little company called Microsoft. I promise you, in those days, Microsoft's products were stunningly reliable. It's one of the reason why they won the market. This time, IMHO, M$ are part of the problem.

If history is to repeat, so we get reliably complex phones, then a standard mobile phone architecture needs to appear, and the hardware manufacturers and network operators need to lose control of the software that appears on phones.

Could any company do it? Apple? AT&T? Ikea?

Re:No it's not! Why are we always stuck with v1.0?

[AaronLawrence]

YOu are very right. The phone companies still try to operate like they are making a voice-only phone ie. a piece of consumer electronics, yet they are now primarily software vendors. They *must* involve lots of real users with beta programs and forums that the *phone developers* take part in, and ongoing maintenance releases, in order to get it right.

I had a particularly absurd conversation with a Nokia rep who insisted that they removed the ability to postpone a calendar alarm to "save space". Sure. In order to load on the Java games and leave a large chunk of unused memory for "expansions" which never eventuated.

Whereas if you actually had a forum where the developers participated, it would probably be two posts and then done. "oh duh yeah we accidentally removed that."

missing option: NTP service...

[Jerry Smith]

How often does the cell phone communicate with the nearest antenna? Few times a day, not included turning on or off? WHY OH WHY DOES IT NOT SYNCHRONISE THE TIME??!! NAME ME ONE, JUST ONE NORMAL (i.e not a trimmed down laptop) MOBILE PHONE THAT IS CAPABLE OF DOING THAT!!

Re:missing option: NTP service...

[The Cisco Kid]

AFAIK, most modern cellphones do in fact do this. I suppose there were probably any number that didnt, but I cant recall ever having one.

Re:missing option: NTP service...

[Alioth]

All Nokia phones from the cheapest to most expensive will sync time with the cell tower. The option is OFF by default. Have you checked that you have turned that feature on?

Some cell phone companies don't broadcast time though. Most UK providers DO NOT much to my annoyance, but in the US, it seems like all the GSM providers send the time.

Re:missing option: NTP service...

[solitas]

My LG-3 (Cingular) always has the correct time on it and syncs like a bitch - it's on my desk, near the computer's external speakers, and I hear it send a bzzt-zzt-zzt-zzt every couple/three minutes to the tower.

I've also noticed it doing that on the rare occasions I've had it shut off - has anyone else noticed the same thing?

Re:missing option: NTP service...

[Jerry Smith]

Sir, I will find that feature, and then I'll hope that Dutch companies broadcast time. Thank you all, you have been really helpfull.

Where's my wrist phone?

[cscole]

All I want is a SMALL phone I can wear on my wrist, with a bluetooth headset:
- no speaker or mike
- no cameras
- no web browser
- no email
- no mp3 player

They're have been a couple of prototypes, a couple of years ago, and one was available in Japan for a while...

To answer my own question ... there's no money in it. The mobile phone companies need to up-sell you all the additional services -- that's where they make their profit -- the basic phone service is break-even at best... ...sigh

Phones for senior citizens

[Anonymous Coward]

What about senior citizens who want to use a cell phone? They just need it only for one reason - to make a telephone call. Recent functionality that gets loaded into cell phones are tangential to its basic purpose. If somebody makes a phone that is easy to use for senior citizens, lots more of them would actually sign up and use one.

Wifi phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Wifi VoIP phones are the latest rage. Except for coverage they are awesome. I have one myself and, yes, I leave my access point open for others to use with their Wifi phones and laptops.

I thought I was the only one

[interstellar_donkey]

I really don't like my cell phone. Too many features I never use, and lacking in what I'd really want. I just want a phone that does the simple things. A phone that sounds clear and doesn't drop calls. A phone that keeps its charge for a long time. That's pretty much it.

I hate text messaging, and I make up a story that I don't know how to read them. I can figure it out, I just refuse to communicate that way. If you want to talk to me, call me. If I'm not there, leave a message. I'd much rather say my phone doesn't support text messaging.

What I would pay for is a phone that looks nice. That is, a phone that doesn't look like some cheap plastic toy.

Give me duribility and reliability, and I'd have no problem dropping a few hundred bucks on a phone. I don't want a camera, I don't want to play video games, I don't want to surf the web . . I just want a phone.

Re:I thought I was the only one

[argent]

Apart from not hating text messaging per se... I'm you. I didn't like to use text on my previous horrid phone because it didn't work worth a damn and it was genuinely too hard to navigate the menus. My new one is still too fancy, but it's closer.

My daughter's new phone looks even better. Instead of a custom connector on the bottom, it's got a standard sized headset jack, a power jack, and a mini-USB port.

Make the damn phones generic, simple, and reliable, and stop making the "free phone" part of the marketing for the 2 year contract. Let me plug it into my computer and have it show up as a USB mass storage device, with my address book and phone log as CSV files I can pull into a spreadsheet or do anything else with. Quit trying to make the phone part of my "style", it's just a damn phone.

Egh. Should've previewed first

[Jesus_666]

Here's the unmangled list of requirements:
- is a candybar (moving parts = decreased durability = bad)
- has a lo-res black and white display
- has no camera
- has no support for any kind of additional programs. In fact it shouldn't have an operating system. A firmware is enough for basic phone support
- is cheap (I'm talking <= 100 EUR, preferably much lower than 100)
- MAYBE can be connected to my iBook for on-the-go internet. But I don't really need that

Re:No it's not! Why are we always stuck with v1.0?

[JakartaDean]

I couldn't agree more.

I've had Nokias for about ten years, and finally switched -- to an O2 (Microsoft of all things). Why? I always bought Nokia because:
1. I already had a plethora of Nokia chargers; and
2. All my contact detail were in a proprietary Nokia database, which was too hard to crack.

Well, my last phone does it all. I wanted this because I travel a lot to remote locations, and the ability to do email with whatever service is available on a small PDA/phone was too tempting. I'm in the process of hacking the Nokia database to get my numbers off my old phone, and I'm happy not to have to go through endless menu options (the default to forward a text message is to use email???? give me a break).

Give me simple, or give me complete. Nokia does neither, IMO.

GSM phones don't sync the time...

[YesIAmAScript]

At least in the US.

They keep time perfectly, because TDMA (GSM) is built around dividing time into precise parts. Also, in most areas, they'll even adjust the time when daylight savings occurs. But they don't actually sync the time.

So, on GSM in the US, if you set your phone 5 mins fast, it'll stay 5 mins fast forever.

CDMA (Cingular/Verizon) do sync the time. You just turn your phone on and it picks up the time from the service.

Re:GSM phones don't sync the time...

[Alioth]

I don't think you're correct.

I'm in the US on vacation from Britain. When I arrived at the airport terminal and turned my phone on, it instantly synced up with the correct time, which is 6 timezones behind what the phone was set to when I left. When I crossed timezones in the US, the phone instantly synced with the local time.

It's a GSM phone. It roams between T-Mobile, Cingular and AT&T Wireless most of the time when I'm in the US. I've never had an issue with it showing the wrong time.

Perhaps you need to choose the setting on the phone to synchronize time - Nokia phones at least have the synchronize the clock option turned OFF by default.

Re:GSM phones don't sync the time...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is totally untrue! Try any Cingular phone, turn the auto update feature and set the time manually to 5 minutes ahead. Then turn the auto update feature back on and the phone will automatically adjust to the correct time (ie 5 minutes back)!! I've tried this on 3 different Cingular phones and 2 different T-Mobile phones. I can't believe this was modded informative when the poster was talking out of his ass - although its not the first time one Slashdot that this has happened.

Re:GSM phones don't sync the time...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you cite a source for this information? I'm guessing no, since it is inaccurate. In fact you have it backwards, US GSM carriers typically have network time sync, while European carriers do not. Please look up NITZ, it stands for Network Identity and Time Zone and is used on GSM networks. According to the NITZ spec:

"As a network option, it shall be possible to send universal time (UT) by the network. Time information shall include:Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Second, and Timezone and DST. The expected accuracy of the time information is in the order of minutes."

You can also search Howard's Forum to see that both Cingular and T-Mobile support NITZ. Please check your sources next time.

Convergence is not a myth.

[plasmacutter]

While i agree whole heartedly that a phone should be only a phone, convergence as a whole is not a myth.

Xbox media center is the ultimate convergence device in my opinion.

It will interface with computer media network shares, play every file format under the sun on your tv, including dvds, and also allow you to play all your xbox games. it is a home entertainment convergence device. It is also extremely illegal because the DMCA and other laws like it are designed to prevent convergence, which is why big incumbent electronics firms don't lobby against it.. they want you to buy 5 devices instead of 1.

that said, convergence needs to be practical
you can't make a hybrid collision of .. for example.. a child's dolly and a nuclear weapon. it doesnt work that way.

those sucked

[YesIAmAScript]

That's the MicroTac 950 (550 if you had the 7-segment display, 950 for dot-matrix).

Those phones sucked.

I had the super-duper version, the MicroTac Ultra Lite (yours couldn't be a Lite or Ultra Lite since those had green displays).

You forget that the battery wouldn't even last all day (unless you used the inch-thick version) even if you didn't talk on it at all. It didn't have voice mail notification. It had no caller ID. And it didn't have a vibrating ring (but my Ultra Lite did, the first phone that did).

As to the poster who replied, the StarTac was far from a tank, the hinges were very vulnurable and the antennas broke off constantly. They were easy to use though.

I replace my MicroTac Ultra Lite with a Nokia 2185. The Nokia 2100 series. It was much better, had a good address book (for the time), a good display, the battery lasted for two days and it had a readable display for caller ID use.

I never had a Nokia 6100 or 5100, but if you ask me, those were the ultimate simple phone. Small, incredibly easy to use, great UI, good buttons. Antenna didn't break off too often. And the battery lasted for a couple days.

My father had a Nokia 5120 (or 40 or 60, one of the IS-136 TDMA phones on Cingular) until last year. He really loved that phone. And for good reason.

Since when are we a "new generation?"

[r_jensen11]

Unless they're talking about preteens buying phones, I can hardly see how we're a "new generation" when most cellphone users were established consumers before cellphones were:
A) Invented
B) Known by the general public
C) Popular

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Anonymous Coward]

That $20 lasts me barely a week, so when all the crap is added up it turns out to be TWELVE times as expensive as the service I was used to. And on top of that, of course, coverage SUCKS. And when I'm in an area with no coverage at all for a few weeks, I come back, and find that my prepaid phone, with a positive balance, has been turned off - apparently because one is required to add money every month whether you're using it or not, or else you lose it.

This was with T-Mobile, who were reputed to have by far the best coverage in the area I was in, by the way.

The way it works with prepaid is totally clear from their website. Yes, the minutes expire in a month when you upgrade with $10. If you don't want that, don't upgrade with $10, duh.

I have a T-mobile prepaid too and upgrade with $100 increments, which stay valid for a year, and give you 1000 minutes of airtime. $0.10/minute is pretty reasonable for a prepaid phone, methinks.

What about both?

[Foerstner]

I don't think that population size or density are particularly compelling arguments

Replace the "or" with an "and" and you might have a better idea.

Obviously, it's easy and profitable to cover a small, densely populated area.
It's somewhat more difficult, but profitable to cover a large, densely populated area.
It's less profitable, but still fairly easy to cover a small, sparsely populated area.

Covering a large, sparsely populated area is a pain. Canada and Australia would seem to bear this out.

For that matter, I wonder how good the coverage can be in (very sparsely populated) northern Finland.

Re:What about both?

[ceoyoyo]

I live in Canada. I lived for twenty some years in a place that would probably be considered uninhabited by US standards. I'm not sure I've ever had a dropped call.

Yes, if you wander too far off the pavement you might not have any service at all but it's not like you constantly go in and out of dead spots.

Re:What about both?

[gatzke]

Exactly. Canada and Finland appear to have low population density due to large uninhabited tracts of space. The density if pretty high in the populated areas. If you ignore the totally

The US has moderate density popluation through most of the east coast and midwest, with large low density areas out West and in Alaska. It is much harder to cover 90% of our population vs covering 90% in Canada or Finland. We have a more difficult problem in the US overall.

What angers me is that I still get dropped calls in large metro areas in the US. We still have crappy systems in place and my provider won't fix the holes on major highways.

hallelujah!

[whitroth]

What's been done with cellphones has been a massive "triumph" of marketing over anything resembling usefullness.

    - A timy phone with no cover, allowing anything you bump, including
            the keys in your pocket, to dial Moldavia in the FSSR, and
            which actively encouraged idiots who thought we wanted to
            hear their "private" conversations 30 feet away, as they
            yelled into their phones
    - "cool" screens, which almost can't be read outdoors in the
            daytime, and, my personal "favorite",
    - the idea that anyone wanted to surf the Web on a 1.5"x2" screen

Remember that the whole idea of the idiot thing is to make phone calls....

          mark, who is also irritated that I can't use 10-10 dialaround
                        on mine

Great phone. Period.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're looking for a bare bones phone, I would highly recommend the Nokia 1100. It's small, reliable, and the battery seems to last forever. No fancy stuff--just a fine basic phone.

Re:Great phone. Period.

[chawly]

Nokia 1600 is OK too, from this point of view.

I hate gadget phones.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I used to love them, but really, I have a laptop that I carry everywhere that's more than adequate for email, IM (I refuse to say "text-messaging"), web (wireless), and anything else I want to do. I can even plug in a headset and use it for voice over IP.

So, when I buy a phone, I just want a phone, thanks. Crypto would be nice, and I kind of like the other features, so long as they don't get in the way of actually using the phone. And I'm happy with the way my current phone does that.

The big problem is, other features cost money. It's not that I don't want a camera in my phone, although I'd rather it just plug into a, y'know, camera if I want to send someone a picture. It's that I don't want to pay $1 to send a picture.

And why are phone IMs (again, I refuse to say "text messages") charged for receiving, but not sending? And why do they then allow AOL to send me spam via that service, about their own IM for phones? Hint: Spammers should be paying ME for the privelage of sending spam to me, not the other way around. And if I want to use IM, I want to be able to use a full-size keyboard, and by the time I can take out a crappy, made-for-a-phone keyboard, I could've pulled out my laptop and used that.

It's not that I don't want to download wallpapers and ringtones, it's that 10c for a 300x200 image is a bit much, don't you think? Would you pay that much for the Slashdot images?

I'll be willing to use a cumbersome, feature-creep phone when it costs me no more to make unlimited use of all of those features than it costs me for basic service now.

The reason for the receiver paying

[AnEmbodiedMind]

do you really still pay to *receive* calls?

The reason for this is apparently due to the fact that for some reason cell providers decided to make cell numbers indistinguishable from normal land-line number.

By law it is then impossible to charge people to call that number if they can't tell if or what they will be charged.

I guess that they could start introducing a new set of distinguishable cell numbers, but the current model is probably too entrenched by now - and must have it's own advantages.

Re:The reason for the receiver paying

[NMerriam]

Actually, it is federal law that dictates cell numbers come from the same pool as landline numbers. This is from back when Faxes first came out, the idea is that you didn't want an exchange that was solely fax numbers, because then people will just fax their advertisements to every number in that exchange. Now, while there are still abuse arguments, people generally don't want callers to know if they're calling a cheap prepaid cell vs a regular landline.

And now that number portability is law, there is no chance we'll ever go to a segregated system. For all the Europeans who claim our cell-owner-pays system is messed up, number portability is the one major choice they'll never have -- here in the USA if you get mad at your phone company, you can buy a cell phone and take your phone number. If you get mad at your cell phone company, you can take the number to a landline. And none of your friends or customers have to be inconvenienced with new numbers or figuring out what they'll have to pay for the phone call.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Anonymous Coward]

No one's going to pay attention to a pair of AC posts, but I'm in the same boat. $100 a year for prepaid service, since I just have the phone for emergency and occasional convenience usage. Best deal around, and T-Mobile was, when I looked, the only US company that had pre-paid minutes that would last this long.

Re:one would think? The red phone

[Anonymous Coward]

check this bad boy out...
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php? products_id=287

Baby boomers

[dcclark]

My parents have recently switched over to cell phones for all their long-distance service, keeping a basic landline only for emergencies and local calls. They got the simplest cell phone they could find, and it's still a huge effort just to check their call log. The manual is clearly written for someone of my generation, not theirs, and it is no help at all.

They realize this, and they had a great idea: a phone made especially for baby boomers. Have a BIG, bold, backlit keypad, with each number on a separate key. (Theirs has "columns" of numbers all on one key, and it's easy to hit the wrong one.) Have a big, high-contrast screen. Have a very simple interface, with ONLY these features: dial a number, look up missed calls and previous calls, check voicemail, and maybe send text messages. No games, no web browser, no voice recognition training. Then, write a manual that spells things out in very simple steps, with minimal technical language (and define the technical terms clearly).

There's a HUGE market out there for something like this -- the baby boomers! If one company or the other would produce a phone like this, they could probably make a tidy profit from it.

Something to do while your service is down

[inactivist]

All those cool features give you something to do when you can't get a connection.

My daughter (who is living on her own dime, thankfully) seems to want the latest phone - it's a fashion statement for her (and, thankfully, she's decided to grow out of that recently - even ditching her cell phone service altogether!)

It seems that many people have to have the latest, greatest toys and gadgets, creating an endless upgrade cycle.. I can understand the desire, but how many people really want to buy cell phones with built-in dental floss dispensers?

I suppose I'm an old fart, but I just want a small, light, inexpensive phone that has great reception and has awesome battery life. I've got that now in an older Nokia. Needless to say, I'm not in the market for a newer cellphone.

Take a hint from Apple

[foamrotreturns]

Hello, mobile phone manufacturers! Wake up and smell the Mac OS X! Apple designed an operating system that is BOTH brain-dead-easy to use for newbies & non-techies AND powerful enough to suit the needs of nearly any geek or tinkerer out there. People keep trying to draw this line in the sand over "simple or complex" but that dichotomy does NOT exist. The real dichotomy is between good design and bad design. Mobile phone manufacturers: If you want to increase your sales, make a phone that is simple to use. Disable all the bells and whistles out of the box, but make them easy to find if someone wants to try them out. In the phone's menu, have a whole category devoted to the bells and whistles, with simple check boxes next to the features. When the check box is checked, the feature becomes available.

That sounds dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

and doesn't sound anything like Mac OS X at all..

desktop operating systems do not translate onto a phone.. apples and oranges

No time to slow down and make things right

[inactivist]

The more you overwork the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the toilet.

Complexity breeds: bugs. usability issues. frustration. Note that it need not be so; however, we live in the real world of human product managers, human marketing droids, human (well... sort of) software developers, and human users.

The usual result of an endless stream of new features: imperfection upon imperfection upon imperfection. You can't get it right on the first, second, or even the third iteration.

Some of the most highly successful and wildly popular consumer devices are also the most narrowly-focused. Do-it-all products almost always leave a significant chunk of the market pissed off and unimpressed. Note that I'm not equating narrow focus with inelegance or lack of sophistication - narrowing focus allows one to better serve the people who need your service.

If you stop (or slow) the rampant featuritis, you get a chance to 'perfect' what you have now: fix bugs, fix usability, simplify the interactions, learn from your mistakes.

Now, this isn't gonna happen in the real world, because manufacturers have to roll out the new feature du jour in order to grab attention and make last year's models obsolete.

And, I must say, I do like the *idea* of the integration in some respects; it's just that the execution always seems to be lacking.

Twenty years hence, there *will* be highly integrated mobile devices; I doubt they'll be anything like the tinkertoys the uber-geeks are carrying around with them today. The survivor(s) will be the ones that make the features easy enough for mom to use. Or ignore.

Ob Simpsons

[Bloke down the pub]

I have an old Siemans model.

These soundalike ripoff artists really piss me off. I sure won't be buying another Panersonic TV or Hatichi DVD player.

sorry

[Anonymous Coward]

There are lots of basic phones out there; they come with pre-paid plans and cost around $20-$40. And for the next step up, a basic 1 year plan, you get a phone stuffed to the gills with features for free.

News flash:

[CAIMLAS]

News flash: most people's "digital needs" consist of checking their email daily to once a week. Meanwhile, cell phones have become, essentially, a societal necessity. People don't have "digital needs", and really don't want to have something that's got a dozen different features which they won't use (especially when there are additional service charges associated with them).

At the very least, people want the "bare bones" cell phones because most modern cell phones have too many features which are poorly designed which get in the way of using the damn phone as a phone. And, when cell phones are essentially designed to last no longer than a year (ie, they break under normal use after that much time), who wants to deal with that nonsense?

Better check the facts! Parent is misinformed.

[puto]

As a former Cingular employee, who has since moved to Ma Bell(Bell South). Cingular is GSM and most phones do sync with the network time, GSM moreso that TDMA, which TDMA towers have almost been converted to GSM.

TDMA is analog, GSM is digital.

The phone will sync to the network time always, for the past two years most gsm phones out of the box do this.

Get the facts straignt.

Puto

It's about bleeding time!

[argent]

Ever since my company switched from Cingular to Verizon and gave us all godawful LG phones to replace the old reliable Nokia bars (monochrome displays, no web, no ringtones, but about a month of standby) I've been pining for a simple "it's just a goddamn phone" phone.

Wasp T12

[Bralkein]

You'll forget all about utilitarian after you check out the Wasp T12. It's totally fucking Mexico!

Re:Wasp T12

[chawly]

Wha.....? You're off your chump if you think anybody over 13 years old is going to want to carry a thing like this. Much less try try to use it to telephone. Cool ? You need an ice-pack on your head.

Re:Wasp T12

[Bralkein]

*whoosh*

Re:Wasp T12

[chawly]

Whoosh yourself, you daft blighter. I use Linux, so I do. I bet I'm at least as cool as you.

Re:Verizon- We never stop working you.

[sethstorm]

That sounds more like something of Verizon's doing than anything - the V3/V3i/V3x dont have as much problems with that - just throw it on a carrier and the only thing you might run into is the data charges.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Arker]

I'm sure they're a great company to deal with if you *want* to pay $100/month for all their bells and whistles.

Now try to get simple, reliable service out of them for a reasonable price.

Needed features

[Nerdposeur]

Not that anyone will read this now, but I really wish phones would have sensible features. Like:

--An "I'm sleeping but press one to ring and wake me up for an emergency" mode
--Standard ability to "beam" all contact information from one phone to another instead of having to enter it by hand. All phones should have this.
--If I'm going to have the internet on my phone, why not an internet PHONEBOOK? Hello?
--How about automatic online backup of my phone book info? Two times now I've had my phone die and lost all my contacts, when my internet-equipped phone could have just uploaded a tiny CSV file of my info to a server and saved it for me.

In short, a high-tech phone should do what a good secretary would do: make calls, defer calls, take messages, look up and keep contact information, and generally save me a lot of hassle.

I don't need a phone that works as a camera, plays movies, or has games. I don't even need a color screen. I already have a computer; I just want a really smart phone.

These simplified features would save battery power and of course, make for a cheaper phone. Which is why cell carriers aren't interested. :(

Is it possible to get a third-party phone? Does anybody makes something like I'm describing??

Re:Needed features

[BenjyD]

O2 (UK) have an online phonebook backup service, I think Orange do as well.

Re:No it's not! Why are we always stuck with v1.0?

[beeblebrox]

But really there was nothing wrong with the hardware -- I could see that the phone could do everything that it advertised, but Nokia were on to greener pastures now that this phone was out of the door.

You seem to be in the UK, so class actions may not apply/be feasible. Have you tried the Sale Of Goods Act?

In Defense of the RAZR

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your points regarding all the little charges but the Razr and Treo 650 serve different purposes. Having both phones myself, i've seen both sides of the argument too.

You really won't use all those games and apps to begin with. If you want a computer, bring a laptop. Otherwise, enjoy the great outdoors, talk to people, think about things, or draw in a sketchbook.

The Razr also doesn't need a belt-clip, which caused your Treo to break. You can fit the phone in a tiny ziplock bag, keep it in your pocket, and use a bluetooth headset. The bag is necessary because any sweat will degrade the phone. You could do this with a Treo 650, but it is a lot bulkier. That extra space in your pockets would make room for a gps and a small camera, which you could use a lot more when outside.

All this being said, i'd switch to a thin GSM/Skype dual phone as soon as they come out, and reduce my phone bills to $20 a month.

I aqree, to an extent

[kimvette]

I used to absolutely hate camera phones, until I bought one (to get the other features I wanted, I had to pick a model with the camera). When I bought one I never thought I'd use it but it comes in very handy at times, e.g., shopping for parts, find a product I really like for the office, send a snapshot off to my partners to see if they want it, or a product I think we should offer to clients, take a photo, then research it when I get access to a real browser. It is also very handy for video surveillance jobs (e.g., photograph the structure for my electricians to price the wiring aspect of the job). One drawback is I obviously can't bring that phone into restricted areas (e.g., certain military installations). Also, I've found that my phone's camera is IR sensitive (no IR filter over the CCD), so it enables me to quickly verify an IR emitter is working as expected. It has come in very handy at times.

Also, I really like basic MP3 functionality. Nothing like having the Futurama theme as a ringtone! :D I also look for the ability for a very basic calendar and basic digital recorder functionality.; iTunes? Don't want it, don't need it on a phone. An SD slot would be a nice plus but really not necessary. Ability to get a data plan with a phone and use bluetooth or USB to get net access for my PDA or laptop is nice, too. I must admit I haven't used that feature much but probably will do so as Cingular continues to increase their data rates.

Now, for a PDA? Aside from the very basic calendaring, I don't like the convergance. I like a PDA that is not tied to a cell provider, has at least 128MB of RAM, VGA resolution, and SD AND CF slots. I don't bring my PDA everywhere with me, and don't want such a bulky phone (that's one reason I'll never go with a crackberry - they're too darn bulky). As an aside, I'm glad the PocketPC seems to be gaining momentum again (it's one product Microsoft really got right!).

Re:I aqree, to an extent

[Browncoat]

I'm pretty much just like you. I love my camera phone, it's become very handy. Sometimes when I'm out, it's hard to explain to the person I'm talking to what something looks like. Why not take a picture? The MP3 feature is great, and it's a necessity for some people who really can't afford an MP3 player, or who don't have a large collection of music, but they want to listen to music. Or they don't want to carry around a lot of gadgetry, so they can get a phone with MP3 capability.

my phone has a great calendar. It's so basic, I love it. One button takes me to my calendar, where it's by day. All I have to do is go to that day, and put in whatever event I want. Plus, when I get to that month, it tells me how many events I've placed for that month, and it'll highlight the days on the calendar.

It also comes in handy, because I browse in bookstores a lot, and sometimes I don't have a notepad or sheet of paper or even a pen with me to write down the title of a book. I love reading, but I can't buy books all the time. So if I can't write down the title, and won't remember it later, I can take a pic of the book itself and find it at the library later.

J. D. Power

[jefu]

J.D.Power and associates looks to me like a group that will happily craft a survey to show whatever you like - at least thats the conclusion I come to from seeing their results on TV ads over the years. Which makes me wonder : who paid for this survey?

Re:Dissatisfied cell phone users...

[Browncoat]

Hmm. That's odd. When my phone gets put on silent, it's pretty much totally silent. Even when I use my camera, if my phone is on silent, then there's no annoying "click."

Re:No it's not! Why are we always stuck with v1.0?

[wintermute000]

Agreed!!!

The last 'new-gen' phone I got was a Nokia 6230 which I went for due to (what I thought) was MP3 support. That was ALL I wanted: voice, text, MP3. Got a 1 gig MMC card. Then I realised:

a.) Proprietary dock, no headphone jack, nokia headphones bite. OK no big deal, i had read about this online, and purchased a 3rd party nokia port --> headphone jack thingy from ebay for like 30 bucks. I'll deal with it.

b.) To take the MMC card out requires taking the battery out and restarting phone, no plug and upload/download. A pain when you're a music geek

I can live with the above two as mere annoyances, then the real whoppers

c.) Phone cannot play files even alphabetically or via a playlist, it always plays MP3s in the EXACT ORDER THEY WERE UPLOADED. And you need to manually create the playlists in an external program, then upload them to a special hidden folder. God forbid, if you changed the file structure on your card and had some out of date playlists referencing non-existent files, the thing crashed.

= every time you wanted to put a new CD onto the thing it took 10 minutes of fscking around.

Then d.) The random crashing hit and I gave up, bit the bullet and bought a replacement for my (terrible but at least it worked, but that's another story) Creative Nomad. hehehe.

Seriously, it was only a minor software issue that prevented the phone from playing MP3s in ALPHABETICAL ORDER FFS its not a big deal eh. Instead they make you jump through hoops. What about UMS browsing of file contents w. normal 3.5mm headphone jack and normal USB connection. Its not technologically advanced or costly is it!!! All that phone needed to become that mythical phone+ipod combo was a USB dock, normal headphone jack, and MP3 functionality like any cheap flash player.

I'm thinking all someone needs to do is design an elongated phone case over any normal candy bar phone, and cram a flash MP3 player into it, viola

Re:No it's not! Why are we always stuck with v1.0?

[Anonymous Coward]

like an idiot I'll have a Nokia E61 on order soon. Maybe that'll work better :-)

So no I don't believe phone "convergence" is a myth when the phone manufacturers get so darned close. It's their unwillingness to go the extra mile after the phone has been released and tested on a large scale which causes people to damn their gadget-phones as white elephants.

My wife and I have a 3-year-old. When he does something we don't like, we don't reward him.

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[Anonymous Coward]

...I ordered new service with Cingular (as the only nationwide GSM carrier left in the US)

You poor, poor person.

Cingular, from everything I've seen and heard, sucks.

T-mobile, the OTHER nationwide GSM carrier in the US, has good service & support at the first level. Try to do anything complicated and it turns into a disaster, but they have been pretty good and certainly I do better than Cingular users.

wrong problem

[alizard]

In almost all of the rest of the world, there's a single GSM standard and frequency range... and a GSM phone can be used basically anywhere, going from one mobile telco network to another is seamless, from the user POV, it's one big network that's everywhere. (presumably until the user who does lots of traveling gets her phone bill)

Here, the FCC said "let the marketplace decide"... and we have lots of big networks, but little interoperability between them and changine networks isn't a matter of changing a SIM, generally, it's a matter of buying a new phone. So as a Cingular GSM user, if I can't access Cingular I'm standing next to a Nextel PCS cell, I'm still screwed... and changing networks because I like their prices better generally means buy a new phone... the idea behind this from the industry POV is to REDUCE marketplace competitiveness by making it expensive to change networks.

I don't WANT a camera on the phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't WANT a camera on the phone. In lots of government and government contractor sites, they won't let your cellphone in if it has a camera. What's more, for most the camera stinks; if you want a picture, bring something that is actually good at it.

I'm over 50...

[alizard]

and I occasionally use SMS text messaging.

It's great for sending messages to people in foriegn countries, and it's great for sending passwords for encrypted zipfiles via a channel different from the one used to send the zipfile.

(looking down at myself) I'm not a teenage girl that I've noticed lately, otherwise I'd look at myself in the mirror instead of pr0nsurfuing.

With respect to a PDA, since I got it to sync to my Linux box, I use it all the time. Great for reading e-books and a notebook replacement, I can squirt any notes I take straight into the computer without having to transcribe them.

The only advantage I can see to a camphone is... the ability to take so-so quality pictures without making it obvious one is doing so.

However, I should not have to spend hours with an instruction manual trying to decipher my phone's UI. I don't care what features are on my phone above the basic voice call and text messaging as long as the UI makes them easy to get to and they don't compromise basic functionality.

Cancelled Sprint internet/picture service

[Retired Replicant]

Sprint's "Vision" pack cost $10 extra a month and was so unintuitive it was unusable. I hated trying to read news stories on that tiny fricking screen, and trying to figure out how to use the camera was impossible. The only way I will ever care to have a camera or MP3 player in my phone in the future is if it functions completely independently of the carrier's cell phone service. I should be able to cancel my phone service completely, and still be able to use my phone as a camera or MP3 player by connecting it to my PC to transfer photos and MP3s to and from the phone.

OH NOSE

[rantingkitten]

No Bluetooth?! What the hell were they thinking? Don't they remember how a few years ago, before Bluetooth, was like practically the Dark Ages, when you had to tediously plug in a cable to the device you were sitting right in front of?

It's almost unbelievable that anyone got anything done back then.

Ellen Goodman

[Voltaire759]

There is a diatribe by Ellen Goodman on "Nightmare Feature Creep" in the Boston Globe that echoes the same sentiments. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion /oped/articles/2006/05/26/nightmare_of_feature_cre ep

better check the facts...

[YesIAmAScript]

TDMA is digital. AMPS and NAMPS are analog.

TDMA is the signalling system used in (pre-3G) GSM.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TDMA

The system you say towers are being converter from is called "TDMA" by some people (including yourself), but is actually called IS-136. When I used the term TDMA, it was referring to the system of signalling used by (or IS-136). This system requires that both the tower and the handset sync their time perfectly. So any handset can keep time as well as the towers can, which is perfect, as the towers are synced to UTC. However, the handsets in the US don't actually know the time. You just set the time once and they advance it, like a watch does. On CDMA, the system sends the actual time to the handset.

So much for factual content in your post.

But is it a solid snake?

[tepples]

Games like Snake worked just fine

By "snake" do you mean the light cycle eating the dots on a flat field (snakes on a plane), or do you mean Metal Gear Solid?

but Mario would be too much for it.

If I'm planning on developing an independent game that could be the next Mario, which platform do you suggest?

Re:But is it a solid snake?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"By "snake" do you mean the light cycle eating the dots on a flat field (snakes on a plane), or do you mean Metal Gear Solid?"

The former. Sadly.

"If I'm planning on developing an independent game that could be the next Mario, which platform do you suggest?"

You're going to laugh at me for suggesting this, but probably the N-Gage. The buttons tend to be a little too utilitarian on most phones. On the flip side, though, you'd have more cycles to play with. One thing I did like about that system was that it was actually capable of 3D graphics. I don't imagine you're thinking in terms of 3D, but it means that they definitely had some power to play with there.

I hope the phone makers read this thread

[try_anything]

I'm a "cyber-savvy guy" (software developer, good enough?) and I HATE the fact that I have to accept the design trade-offs of tons of features I don't use. How much smaller would the phone be without a camera, an mp3 player, a web browser, and a bunch of girly jingles and animations to play for every function? How much more battery life would I get if it didn't have a huge, colorful, animated display? The Razr is a huge step in the right direction, except that I have Verizon, and a special LARGER version of the Razr was created for Verizon users, which are evidently all 13-year-old girls.

I'M NOT A 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL! (Though it's an easy mistake to make when I get upset and start screaming.) Motorola created a huge storm of enthusiasm by releasing an unprecedentedly slim phone, and the first thing they did to it was make it fatter. The fact that they did this especially for Verizon sealed my decision to quit Verizon and switch to a company that caters to adults.

Please, produce just a few phones built for people who care about size, battery life, and reception. Don't worry that people won't pay $300 dollars for a phone without features. They will. When I bought my current phone, I looked through the specs of many dozens of phones and ended up paying a couple hundred bucks for a phone I didn't even like, because there were NO phones I liked. People live with their phones their whole waking lives. They'll spend $300 or $500 for a phone that serves them well, even if it doesn't have the latest features.

Give us choices, an array of phones with different features and different design trade-offs, not dozens of phones with the same features and the same design trade-offs.

your observations do not contradict my assertions

[YesIAmAScript]

I want to say first I very much appreciate someone who considers others' points of view, explains their own observations and states their conclusions, along with a statement of how they feel this affects the discussion. This is in stark contrast the the regular "you are a moron, you're wrong and your mom is ugly" stuff you usually see on the internet.

But your observations do not prove me wrong. I wish to explain why your observations do not contradict my assertions.

I also have a GSM phone and asked a friend who made GSM phones for a company (at the time, he works somewhere else now) which sells handsets into the US market. He explained how it works.

GSM towers tell your phone what time zone you are in (actually offset from UTC). So, in your case, you set the time correctly when you were in Britain, your phone also knew the time zone there, that your offset was +0 (I'm assuming). When you get off the plane here, your phone sees that the UTC offset is -500 (on the east coast, Eastern Daylight time). So your phone adjust the time by 5 hours, and now the time is as correct here as it was back in Britain.

But at no time did a US tower actually tell your phone the true time. If your phone was 5 minutes fast in Britain it would now be 5 minutes fast here. This is how GSM phones adjust for daylight savings here in the US. The tower tells the phone the new offset and it adjusts.

Some US operators ship their phones with this feature turned off. Cingular appears to, and if you turn it on, your phone goes nutty around the daylight savings start/end periods. This is because some towers start telling your phone you are in (in my case) -800+100 DST and others tell you you are in -700. And the phone keeps asking if you want to update over and over each time it sees a new tower if it uses the opposite scheme than the last, even though the time doesn't change!

You could try this out by making your phone 5 minutes off before going back to Britain at the end of your vacation. It might not work though because my friend told me that GSM does include the ability for the towers to send the actual time (and the phone he made implements it), just that in the US no operator does it. It might be that in Britain the operators do send the time and your phone will thus get on track.

Again, I appreciate your reasoned reply and not some screeching condemnation (like the other responder posted for example).

US consumers are unsophisticated.

[Matt_Joyce]

Does the US market really matter with this sort of product ?
I mean, the bleeding edge users are in Europe and Asia, Asia moreso.
The US can settle for the dross lowest common denominator products.

This report is irrelevant and should be ignored.

Don't tell this to the phone makers

[John Jamieson]

I was at JavaOne in San Fran last week, so I was talking to a Motorola rep and telling him that I just wanted a simple sleek phone that did nothing but phone. (and download addresses from my computer)
He basically laughed me out of the booth. He looked at me like I was a loon, and told me that the extra features don't take more space, and there is no market for it.

I think the handset makers are getting scared and think if they ignore us, we will eventually get addicted to feature rich phones. I just wish that the R&D went into shrinking them further, not into feature creep.

(with that said, there was a new java phone there that I would use for our sales force, we could put some nice apps on there, but this is a blackberry replacement really)

Re:No it's not! Why are we always stuck with v1.0?

[chris.evans]

Cellphone companies should opensource their software so the bugs can be fixed by the armyof developers out there :)

Less Features is More Phone

[TemporalBeing]

While I have not RTFA'd...based on the summary I at least agree with it myself. I would love to have a phone that is nothing more than a phone, and possibly and address book. That's all I need - and that's all I use on my current phone (Motorola v180). Connectivity and calling people is all I need and want to do. And, based on the summary, I think that more and more people are getting to that point - they don't want all the features.

Now, reading through the /. responses, I think that the /. audience is generally an exception to this - most of /. readers are techo-geeks, so they'd be naturally drawn to phones with more features. But the average Joe probably just wants to be able to make a phone call and have it actually work.

Per work - I actually can't have a camera - not allowed.

And - just to note - about the only feature I would find useful besides basic phone/address book would be bluetooth, but only in so far as being able to use a bluetooth earpiece and syncing my phonebook with the computer. That's it.

As others have said - it's not in the telco's interest to provide a service like that - they make too much money off the other functions because they can charge different rates. Me - I turn off all the data features, and have instructed the provider to do so - only data feature is the old pager equivalent - not text messging, no internet, etc. Just phone, and paging. (Paging can be nice - but I only keep it since there is no charge for it. I imagine I'd do the same for other things too if it were free, but they're not and I'm not going to pay for them either; so I turn them off.)

Oh - and my parents and others I know are the same way about the phones. Some (my sister) might use a little more, but even the uses I am aware of can be done without Internet - and just 411 directory dialing.

Again, based on the summary (since I didn't RTFA) - I think the article is really just showing there are a lot more people out there like me than the /. audience and even the telco's thought.

mobiles suck

[bonezed]

the biggest problem with all new phones is the shite user interface

I mean c'mon, my 4 year old phone is easier and faster to use!

Both?

[theBluesDog]

I dunno... i carry a PDA in one pocket and a cell phone in the other, so i'm shopping for a smartphone.

I mean, given if you use a PDA, then a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone would seem perfect. All your "phone" need consist of is the little bitty headset goes in your ear. How much simpler can it get?

Re:your observations do not contradict my assertio

[Anonymous Coward]

"You could try this out by making your phone 5 minutes off before going back to Britain at the end of your vacation. It might not work though because my friend told me that GSM does include the ability for the towers to send the actual time (and the phone he made implements it), just that in the US no operator does it. It might be that in Britain the operators do send the time and your phone will thus get on track."

I tried this with Cingular (a US carrier) and setting the time 5 ahead, turned on auto update and the phone synced back to the correct time. Your 'friend' is an idiot.

Re:your observations do not contradict my assertio

[Alioth]

Hrm. My observations are still contradicting you :-)

I just ran this test. I'm in Houston, TX. and my GSM phone is currently using T-Mobile. The phone is a Nokia 6820.
The current time is 09:40 CDT as shown by my NTP synced laptop.

I set the clock to 14:47 manually - so both the hours and the minutes were way off. It reverted back to 09:40 when I powered it off and on.

I ran another test. I set it to 17:20 then just let it sit, without cycling power. It takes much longer before the time gets corrected if I don't cycle power, but it does get corrected.

So therefore, I think you're friend is probably wrong too - or at least has outdated information.

mine still doesn't do it.

[YesIAmAScript]

I think you're right about the outdated part. Although every time I try to verify it, it doesn't update. Perhaps I was fooled by bad info from him and a phone that doesn't have the feature?

Anyway, thanks for performing the experiment on your phone. It's helpful to be corrected so I don't keep repeating bad information.

I never had to enter the time into a phone until I got a GSM phone. My first phone was analog (in 1992) and didn't have a clock. My first digital phone used CDMA (1995ish) and got the time from the system when you turned it on. My 2nd and 3rd CDMA phones were the same way.

I've had two GSM phones and each one asks me for the time the first time you set it up. My new one has a fancy wizard that asks you even.

So it seemed like a big step backward to me. Maybe my next GSM phone will set the time automatically when I first turn it on like my 1995 CDMA phone did.

Re:mine still doesn't do it.

[Alioth]

Your next phone will probably still ask you to set the date and time on first power on. On Nokia phones at least, automatic time/date update is switched OFF by default. You have to go through the wizard thingy before you can get to the setting to set the auto date/time setting! (Nokia's user interface on their more complex phones is bloody awful - even simple and frequent functions such as sending a text take about ten times as many button presses as should be necessary)

Re:That's cuz all the simple phones are in......

[hab136]

Cingular, from everything I've seen and heard, sucks.

I didn't say they were good. :)

T-mobile, the OTHER nationwide GSM carrier in the US, has good service & support at the first level. Try to do anything complicated and it turns into a disaster, but they have been pretty good and certainly I do better than Cingular users.

T-mobile leases minutes from Cingular; they use the exact same towers. So, only one nationwide GSM network, resold by more than one company.

Since they are the same towers, I fail to see how coverage could be better with T-mobile. T-mobile differentiates themselves on service plans and customer service (quite well in my opinion).

Many electric and long-distance companies operate the same way, reselling a larger company's product (usually with better pricing and service).

Alas, T-mobile doesn't serve my city (Charlotte, NC) except as roaming. So, Stinkular it is.

You got all that right

[YesIAmAScript]

I just borrowed a Nokia N80 today. I started it up and it did ask for the time. I turned on the update feature and nothing changed, but then again I had set it correctly already. I believe you, I have no reason to try messing it up and turning the feature back off and on again.

This UI is pretty bad (it's a Series 60 phone). I came from a Sony-Ericsson W810i, which has a great UI. This is a nightmare, as you mention, it takes like 3 extra clicks to do everything. In one particular path (creating a text message?) every step along the way took an extra click, including the send action (which has a single key on the S-E).

It has a nice display though. Camera is good, if the camera on my W810i weren't excellent (and auto focus) I might have better stuff to say about the N80 camera.

It's crashed on me 3 times in 8 hours and put up the message "General: System Error !" at one point.

It does do a few things well, I'll say that. The main screen showing appointments and other stuff is nice. But mostly, it's a mess. Even the keyboard lock doesn't work well.

It's a slider, so sliding it closed should lock it. It doesn't. It asks you, and if you don't answer, it doesn't lock. I should be able to change that in a setting, but despite having a bewildering array of options, that doesn't seem to be in there. When I put it in my pocket, the phone often slides open a bit, which automatically unlocks it. Sliding it back close in your pocket doesn't relock it (it just asks again) and so you have to remove it from your pocket, open it, close it, answer yes, and try to be more careful putting it in your pocket next time, or else it's back to step 1.

I guess S-E doesn't have a true time update option (just the auto hours/time zone adjustment I spoke of). Perhaps their next phones (k800/k790) will, as they are a new generation of software and hardware.

This thing is maddening. It supports Wi-Fi, but the settings are so crappy, it's difficult to configure.

And who do you need to call you?

[jotaeleemeese]

I mean, honestly, lets look at normal living patterns:

-8 hours sitting in an office.
-8 hours sleeping.
-2 or 3 hours doing stuff at home.

that is already 18, 19 hours a day during which a landline is easily available.

Guess what? During that time I don't care to be called because more likely I am already with the people I want to interact with.

If the mobile phone service per se was so useful the companies will not be trying like mad to cram all other unnecessary services in order to increase their revenue.

The truth is that people use little that service beacuse it is pretty useless and what they are using is text of all things.

Re:And who do you need to call you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eight or ten hours in an office, where personal use of the landline is prohibited (but I can step out to take a call on my cell phone). Also an hour away for lunch, and an hour (maybe two) commuting.

And part of the point of being reachable is so that you and your SO and friends can arrange to meet and do something more enjoyable than wasting a couple more hours at home again alone.